BUILDING COSTS

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 127, 31 May 1935, Page 8

BUILDING COSTS

(To the Editor.) I s Sur,—ln your leading article of May' .28 you haye written at some length to + show that in America high wfge rates do not necessarily mean increased purchasing power, because a Mr R H Armstrong has pointed out that though the workers in the building trades receive approximately a dollar an. hour the working week averages 27J hours and he is further quoted as saying that there has been no new construction in the building field for a number of years. This ftck has been caused by one fadtor—it has not been economically possible to erect new buildings" He winds up by stating that the uneconomic factor is the cost, of labour. It is time that this fallacious reasoning was given the knock-out How is it that Henry Ford has recently increased wages and still is able to sell his cars cheaper (all things considered) than any other manufacturer? How is it that here in New Zealand the total labour costs in the erection of a dwellmßi ? th oo *^aa' materials, is approxil mately 22 per cent, (covering carpenters, _painters, plumbers, plasterers, electricians, etc.) of the whole, and I have no doubt that in America it would not be a great deal, more, for only recently another American journal stated that there was ton exhibition in New York, a house built of fabricated materials so hew that a name had not been given to some .of them, which could be erected and'finished in every detail in just two weeks from the time it was ordered. The trouble is, and it does not matter how one reasons it out, that the amount of money required to purchase a home, whether in the form of rent or otherwise, isi not equivalent to the amount- distributed as wages to all those concerned, directly or indirectly, in the building indus: try, so far as actual workers are concerned. Merchants, insurance companies, and others take more out of than what they put in the building industry. Notwithstanding a plum in the form of "a £50 subsidy, competition in the trade of erecting dwellings is so keen that a contractor who can show a profit is indeed fortunate. -Another factor retarding building operations is the high cost of land and high duties on materials which; in any* case have to be imported.—l am, etc., BUILDER. tThe statement made by Mr. Armstrong concerned the building industry in New York, not the motor industry. It quoted various statistics. The figures we requoted were given on the authority of the United States Bureau of Statistics. They did not concern fabricated houses. Other American observers see in fabricated houses a possible means by which the temporary idleness of thousands of building employees may be made permanent. —Ed.] ,