EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS

Evening Star, Issue 20312, 22 October 1929, Page 14

EIGHT BILLION DOLLARS

AMERICA’S HUGE EXPENDITURE The year 1928 in America constituted a record as the greatest volume of building ever accomplished by a nation during any single vear in the histcrv of mankind. The staggering sum of eight billions of dollars was spent for construction of all types. Of this amount D. A. Garber, general manager of the Association' General Contractors of America, 'estimates that general building took 5.500.000. 000dol. engineering and construction, including public works 1.000. 000dol, highway construction 1.000. 000.000dol, and railway construction 500,000,000d01. An outstanding fact in an analysis of the figures (comments ‘ Architecture ’) is the success of tho carefullywaged campaign against the traditional damper of seasonal declines. As a nation of builders we arc coming nearer and nearer to the conviction that wo can keep on building through the winter months. Unquestionably greater than any other factor in -our building activities (this writer continues) has been the constantly-rising standard of American life, which, perhaps, is but to say that we build because wc arc prosperous, or that wo are prosperous because we are building. We might even sum it up in the old olatitudo that “nothing succeeds like success/’ Tho fact is, however, that wo have begun to grasp an entirely new idea in human relationship, and that is that the consumer is not, as wo used to think, a portion of tho public parked somewhere by itself, with nothing to do but to buy and consume. The consumer is _ the" producer, when, as and if the said producer is well paid lor his work, and has enough leisure from hi« working hours to enjoy life and what goes witli it in tins day and generation. There are those who fear the five-day week tc-day just as there were tho«p who feared the eighthour dev, yet both are part of our inevitable march dmvard with tho tide of increasing .production coupled with ; r’cr”a'd”g consumntion.