architecture and they have finally succeeded in perfecting a home for the American wage-earner which in all respects measures up to his standard of living, the highest in the world. This technical achievement introduces a new factor into the situation. As compared with the older models of the speculative builders, the superior economy, efficiency, convenience, firesafety and beauty of the new architectural types should create a revolution in industry besides which the changes wrought by the automobile seem slight in comparison. One may safely assert that, had the new housing architecture, which includes the new system of site-and-town planning based upon it, been perfected ten years ago, so that it could have been introduced at the same price level on which the older types were produced, it would already have begun to transform the entire physical aspect of American industrial districts. Housing blocks, neighborhoods, towns, whole districts, would be covered with better homes and gardens, interspersed with playgrounds, parks and open spaces.
The social transformation would be no less profound. For, in such an environment, life would be fuller, finer and more reasonable, and democracy, for the first time since the days of the beautiful old towns of the Early Republic, would again be on the way to having a setting worthy of it.
The contrast of slums
To draw such an ideal picture seems an odd way of beginning a discussion of economics. Nevertheless, the subject of housing economics is so intricate and so generally misunderstood that it easily loses point unless it is illustrated in a clear picture which we may keep before our eyes, revealing the vision of the future, when intelligence, organization and imagination are at last brought widespread into housing. Nor will this ideal painting alone suffice. If we are to grasp its meaning to the full we must have another picture to place beside the first one which will show, by contrast, the present lack of leadership and of statesmanship and the resulting disorganization, from which issue huge social and economic waste and the demoralization of slums. This latter is the picture of the outward tenements of New York City and of the ramshackle wooden houses of other cities. By comparing these two pictures one sees which way progress lies.
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