are not skinning the rich to any great extent. The rich after all are relatively few in number and do not need many houses. It is the poor who mainly suffer. When they get this into their heads they will begin to see that federated labor unions are not all that they have been cracked up to be. Their policy is not one for all and all for one, but rather is it all for a few and the devil take the rest. The farmers also will begin to see that alliance with labor, which labor is so keen about effecting, is about as preposterous as a marriage between a lamb and a wolf. The farmers’ animosity has been directed against Wall Street, but if the farmers could get the dust out of their eyes they would ally themselves with Wall Street rather than with organized labor.
I have brought out these points so often that my hearers may well be wearied by my repetitions, but it is by iteration and reiteration that we fix ideas in the minds of people. I am going to quote on this subject some fresher and more graphic words than mine. Frank Mann, Tenement House Commissioner of New York, declared a few days ago that there is no immediate prospect of low rents for the average wage earner. Despite the building of 167,375 new apartments in New York during the last three years, under the stimulus of tax exemption, the city gained but 13,182 in its housing capacity, 154,000 having become obsolete and having been razed in the meanwhile. Even the bonus of tax exemption has been absorbed by building labor, which in complete analysis now constitutes 85 to 87 per cent of the cost of building. Mr. Mann proceeds as follows:
Thus a condition has arisen whereby some classes of wage earners are
surely reaping the profits of tax exemption, while the rising cost of living, due