Back to 1923

Depression has knocked the building industry into the subbasement. On the theory that a revival of construction would fan its beneficial effects out into countless allied trades and manufactures, President Hoover called his Home Building & Home Ownership Conference two months ago (TIME, Dec. 14), urged its attendants to get busy and encourage the building of houses. Now pending before Congress is a bill to create a Federal Home Loan Discount system to safeguard mortgages and open up fresh credit for private building (TIME, Nov. 23). A variety of communal plans have been offered in an effort to get the building business again above ground. None seemed more encouraging, more logical to contractors than a proposal prepared by the Building Trades Employers' Association in New York City last week.

Effective May 1, when the 1929-32 labor contracts expire, the Association was ready to cut union wages a whopping 25%. In the building business it is traditional that as New York goes, so goes the union. Under the proposed reductions bricklayers would be paid $12 per day instead of $15.40. Plasterers would be cut from $15.40 to $10. Their helpers, now paid from $8.15 to $10.12, would receive a flat $7. These reductions would bring building tradesmen back to the 1923 basis. As labor absorbs 60% of the expense of erecting the average building, a decrease in construction costs appeared close at hand to help stimulate the industry.

Scarcely a peep of protest came from the unions. Most of their members were now gladly working for whatever they could get, wherever they could get it. With so many jobless a strike, they realized, would be the emptiest of empty gestures.

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