Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1919-03-23
BUILDING NEEDS
 ARE EVIDENCED
 IN MANY CITIES
Questlonnaires Show Needs and Obstacles That
 Are Hindrance.

SeVenty-four cities have returned
 to the U. s. Department of Labor missionaries on building needs and obstacles in getting building under
 way. Flfty-seven of these cities snow a pressing demand for buld- ing and most of these emphasize the shortage of dwellings and apartment
 houses. '''''
 .lyplcal of the representations in ! thls particular are the follow;ng.
 !ortland, Maine reports a shortage
 Tn dwelling and tenement houses. Ha- Vefnlll, Lawrence and Salem, Mass. report demand for dwellings and
 ttenements; Albany, N. r., needs flats Manhattan needs buildings; Atlantic
 Glty, East Orange and Elizabeth, New Jersey are short in dwellings ana apartments and almost all the towns in Pennsylvania reporting 1 snow a deflclency in residences.
 Ohlo, lntlana and Illinois show q shortage |. dwellings with an occas- lonal report on demands for schools and factories, and the major per cent of shortage in Colorado, Utah, Was lngton and California is in dwellings. In the south and southwest there is l a demand for business building this being especially noticeable in Texas and Louisiana.
 Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Newark, Ohio, Wheeling, w. Va. Bloomington and Danville, H., re- port no demand for buildings indi- eating present facilities are ade- quate to crrent needs.
 w, ,,,oo city reporting no delay on account of wages, material prices, interest rates and available capital. Taco- 1 mas obstacle was indictment wealth , CT and subsequent reports from the state of Washington indicate prep arations for unusal building activity for spring season.
 The questionnairs, which were sent out by the Division of Public Works and Construction Departments of the U. s. Department of Labor, were calculated to verify the results of other Investigations intothe building | shortage of the country and to de- velop what, if any, obstacles were being encountered by building inter- est Specific information was ask ed on the influence of wages, ma terial prices, interest rates and avail- able investment capital. Several cit it's reported that it was none of these which was delaying building but rath- 1 CT the uncertainty of the future lab- or and material market. A majority of the cities assert that high wages are factor in holding back build l ing: there is almost unanimous con- entrance in the opinion that high prices of materials are determined obstacles. There is not much com- plaint about interest rates but IA cities report builders are having diff ficulty in obtaining capital to fi- nance projects. 1 This latter obstacle appears not to be a sectional matter but rather one growing out of local conditions in widely separated territory. Cam bridge. Mass, New Haven, Con-, AL bany. N r., Philadelphia, Pa, Terre, Haute Ind, Wheeling, w. Va, Au- rora, Ill.,. are among the cities re- porting difficulty in borrowing capl- tai for building work. ss.s1
 Whenever building indGsctry or- ganizations have gone into the sub feet. the conclusion has prevailed that no decrease in labor wages, may be expected for some; time to come-l not until general price level on liv- ing necessities drops. The inyestigar tions of the economists in the De- partment of Labor supported by no tess an authority than Prof. Irving flsh- err, of Yale University, assert no marked reuction may be expected m building material prices Fro1; Fisher asserts we are on new ana higher price level from which: m the main. we shall not recede. we are m a permanently higher price level" saws Prof. Fisher. "and the sooner the busines men of the country take this view and adjust themselves to if the sooner will they serve them selves and the nation from the ms ] fortune which will come if we per sist in our present false hope.
 Afssg ssssienn,anfg sest1as Rpa'y 6 wych this con-
 ci,,s;on ci Is based, Prof. Fisher con cludes his story of the slt9atlon Witn this: "Business men should race ,tne 1 facts. ;. To: talk reverently ot lSlo-I4 nrices is to speak a dead language today. The buyers of the country, since the armistice, having made an nnexamuled attack upon prices thru their waiting attitude, and yet prlce recessions have been stubborn reah, tv Rusiness men! are going to ma o,t That the clever man IS not the uoan % who waits. but the one who finds o,t 'the new price facts, and acts ac- cordingly."