Evening star., 1941-10-05

II you had IA pounds Of copper wire,
perhaps you could build that dream
house you've been planning.
But the chances are you won't be
able to get the wire, nor lot of other
metals you would need; and your house,
like hundreds Of thousands OF other
houses now being planned, won't be
put up until after the war.
For practically no new non-defense
construction will be started In the next
year or two, according to some of the
best informed Government officials Be-
cause of shortages Of certain materials,
the building industry Is about to go
into temporary eclipse. except that part
Of 1t which builds homes for defense
workers.
Even defense housing projects have
been delayed by the shortages-and the
situation has been still further COM
picated by disagreements among the
man running the housing program
OilClhlS HI bOeA1 ~ e W. oilI Vic
ofnce Of the co-ordinator of defense
housing estimate that s1,000000,000
worth Of defense house construction,
both public and private, was stalled at
one time a few weeks ago when the
long-debated problem OF priorities for
building materials was at last settled.
Key Shortage
The scarce materials are metals, OF
which vast quantities are needed to
manufacture guns, shells, tanks, air
planes and ships. Copper, particularly
copper wire, Is the key shortage In the
new building industry as aluminium is
In the aircraft field. 1t is absolutely in
dispensable-you can't have electricity In
your home without copper wire; yet the
supply Is running so short that next
year civilians will have to get along with
only one-third of the copper they used
last year.
Copper will have TO be spread SO thin
10 meet the most urgent civilian de-
mands that even the IA pounds of it
required to wire a small home can be
spared only for dwellings for defense
workers. The only way to obtain more
copper would be to increase imports of
1t from Chile, which supplies one-third
OF the United States market, or by
exploiting low-grade veins of American
ore. But shipping is too scarce to
expect a large increase in Chilean i'm
ports; and developing the American
veins will not be economically feasible
until price control authorities, now
struggling to keep down the price of
copper allow a higher price to be
charged for domestic metal whose
processing is expensive.
The other short items are steel largely
used in girders, window frames and vari-
GUS supports; zinc, for galvanizing and
for making brass and hardware; pig
iron, for furnace and radiator castings;
nickel, for plumbing and decorative
metal work; and lead for plumbing and
paint.
There will be plenty of lumber, brick
and concrete as long as transportation
flows freely. But only frontier cabin
could be constructed without some
metal-for lighting, heating and plumb
ing; to be used in items like locks,
hinges, window sashes, nails, door knobs.
Builders first felt the shortages in
May and June, when defense production
began to eat deep into the metal supply.
Many of them bought up large quanti-
ties of supplies to be kept in reserve;
and whatever private non-defense build
ing takes place next year will be done
almost entirely with these stored-up
materials.
Factories which normally supplied the
scarce items have had to give preference
to orders which bore o. P. MS priority
satings. Such orders, ranked according
to their Importance to the defense pro-
gram take precedence over civilian Or
ders or other defense orders of lower
priority rating.
The general result has been a gradual
decline in non-defense building, and a
gradual tightening up on bank credit
for construction work Lending agen-
cies everywhere are reporting that they
will not make loans for new construction
unless the builder has his supplies on
hand or is building defense workers
homes, which have priority ratings and
thus are assured of the materials which
will be needed to complete them.
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