CHAPTER X

WHY GOVERNMENT HELPS IN HOME MAKING


Our nation requires healthy citizens, intelligent citizens,
prosperous and happy citizens. The home can do more to produce
them than any other community agency. Therefore the nation is wise
to look after its homes.

RELATION OF HOME CONDITIONS TO INDUSTRY

People cannot do their work well if they live in unwholesome or
unpleasant homes. This was made clear during the recent war. The
lack of suitable living places for workmen and their families was
one of the chief obstacles to shipbuilding and munitions
manufacture during the early part of the war. England found this
out as well as the United States, and one of the first things both
countries had to do was to take measures to provide proper home
conditions for those who were engaged in supplying the nation's
needs. During the first year of the war our Congress appropriated
$200,000,000 to build houses for industrial workers.

The problem of securing good physical conditions of home life has
naturally been greatest in crowded industrial centers, but it is
by no means absent in small communities, or even in the open
country. One writer describes a certain farmhouse where five