There is no more baffling problem than that presented by the continued
growth of great cities, but it is a problem with which we must sometime
deal. It bears directly on the high cost of living and is, indeed,
largely responsible for it. Rent is based on land values. Land values
rise with increasing population. The price of food is closely related to
the growing disproportion between consumers and producers, resulting
from urban congestion.
Here is Washington, a city of some 400,000 people, doubtless destined
steadily to grow until--a Member of Congress predicts--it may touch
2,000,000 twenty years hence. Already the housing problem is acute, as
it is in almost every other large American city. It would be a pitiful
thing if the provision of more housing facilities to meet the needs of
growing population meant merely more congestion and higher rents, with
an ever-decreasing degree of landed proprietorship and true individual
independence. Such conditions, it seems to me, undermine the American
hearthstone and carry a deep menace to the future of our institutions. I
believe there must be a better way, and that the time has come when we
should make an earnest effort to find it.
Within a 10-mile circle drawn around the Capitol dome are thousands of
acres of good agricultural land, of which the merest fraction has been
reduced to intensive cultivation. Much of it is wastefully used, and
much of it is not used at all. Conditions of soil, climate, and water
supply are good and represent a fair average for the United States.
Suburban transportation is a serious problem in some localities and less
so in others, but tends to become more simple with the extension of good
roads and increasing use of motor vehicles, including the auto bus.
Somewhere and sometime, it seems to me, a new system must be devised to
disperse the people of great cities on the vacant lands surrounding
them, to give the masses a real hold upon the soil, and to replace the
apartment house with the home in a garden. Such a system should enable
the ambitious and thrifty family not only to save the entire cost of
rent, but possibly half the cost of food, while at the same time
enhancing its standard of living socially and spiritually, as well as
economically.
It has been suggested that there is no better place to demonstrate a new
form of suburban life than here at the National Capital, where we may
freely draw upon all the resources of the governmental departments for
expert knowledge and advice and where the demonstration can readily
command wide publicity and come under the observation of the Nation's
lawmakers. And I am expecting that this experiment will be made. Such a
plan of town or community life, rather than city life, should be
extended to every other large city in the Nation. A simple act of
legislation, accompanied by a moderate appropriation for organization
and educational work, would enable the department to put its facilities
at the service of local communities and of the industries throughout the
United States. This form of national leadership would be of value both
to investors in the local securities and to the home builders
themselves. If the work of land acquisition and construction, together
with the organization of community settlements resulting therefrom, were
conducted under the supervision of the State or the Federal Government
it would safeguard the character of the movement from every point of
view.
Therefore, I put first among the constructive things which may be done
by the exercise of the Government's power of supervision and direction,
with the smallest outlay of money, this matter of providing suburban
homes for our millions of wage earners.