Again I called the attention of the Legislature to the fact that it had been brought to my attention that the high cost of building materials was artificially stimulated, and I suggested that the Joint Legislative Committee be given increased powers to carry on further investigation of this situation.

In urging a housing policy for the State I called the attention of the Legislature again to the fact that building houses for some groups in the population has become an unprofitable business. Hence, these groups have for a generation lived in the left-over housing, or in the cheapest and most poorly-planned type of home that a grudging and unrealizing community would provide. As a result of the present emergency, a still larger portion of our population is being forced back into houses of a standard below that which we have accepted as decent American homes.

I pointed out to the Legislature that except for the report of the Reconstruction Commission and the findings of the Joint Legislative Committee, we have been aided by no State agency in the consideration of this very important problem. In the enactment of labor laws, we are guided by the Industrial Commission. In the enactment of health measures, by the State Health Departments. In matters affecting the conservation of our natural resources, by the Conservation Commission. The Banking Department, the Insurance Department, and other State agencies all deal with special subjects that need executive or legislative action. But in housing, dealing with the elementary need of shelter and establishing homes, there is no State or local agency to aid the legislative and executive branches of the Government either in meeting an emergency, or what is more important, in helping to establish a permanent housing policy for the State. Such a policy does not necessarily mean the building of houses by the State, but it does mean the establishment of housing standards and of local development that should underlie any future growth of the cities of a state.

To this end I recommended for New York State a law which will create in each community having a population of

over ten thousand a local housing board, which shall be charged with the duty of finding a solution for the local housing situation. These local boards should be required to prepare within a period to be determined by the local authorities a plan for the future development of the city and should consider local housing ordinances. A State agency should be created and the local boards should be required to report to it at stated intervals so that there may be available at all times a body of information applicable to this subject The State agency, on the other hand, should first of all be directed to report to the next Legislature on a method for the development of a system of State credits for housing ing purposes. Through the State agency informatino should be made available to local communities that should aid them in their housing program.

Even at the extraordinary sesesion the Legislature enacted only emergency relief measures. In acting on my recommendations that something be done to stimulate building construction, a permissive statute was passed, allowing local communities to exempt from taxation new construction. The net result of this has been that only one communityNew York City-has made any attempt to pass a tax exemption ordinance and although two months have passed since the legislation was enacted no act is as yet on the statute books, and new construction is as far as ever from being undertaken.

The Joint Legislative Committee with its increased powers has gone forward with its investigation of the high cost of building materials and an examination of the unlawful conditions in the industry with the sensational results which are common knowledge to readers of the metropolitan dailies.

It seems however that proper housing is recognized as a social and health necessity by other countries. The Canadian Government is lending twenty-five million dollars to the provinces for the building of homes. In England, where housing has become a function of the Ministry of Health not only is the government making colossal loans to local authorities and to public service corporations (limited dividend

companies)-but it is offering subsidies of as much as one quarter the cost of houses to make up for the loss involved in building at a time of excessive costs-Britain knows that its welfare depends on having sufficient decent homes-and it means to have them no matter what they cost. England is not only planning new homes-it is planning new towns. France also is doing constructive work. Paris has bought a large tract of ground on the outskirts of the city on which is to be built a garden suburb. The policy of Australia that has been in operation for some years, of stimulating house building and ownership by loans on easy and long terms, has been greatly extended to aid returning soldiers. And so we find in every civilized country the government has accepted its responsibility even in a greater degree than before the war of solving the most difficult problem that confronts its citizens, that of finding a home. In America our housing laws have been negative laws-restrictive laws. But in the light of the present emergency we see that the State here, as elsewhere, must offer a helping hand-must find a constructive solution if we are to have homes.

It is time that this country made adequate provision to meet the problem. I do not believe that federal legislation alone would meet the situation. The whole problem is too colossal to be solved by a single bureau at Washington. Our State governments are in a different position than the national government in meeting the housing problem. The political problem is lessened in degree. The number of geographical interests to be served are much smaller. But, above all, in State legislation there is the opportunity to try out various methods of building, aiding and financing housing. There are innumerable suggestions in the experiences of Canada, South America and Australia, as well as European countries. Some will fit the local conditions and habits of one part of the country and some another. American ingenuity will find new means of meeting this problem. The solution of the housing problem of a comparatively newly settled agricultural state will be different from that of New York with its great cities. Some states may use their insurance funds, others their farmers' banks, as sources for

building loans. Ultimately all these experiments may be used by the National Government as the basis for the organization of a great central bureau. But that will be a problem of the distant future. In the same manner that the States have tried out women suffrage, minimum wage compensation and child-labor laws, so now they should undertake experimentation and careful study of their local housing conditions. We may have failures on the part of individual states through choice of means that do not meet the social conditions of the state. But how insignificant such failure would be and how easily remedied as compared to a failure on the part of a Federal housing administration.

It would be manifestly impossible to fill all the needs for housing everywhere. It does not seem to me that this is the time to create a national housing fund of any kind. It seems clear to me that the individual states should themselves work out sytems of state credits for state purposes. Out of intelligent attempts to solve the question on this small scale, we can evolve a national housing policy.

With the control centered in each state, people will be in more direct and more democratic control of their housing funds and their application to local conditions. I am therefore not an advocate at this time of a Federal system of housing loans, although a central housing bureau for the coordination of all available material is desirable and even necessary, but this is something quite distinct from creating a national housing fund.

No problem of reconstruction has such far reaching implications as this problem of housing. Shall this country remain in the dark ages of inadequate and un-American housing, endangering the health and morals of future generations of our citizenship? Or shall we go forward with the times, and enter the new era of our democracy with an enlightened interest in the fundamental needs of our cities and our citizenship for well-planned communities that serve the industrial, commercial and social needs of the people and homes that make for a stabilized, self-respecting, wholesome family life?

THE CHAIRMAN-The Chair recognizes Hon. Abraham Kaplan, senator from the state of New York.

HON. ABRAHAM KAPLAN of New York-Mr. Chairman and members of the Governors' Conference: I am very happy for the privilege of being here this afternoon as a member of the Lockwood Investigating Committee of the state of New York for two reasons: first, because I deem it a privilege to be allowed to address this gathering of Governors on so important a topic as housing; and second, because I have the honor with Judge Boyle of representing the able Governor of New York, Alfred E. Smith.

I do not know how many of you Governors were acquainted, or are acquainted, with conditions with which the city and state of New York were suffering shortly before the Lockwood Committee was appointed a year and a half ago, or how many of you know that the Lockwood Committee itself has in the year and a half of its existence listened to about ten thousand pages of testimony, a great part of which was wrung from the lips of unwilling witnesses.

In those days a year and a half ago we were suddenly confronted with a condition of congestion; the hotels were very much overcrowded. Everybody down south and everybody out west was coming into the city of New York to occupy the hotels at that time, so that the people resident in the city of New York were kept out of the hotels. Construction was at a standstill, landlords found themselves suddenly in the possession of a commodity short in supply and great in demand, and some of them took advantage of the situation. Rentals started to increase, they doubled, they trebled, poor people had no place to live; they were in a dilemma with two horns, one of which meant paying an exorbitant rental to some landlord practicing rent profiteering, and the other meant taking one's family into the streets and attempting to maintain it homeless.

It was with that condition staring the city in the face that the legislature appointed the Lockwood Committee a year and a half ago to investigate. Now, it didn't take that committee a long while at all to come to one conclusion, and that was that rent profiteering was being practiced in the