BOOK REVIEWS 
REPORT OF THE UNITED STATES HOUSING CORPORATION. (U. S. 
Bureau of Industrial Housing and Transportation.) Vol. II, Washington, 
Government Printing Office, 1919. 524 + xix pages. Illus., plans. 11% x g 
inches. Price $1.50. 
The Housing Bureau was created to help win the war by providing for workers 
in war industries such housing and living conditions as were required for the health, 
self-respect, and efficiency of the workers, in order that the production and shipment 
of munitions and supplies might not continue to be imperiled by the intolerable living 
conditions caused by the war in manufacturing centers. This volume is a part of 
the accounting which the Housing Bureau is called upon to make to the Secretary 
of Labor and thus to the people of the United States. As a record of actual physical 
achievement, when measured against the whole of the task which was to be performed, 
it is like the record of most of the other government bureaus, which came to their 
maximum activity and efficiency only shortly before the time when the armistice 
made their efficiency of no further military value. Although the power of the Housing 
Bureau for further creative effort has terminated, the need for proper industrial hous- 
ing and town planning has not ceased with the war, as has the need for munitions. 
There is now a great and growing housing shortage in this country, and the content- 
ment and consequent efficiency of industrial workers is no less important to the 
country in peace than in war. The Housing Bureau in endeavoring to do its job as 
logically and effectively as possible was obliged to evolve certain methods of determin- 
ing what the circumstances were in each housing problem dealt with, and certain 
conceptions of what should be aimed at in handling these problems; and the records of 
this organized thinking ought to be immediately valuable to such of us as are now deal- 
ing with similar problems. Furthermore, the detailed records of the house plans and 
housing schemes worked out by the Housing Bureau, even though less than half of 
them ever came to construction, form much the largest available collection of data as 
to comparative advantages and relative costs of work of this kind. The more important 
items have been carefully stated and tabulated in the report, without, however, any 
considerable attempt to draw from this mass of data the conclusions which it may 
warrant, this being obviously too slow a process to be possible in the time. 
Careful study and comparison of this material, however, should throw a great deal 
of light on various practical points in industrial housing, and will be equally valuable 
to the people of this country whether it shall incidentally also show that the Housing 
Bureau was correct or incorrect in the various decisions which it was forced to make, 
under stress, with such skill and information as it then had at hand. 
To quote the editor’s note: 
“The accompanying volume endeavors to set forth in as small space as practicable 
those activities and accomplishments of the Housing Corporation which were most 
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