THE HOUSING QUESTION 
43 
Finally, as to the men’s output. The steady fall of 
prices in a year from £950 to £500 tells its own tale. 
Every architect and surveyor in England knows how 
greatly output has increased in the last 18 months. 
Charts prepared by a Ministry of Health official, from 
statistics covering the erection of thousands of houses 
between June and November, 1921, shewed that in 
that period the output of plasterers and bricklayers 
increased by 50 per cent., and of slaters by 75 per cent. 
Let us quote the witness of the National Housing and 
Town Planning Council on this subject (their Weekly 
Statement of 16th April, 1921) :— 
“ Enquiries made over a large number of areas demonstrate 
the erroneous character of many statements made as to the number 
of bricks laid per day. The normal number of bricks laid in 
cottage schemes is over 500 per day. 
“ Over the whole of the Manchester City Council schemes on 
which 475 bricklayers are now employed (as compared with 
48 last summer) the average is greater than this. 
" In a typical Home Counties town (Aylesbury) the Chairman 
of the Housing Committee—a builder—states that the average 
has never fallen below 600 a day. 
" Concerning the possibilities of laying a greater number of 
bricks per day in cottage work, it is pointed out that there is 
much misunderstanding. A modern ' Balbus' can lay 1,000 
bricks a day in the construction of a simple wall surrounding an 
estate. But the most skilful bricklayer cannot greatly exceed 
200 a day in the construction of the flues of a cottage chimney 
carried through the roof. 
“ For this and similar reasons, those familiar with the actual 
operations of cottage building regard with a large measure of 
good-humoured scepticism the stories which are told, wherever 
male gossips congregate, as to the sins of the bricklayers. These