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
