HOUSES SCARCE
Oft I hear discordant slogans, hear the loud and sad lament; men are wearing out their brogans hunting houses they can rent. Every village, town and city sees the same discouraged crew; and it seems to me a pity that good houses are so few.
In my native burg, Empory, I see women chasing round, and they tell the same old story—houses simply can’t be found. And the same sad word is spoken everywhere I chance to roam; from Topeka to Hoboken folks are hunting for a home.
When they’re sick and tired of chasing, when their souls with woe are filled, maybe they will do some bracing; maybe they’ll decide to build. Rents are higher now than ever, and the prices won’t slump back, and that man is really clever who will build himself a shack.
“But the cost!” I hear men yawping; and they put up thoughtless roars, for they never have been shopping at the modern lumber stores. Building goods today are cheaper than all other goods you buy; all commodities are steeper—ask the lumber dealer nigh.
Monied men are often questing for gold bricks, and dern the price; always ready for investing in blue sky and pickled ice. If they’d build a lot of houses they might dwell in Easy street, where the catawampus browses, and the dingbat’s song is sweet. Every time they’d build a dwelling crowds would come, and still increase, crying, clamoring and yelling, begging for a five-year lease.
There’s no better proposition than this thing of building homes, and the fact should find position in the plutocratic domes.
And the man with modest bundle should be renting nevermore; he should take his wad and trundle to the lumber dealer’s store.
There should be a boom in building such as we have never seen; palaces with ornate gilding, modest homes, all painted green.