great relief from congestion at terminals and added much to property values.

The number of homes wired for electrical service has increased from 5,700,000 in 1920 to over 12,000,000, greatly extending the advantages of electricity, relieving home makers of many irksome tasks, and adding immeasurably to home comfort. The adaptation of electric power to the farm is rapidly expanding and is being given increasing attention.

STATISTICS AS A FORCE IN THE ELIMINATION OF WASTE

[By W. M. STEUART, Director of the Census]

There has been a great extension and improvement in business statistics during the past five years. A distinctly new attitude and basis of thought upon the question of the enormous waste due to periodic suspension of production and employment was developed through the exhaustive research by the committee on unemployment and the business cycle, appointed by the Secretary of Commerce in 1922, and comprising Owen D. Young (chairman), Joseph H. Defrees, Mary Van Kleek, Matthew Woll, Clarence M. Wooley, and Edward Eyre Hunt (secretary).

This committee's report pointed out that depressions and slumps were the reaction from the waste, extravagance, and overproduction during booms, and that the reduction of boom periods was the point for attack. In this field the committee suggested that the most important contribution to solution lay in a better understanding by the business world of the dangers inherent in these boom periods, and of the signals of their approach. This very understanding, it was felt, would bring automatic reaction in the business community which would largely cure the evil.

In this direction the committee strongly supported the views of the department that an adequate objective statistical service as to production, consumption, stocks, and prices of commodities, together with informational service upon economic currents at home and abroad, was the first requisite. They also pointed out the desirability of direct check upon overspeculation through credit management by the Federal Reserve Board, and also the importance of a reserve of construction and equipment in the large industries and in governmental and public works which could be used to stimulate activity at any indication of slackening employment. Aside from their contribution to stabilization of the business cycle, statistics and economic information have a profound day-to-day importance in the elimination of waste in all of our industry and commerce.

With the purpose of putting statistics to work, the department, through the Bureau of the Census, inaugurated the monthly Survey of Current Business in 1921, and has been building up that publication ever since, with the aim of collecting all this type of information and making it promptly available to the business cominunity. At the same time the census of manufactures was reorganized to point it more directly to these purposes. The department has also developed a large informational service through Commerce Reports, issued weekly, and the Commerce Yearbook, issued annually, together with numerous special reports of particular interest to different industries and trades. These services reflect the concentration of the vast collection of data from individual industries and trades, a considerable part of which has been recruited by the trades themselves.

It has long been the view of the department that the function of the Federal Government should be to provide, through the Bureau of the Census and other branches, the basic data as to population, occupation, production, etc., in order that accurate foundations should be periodically created upon which intermediate current statistics and surveys might be conducted by the industries and trades, and further that the Government could render a valuable service by summarizing the results of current trade statistics so that they should be available to members of other trades and to the public.

There has been hesitation in many trades at undertaking this large area of effort because of the lack of clarity in interpretation of the Sherman Act. These matters were clarified, however, by decisions which the Supreme Court handed down June 11, 1925, in the maple flooring and cement cases. These decisions supported the economic necessity of accurate statistical surveys, recognized their contribution to the public welfare, and held that in themselves such statistics constituted no infringement of the law. These decisions in no way relax the restrictions upon conspiracy to control price and distribution.

The importance of statistics as a contribution to the elimination of waste can be shortly summarized. Information as to the distribution of population, its character, and occupation, and as to industrial capacity, production, stocks, and distribution, is vital to economy in the distribution trades and to judgment on increase in plant capacity and production. The whole system of production and distribution is improved just in the degree that supply and demand can be rightly adjusted. Underproduction creates scarcity and speculation; overproduction creates losses, suspension of industry, and unemployment. Both violently affect price and widen

the margin in distribution. Industry is no longer local in its production and distribution, and the fundamental facts must be determined for the country as a whole and often for the whole world. Therefore knowledge as to productive capacity, volume of produc tion, stocks, commodities, and current consumption of every indus try is vital if we are to have stable industry and stable profits without undue margins and speculation. Public information as to these things is necessary to safeguard both the consumer and producer.

Agriculture shares these benefits with all other industries. In fact, no industry so much requires the compilation of such statistics as does agriculture, for the many million units of production are less able to adjudge these currents than the larger units of other industry with their larger contacts.

ELIMINATION OF WASTE IN PROCESSES

[By GEORGE K. BURGESS, Director, Bureau of Standards]

In cooperation with the industries of the country the Bureau of Standards is assisting in the great problem of eliminating wastes, which like all major problems depends for its solution upon more fundamental, scientific, and technical data. As a result of the equipment built up during the war the bureau to-day possesses the greatest physics and research laboratory in the world. While the prewar activities of the bureau were mainly directed at the determination of physical standards and constants, it seemed desirable that our industrial system should not lose the great values that could be obtained from the wider use of these laboratories in research into the elimination of waste in industrial processes, where such research did not conflict with that carried on by the industries themselves. More particularly does this apply to industries comprised of great numbers of small manufacturers, none of whom can afford to establish the laboratory and research staff necessary for consideration of broad problems.

There has, therefore, been developed a large amount of research work of this character in cooperation with committees of the different industries, and this work is steadily expanding. Through these researches ways and means have been found for the better utilization of our raw materials, for cheapening and improving the quality of manufactured articles, and for turning to useful purposes by-products of industrial plants. Recent progress in this field of waste elimination may be illustrated by the experiments in chrome tanning for shoe soles, which increases the time of wear; the studies of crazing of pottery, which cuts down seconds; and the demonstration of the practicability of the commercial production of levulose, which may result in a new American industry.

Various industries have cooperated with the bureau in research designed to effect large savings in manufacturing, and especially by stationing at the bureau research associates working on fundamental problems. These research associates now number 63, as against 29 last year. For example, the Portland Cement Association has 8 men here working on a joint program of far-reaching importance in the development of our knowledge of what has in recent years become one of our most widely used materials of construction.

ELIMINATION OF WASTE IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRIES

By GEORGE K. BURGESS, Director, Bureau of Standards; JOHN M. GRIES, Chief, Division of Building and Housing; RAY M. HUDSON, Chief, Division of Simplified Practice; and AXEL H. OXHOLM, Chief, Lumber Division]

Construction ranks among the most important of all our great industries, not only because of its volume of about $6,000,000,000 annually, but because it bears peculiar relationships to the whole economic fabric. The industries dependent upon it for the disposal of their products—lumber, steel, cement, brick, as well as transportation, etc.—are so numerous and form so large a section of our national economic structure that the ebb and flow of construction activity has a dominant effect upon the entire problem of prosperity and depression.

Theoretically, if the construction industries could concentrate their activities in times of slackening demand for consumable goods, we might stabilize our entire business fabric. Although this theoretical possibility of complete economic control is not practically feasible, much can be contributed through the stimulation of public worksFederal, State, and municipal-and of other types of building and repair work so as to strengthen employment in times when other trades are slack. The development of better statistics on construction has, furthermore, made it possible to keep the volume of construction within reasonable limits at times of peak activity in general business (as explained more fully in the section on "Statistics").

In the more immediate and measurable problem of elimination of direct waste in the industry there has been great progress. Such major wastes have arisen from:

1. The seasonal character of the industry.

2. Insufficient standards as to grades, quality, and business documentation.

3. Unnecessary or uneconomical variety in dimensions of building materials.

4. The confused state of municipal building regulations and lack of "zoning" in cities.

5. Lack of adequate statistics as to volume and character of construction, building costs, production, stocks, and consumption of building materials, etc.

6. Uneconomical purchasing methods with particular reference to specifications and true requirements of consumers.

REDUCTION IN SEASONAL CHARACTER OF THE INDUSTRY

In June, 1923, the Secretary of Commerce appointed a committee on seasonal operation in the construction industries. This com mittee recommended an exhaustive investigation by the department into the fundamentals which underlie the seasonal character of the industry. Following the detailed study, it concluded that under the improved methods of construction and the climatic conditions of most of the country, construction could proceed as economically and effectively in winter as in summer; that an extension of the active building season would give steadier employment of men and equipment, both in construction and the material trades; and that cooperation in each locality by those concerned with construction could do much to utilize labor and transportation facilities more effec tively throughout the year. Contractors, real-estate men, building material manufacturers, labor, and other groups represented on the committee accordingly united in furthering the organization of local committees to plan and encourage better-distributed construction.

The better understanding of the problem brought about by the committee's report, and the cooperative activities in many localities, have already had a marked effect. Activity of a large number of contractors on operations throughout the country averaged about a third greater during the three winter months of 1924 than in previous years. The far-reaching practical effect of such developments has been demonstrated during the past year, when the total amount of construction reached a value of more than $6,000,000,000, the highest in our history. Large building programs have in the past usually meant rapidly mounting costs of construction. In this case, however, there was a greater equalization of building activity throughout the 12 months, and as a result the enormous construction

Ernest T. Trigg, Philadelphia, Pa., chairman, ex-president National Paint, Oil and Varnish Association; John W. Blodgett, Grand Rapids, Mich., president National Lumber Manufacturers' Association; H. R. Daniel, New York, N. Y., assistant to the president, S. W. Straus & Co.; John Donlin, Washington, D. C., president Building Trades Department, American Federation of Labor; L. F. Eppich, Denver, Colo., president National Association of Real Estate Boards; A. P. Greensfelder, St. Louis, Mo., As sociated General Contractors of America; John M. Gries, Washington, D. C., chief of the division of building and housing, Department of Commerce; Jay A. House, Cleve land, Ohio, president Guardian Savings & Trust Co.; Otto T. Mallery, Philadelphia, Pa. former member of the Pennsylvania State Industrial Commission; Rudolph P. Miller, New York, N. Y., president Building Officials' Conference; James P. Noonan, Washington, D. C. president International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers: William Stanley Parker, Boston, Mass., vice president American Institute of Architects; Edward Eva Hunt, secretary.

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