The programme demanded in France by MM. Loucheur and Bonnevay was for a law authorizing the construction of 500,000 dwellings to be built well and cheaply. This was an exceptional event in the annals of construction and required exceptional means and methods.
Now, it was necessary to start from the very beginning; nothing being ready for the realization of such an immense programme. The right state of mind does not exist.
The state of mind for mass-production houses, the state of mind for living in mass-production houses, the state of mind for conceiving mass-production houses.
Everything must be begun from the beginning, nothing is ready. Specialization has hardly touched the domain of the dwelling-house. There are neither the workshops nor the technical specialists.
But at any moment, if once the mass-production spirit came to life, everything would quickly be begun. In fact, in every branch of building, Industry, as formidable as a natural force and overrunning everything like a flood that rolls on to its destined end, tends more and more to transform natural raw materials and to produce what we call "new materials." They are legion: cements and limes, steel girders, sanitary fittings, insulating materials, piping, ironmongery, water-proofing compositions, etc., etc. All this stuff is dumped in bulk into buildings in course of construction, and is worked into the job on the spot; this involves enormous costs in labour and leads
