American City By JOHN FREDERICK HESSEL Municipal Problems, Mother of Mine, Etc. Published by Champaign, Illinois HT COPYRIGHT, 1922 BY JOHN FREDERICK HESSEL United States and Foreign Countries THE MUNICIPAL PROBLEMS PUBLISHING Co., CHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS, U. S. A. Wahr 10-29-23 9304 PREFACE A portion of this manuscript was written several years ago, during a period of inflamed public opinion and social unrest, fraught with many misgivings and uncertainties. The period in question, was one most prolific in various and numerous remedies offered for the purpose of stimulating the building industry, each one a guaranteed specific for every economic ill. The object in offering it, at this time, is more for the purpose of giving some idea of the psychology of a period, filled with many economic problems, that had to be solved under conditions, new, varied and untried. The position taken at that time was far from being the most popular one, for the reason it offered very little encouragement for the builder to build, until some of the abuses with which the building industry was surrounded, were corrected. Artificially stimulating building under existing conditions, it was contended, would in the end, entail another period of stagnation to correct abuses, resulting in further delay in stabilizing cost of material and labor, the primary cause of stagnation in the building industry—a |