FOR AND AGAINST

A calico applied to the facade of a large building on the left bank bears this simple inscription: MODERN COMFORT FOR 50 CARS Happy cars! Happy torpedoes and too happy cyclecars... They are promised and given modern comfort, housing, heating - and everything else they need... Cars do not sleep under bridges and their fifty horsepower when there are fifty horsepower do not constitute, in the eyes of the owners, indiscreet and inopportune large families... There are houses for cars.... There are not always houses for citizens...
One can, of course, cry scandal... One can, of course, vehemently denounce the evil capitalists who build garages and who do not build buildings "for residential use". Only, it is too easy and, what is more, it is useless... It would probably be better to try to reason a little...
We cannot prevent a free citizen from disposing of his money as he pleases and from undertaking the businesses that suit him. We can therefore only recognize the full right of a businessman to build a garage. He has the same right to make noodles, jams or clogs. So much the better if he succeeds and so much the worse for him if he fails.
We cannot prevent a man from building a garage. We cannot force another to build a dwelling house. This is a simple truth that is quite simple and yet very strong. Now we need dwelling houses. Now we cannot do without housing. Now it is quite obvious that before cars it is necessary to house people in the city. So, what to do?...
Since individual effort is the only thing that works, and the powerlessness of the State and the administrations to carry out any kind of enterprise has been completely demonstrated, it is therefore necessary, at all costs, that "individuals" build houses. This is the only way to ward off the crisis from which we are suffering. But what can be done to get individuals to start building houses? But what can be done to get individuals to consider it more interesting and more profitable to build houses than garages?...
There, alas! is the question... And it is a question of general interest; but it is also a question of particular interests... Big words, big phrases, big speeches will do nothing... It is the money of individuals, it is private initiative, it is architects and masons who must do everything. It is neither a question of politics nor even philanthropy. These are stones, these are buildings...
We should, obviously, encourage people who build garages to also build houses... Are they encouraged?... Are they not discouraged instead, by untimely interventions, by harassment, by vexatious formalities and by Chinese things that seem like threats?... Let us ask ourselves the question frankly...

Maurice PRAX.