National Affairs: The Habit of Suspicion

When Realtor Charles E. Slusser was mayor of Akron (1944-53), he led a fight to replace city slums with public housing and met with stiff resistance from some of his fellow real-estate men who opposed Government housing as interference with private business. This week Republican Slusser made a speech before the Akron Real Estate Board as Eisenhower Administration spokesman and its Public Housing Commissioner.

Public housing is a useful weapon for correcting "civic disgraces," said ex-Mayor Slusser, harking back to the old controversy: "In this city, I was denied that weapon. I would not have it denied to my successors." Slusser appealed to his fellow townsmen to recognize the new public-housing program as a good example of the change in attitude toward business which the 1952 election brought to Washington.

"Too many Americans," said he, "have been nursed on the idea that Government and private business are basically antagonistic—that what one seeks the other au tomatically opposes. There are men and women now graduating from college, or with infant families, who less than two years ago had never known the time when their country was not divided—divided between a paternalistic Government and a dogged business community resentful of paying exorbitant bills.

"Suspicion . . . dies hard. And too many businessmen still show the whites of their eyes every time they hear the words, 'Government program.' Automatically, they say no.

"This is a mistake. The truth is there is a very desirable meeting ground between business and Government. It is a plateau that rises above the twin dangers of costly 'do-goodism' in the swamp to the left and shortsighted selfishness in the mountains to the right."

In the case of public housing, said Slusser, the plateau of teamwork can be reached through a city's slum section, which produces an everlasting succession of headaches but little revenue for private real-estate men. "My guess is that nobody in this audience is handling slum homes. You want customers—not the nickels and dimes wrung out of human misery."

Can such liabilities be converted to business assets? Commissioner Slusser made his case: "In building self-respect and hope for tenants, public housing is building future customers for private homes . . . Roughly one-fifth of all families who leave public housing become purchasers of their own homes . . . For children reared in the cleanliness of public housing, it is a challenge to do better than their parents ... In short, public housing creates hope—and hope for the future is the fuel that powers the engines of private enterprise."

The real-estate men, thought Charlie Slusser, should have no "grounds for apprehension at the use of this weapon." Said he: "Taken together with the philosophy of this Administration, I think you will agree, this is no camel nose of Government trying to get under the private building tent."