The full text on this page is automatically extracted from the file linked above and may contain errors and inconsistencies.
Chicago 43, 111. Dec» 1, 1945 Marriner Eccles, Chairman Of The Federal Reserve Board, Washington, D. C. Dear Sir: .A • 'I i i. •! ' J i • :.-.»'-! < (v' i o <. J I have been informed that you can offer some concrete plan whereby the speculation of land values, causing the eternal aftermath, depressions, can be avoided for all time.. . I can cite one instance of. my own personal experience in land values when I was able to buy a lot for home building for $800.00 thirty months ago. To day the same owner is asking $1800.00. An increase of 125$. This increase in value is really unwarranted, but because of scarcity of housing owners, of land are taking advantage of the situation, j. ' . . . If The Federal Government cannot put a ceiling on the val»ues of land some plan must be devised to stop the upward spiralling of prices, which bring on the depressions we have faced in this country for over thirty-three times. , Would it be feasible to Amend our Constitution so as to be able to control land values as we have controlled commodity values, to prevent inflations? «3V ' I i ... J Hoping to receive an expression from you along the above lines of thought, I remain, < * . i Very respectfully yours Jacob I. Gale / 1013^ South May Street Chicago, 43, 111. December 11, 19^5* Mr. J ¿¿cob I. uale, 101->outh May Street, Chicago A3, Illinois. Dear Mr. Gale: This is to acknowledge your letter of December 1 in regard to the speculation in land values,ftbilfeI do not profess to have any universal or permanent cure for speculation, nevertheless, there are certain very definite steps tft«t I have long advocated that might and, I think, should have been taiten t<* curb developments such as you cite, which are typical of the inflationary forces 1 today, it had seemed ti> me most unfortunate that s regulation Kiiovffi as L-4.1 «as removed, for that or soru&tii Ing ii*er it could nave ueen utilised to allocate scarce materials to those contract<3Ps wno would agi»ee to build moderately priced nousing available on some priority basis to veterans first at all. Long ago 1 did all I could to persuade the powers that be to enact a stiff capital gains tax th«.t, in my opinion, would have taken much of tne speculative fever oat of the "real estate market as well as tne Stock market and other capital, assets. You might be interested to see a statement on this subject which 1 prepared some time ago, copy of which I enclose» r.niie I nave not oeen informed as to the proposal that tne President is expected to announce shortly, I an encouraged oy what has been said in this connection to hope that it will be iir effect a reinstatement of the Kind of control over ¿.liocatimx of materials that I referred to aoove. 6incereLy yours M. S. Eccles, Chairman. Enclosure ITsb
@FedFRASER