CIVILIZATION THROUGH PIPES AND WIRES
The economies of a continuous house under one roof and of railroad and
steam shovel, rather than hand and dump cart methods, are sufficient
to make the line construction far more economical than any method now
in vogue, but even they are greatly exceeded by the additional saving
involved in the installation and operation of the pipes and wires of
the Roadtown.
Witness the present situation. The farmer’s house is alone in the
middle of his farm. For every pipe, wire or rail utility with which he
is supplied, he must have a plant of his own. If he wishes steam heat,
he must put in a boiler; if he wishes electric lights, an engine and
dynamo.
In practice the farmer, with the occasional exception of the rural
telephone, is limited to the products of civilization that can be
hauled home in a wagon.
The city man is a little better off. City dwellers are close together,
close enough that one electric, gas or steam producing plant will do
for many hundreds or thousands of families, but by the present plan
which enables them to have these improvements, they pay not only
the expense of periodic tearing up of the pavements and the house
foundation, but a far greater price in the loss of air, sunlight and
privacy.
The Roadtown has these God-given utilities of country air and light on
two sides of the house. Upon the other two sides it has blank walls,
but the examination of the average isolated residence will show that
there is little to be gained in light or air by the two extra sides and
much to be lost in privacy. Upon the two remaining sides, _i. e._, the
top and bottom, the Roadtown house has its sidewalk on the roof and
its transportation by rails, pipes and wires that are now in the city
streets, it has on a far better and economical plan in the basement,
now used principally to store old trunks, rubbish and coal.
Picture the installation of a new pipe line through a paved street. The
expense and the unsightliness, the danger to human life--and this has
nothing to do with getting the pipes into a private house.
Now suppose you are a resident on that line and conclude a couple of
months later to install the utility in your home. Again the pavement is
torn up, a gang of laborers spend several days on the job, and you as
consumer will pay the bill either in a lump or as stiff rates on the
utility sold. The result of this clumsy system has been that pipe and
wire utilities in the city are limited to those people who use them to
a sufficient extent to stand this criminal waste and expense.
Moreover, in all large cities the matter of installing pipe or
wire conveyed utilities is also a question of reckoning with
franchise-selling politicians and private monopolists who generally
work “hand in hand.”
Compare these conditions, mechanical and political, with the Roadtown
where all pipes and wires will be bracketed in a runway beneath the
floor of a machine-made house on land at farm prices. To put in a new
pipe conveyed utility will cost the price of the twenty-one feet of
main and a branch pipe leading to the apartment above through suitable
openings made when the building is constructed. The expense will be
about equal to that of maintaining the red lanterns which are now
placed about the torn up city streets.
As a result of these differences there will be added to the Roadtown
home--and I mean to the home of the man of average means--a number of
utilities now available only to the rich, or not available at all.
Beginning with the following paragraph I will enumerate some of the
inventions that will be available in the Roadtown home. I may include
in this list some inventions which, while demonstrated on a small
scale, may for some reason not now discernible, develop an objection
or difficulty in its use. But for every such a one that I may here
include, there will be several others that science has already or will
yet devise and which can be installed in Roadtown as soon as perfected
and demonstrated with no more expense than there would be if it were
put in when the houses were built. This feature alone is a tremendous
argument in favor of the Roadtown, for every previous form of house
construction once finished is set in its equipment and soon gets behind
the age and must be torn down to make room for the new. At this time
considerable humorous comment is being made in the newspapers over the
tearing down of a twenty-two story building in Wall Street to make
room for a forty story one. The old one is only thirteen years old.
The Roadtown will always be “modern,” and increase in efficiency as it
increases in length while the separate building is a complete unit with
its height and utilities stationary.
_Water._
The water systems of great cities are enormously expensive, as it is
usually necessary to build great conduits dozens and even as much as
one hundred and fifty miles long. The trouble with such cities is
that a very large population must be supplied with water from a very
limited area. The Roadtown with a population of about 1,000 to the mile
will be able to get its water supply from suitable sources all along
the way. The length of line to be supplied from one public station will
not be great, but the entire main may be opened so that one station can
relieve another in case of excessive use of water at any given point.
_Sewerage._
The sewage system of the Roadtown will, like the water system, be built
in comparatively small units, and will require none of the large and
expensive sewers seen in city systems. Wherever the Roadtown crosses a
natural valley in the land the sewage can be led off to a reasonable
distance from the house line in pipes and used in irrigating non-food
crops. The income to be derived from the use of this sewage for
fertilization and irrigation will be a considerable source of profit
and wholly without the expense attached to city sewage disposal works
because of distance from the land and the fact that the point of the
city sewer outlet is almost always below the level of land available
for such uses.
_Heating._
The Roadtown heating system will be of hot water circulated by pumps.
The heating plants will be located every two or three miles, which,
according to the engineers’ figures will be more economical than to
have them either at greater or less distance. The temperature will be
regulated to suit each and every tenant by the use of the thermostat
with a push button regulator in each room of every apartment. This
simple, but marvelously useful device, is now in general use in
thousands of first class hotels.
_Refrigeration._
The refrigerating system of Roadtown which will be required for food
and drinking water purposes could be turned into the radiators and a
circulation of cooled water or brine pumped through the houses. I do
not say that such house cooling will be established, for the Roadtown
house, through which the breeze will have a full sweep, and in which
the electrical fans will be plentiful, will have little need for a
system of house cooling, but if the people in hot countries wish it and
care to pay for it, eventually they can have it.
_Drinking Water._
The next utility for the Roadtown house will be that of pure, cool
distilled water for drinking purposes, cooled _only_ to a healthful
temperature. Because of the small expense for piping, this separation
of the system of drinking water from that used for bathing and for
spraying the lawn will mean that no method known to science for
purifying the former need be spared.
In present city life the peddling of so-called “spring water” in
bottles, is a farcical affair, which would have about as much chance
to survive in Roadtown as an independent oil producer shipping oil in
barrels would have in competing with the trust’s tank cars and pipe
lines. If the Roadtown is piped for refrigeration, cooling will be very
simple. If this is not done the coolers may be placed in the basement
and filled with ice manufactured at the central refrigeration plant and
distributed by train. In either case, the efficiency will be great as
compared with any present system.
_Bath and Toilet._
It goes without saying that every home in Roadtown will be provided
with good bath and toilet facilities. Because of the fact that the
house is of cement and has no lath and plaster ceiling to get soaked,
shower baths will probably be much in vogue in Roadtown. If at any time
it proves desirable to give up the space for the purpose there can
be shower baths installed in every sleeping-room at a cost of only a
few dollars for each. The soap for bath and wash basin will probably
be liquid, and while there will not be enough used to make it worth
while to pipe it, it can be supplied ten gallons at a time by a man
who will make the rounds and fill the reservoirs at each home. This is
comparatively a small matter and I merely mention it to show the extent
to which the natural coöperation of line house building will gradually
lead.
_Gas._
For light cooking and local heating in the Roadtown home, to such
extent as is desirable, gas will be used.
_Vacuum._
During the last few years a great vacuum sweeper craze has swept the
country. We are literally deluged with every type of apparatus, from
systems for installation in hotels and office buildings, or wagon
outfits that chase about the street and run a hose into the parlor
window, to the little pop gun arrangement that is worked by hand. The
ease of adaptability of the best features of vacuum cleaning systems
to Roadtown is too apparent to need comment further than to say that a
small pipe, with an opening at each home, and a suction fan every half
mile, will be sufficient to give the best possible results.
A further use of this vacuum may be made in connection with automatic
movement of windows, doors, etc. Compressed air is now frequently used
for this purpose as in elevator doors in office buildings. Vacuum will,
of course, work equally well.
_Disinfecting Gas._
A pipe dream of Roadtown that is absolutely practical, cheap and a
crying need, will be gas for disinfection.
_Electric Light._
Electricity for lighting will, of course, be available in Roadtown at a
fraction of the present cost.
_Electric Power._
Electricity will be used for fans, vibrators for massage, shoeshining,
and other household devices that may demand it as time rolls on.
Besides this there will be an industrial use for power which I will
discuss in a later chapter.[A]
[A] Until some cheaper source of power is developed electric
heating will remain an expensive luxury.
_Telephones._
Electric buttons and signals and bells can be used for the “top”
and “bottom” doors of the house, signaling to central stations when
preferable to the telephone. The telephone, the cheapest of the pipe
and wire group of civilizing agents, common though it is, has not
yet come into universal use. In New York City alone there are over
three million people who have no telephones and in the United States
there are 60,000,000 deprived of that great necessity. In Roadtown
the cost of installing telephones will be practically the cost of
the instruments, switch-boards and twenty-one feet of wire. If the
automatic system is used, which is likely, in local service between a
public service center and the houses they wait upon, the cost will be
but those of interest on installation and cost of repairs. A telephone
expert has estimated that the system complete would be less than ten
dollars per family, and that the expense of operation or telephone rent
less than one dollar a year, net, per family, or eight cents per month.
_Dictograph._
At the present date there is in practical operation a loud speaking
telephone called the dictograph. If this modern invention is installed
in the Roadtown home, it will be possible by simply pressing a button
to talk over the telephone while sitting in a chair or lying in bed.
This instrument has been most successfully utilized in conveying
music, which, if received through a horn can scarcely be told from the
first-hand product. This wonderful invention, as many other similar
ones that now exist, cannot be put into practical use on a large and
systematic scale, because of the present city construction, the conduit
and other trusts.
Since the preceding paragraph was written, M. K. Turner, the inventor
and proprietor of the dictograph, has donated the use of all of
his wonderful patents to the Roadtown, and in addition has offered
to design an entire system of loud speaking telephones especially
adapted to Roadtown use, because of the great uplifting influence he
recognizes in its principles when put into practice.
This donation, together with the house pouring scheme of Mr. Edison
and the Boyes Monorail, gives to Roadtown fundamental patents on house
building, transportation and intelligence transmission--the three great
essentials of a new civilization.
_Telegraphone._
The telegraphone, or recording telephone, is also a most wonderful
invention. The telegraphone records any sound sent over a telephone by
means of magnetic changes in a disc or wire. These steel disc records
or wire records can then be reproduced any number of times with no
loss of distinctness. As the dictograph may be used to give a sermon,
lecture or piece of music to any number of people at one time, so the
telegraphone may be used to record and repeat it any number of times.
I could add other inventions to the list, but will not, for these
already given, though all practical existing devices, will be so
wonderful in application that I will not extend the list to any less
thoroughly proven inventions, lest the reader who can but judge from
the viewpoint of the present imperfect city civilization, confuse the
Roadtown which is the plan grouping of proven inventions with the
dreams of novelists who revel in inventions yet to be.