CHAPTER VIII.

TO RENT OR TO OWN: A DIFFICULT QUESTION

THE COST OF SHELTER.

CHAPTER I.

THE HOUSE AND WHAT IT SIGNIFIES IN FAMILY LIFE; TYPIFIED IN

PIONEER AND COLONIAL HOMES, THE CENTERS OF INDUSTRY AND

HOSPITALITY.

"There is no noble life without a noble aim."--CHARLES DOLE.

The word Home to the Anglo-Saxon race calls to mind some definite house as

the family abiding-place. Around it cluster the memories of childhood, the

aspirations of youth, the sorrows of middle life.

The most potent spell the nineteenth century cast on its youth was the

yearning for a home of their own, not a piece of their father's. The

spirit of the age working in the minds of men led them ever westward to

conquer for themselves a homestead, forced them to go, leaving the aged

behind, and the graves of the weak on the way.

There must be a strong race principle behind a movement of such

magnitude, with such momentous consequences. Elbow room, space, and

isolation to give free play to individual preference, characterized

pioneer days. The cord that bound the whole was love of home,--one's own

home,--even if tinged with impatience of the restraints it imposed, for

home and house do imply a certain restraint in individual wishes. And

here, perhaps, is the greatest significance of the family house. It cannot

perfectly suit _all_ members in its details, but in its great office, that

of shelter and privacy--ownership--the house of the nineteenth century

stands supreme. No other age ever provided so many houses for single

families. It stands between the community houses of primitive times and

the hives of the modern city tenements.

As sociologically defined, the family means a common house--common, that

is, to the family, but excluding all else. This exclusiveness is

foreshadowed in the habits of the majority of animals, each pair

preempting a particular log or burrow or tree in which to rear its young,

to which it retreats for safety from enemies. Primitive man first borrowed

the skins of animals and their burrowing habits. The space under fallen

trees covered with moss and twigs grew into the hut covered with bark or

sod. The skins permitted the portable tent.

It is indeed a far cry from these rude defences against wind and weather

to the dwelling-houses of the well-to-do family in any country to-day, but

the need of the race is just the same: protection, safety from danger, a

shield for the young child, a place where it can grow normally in peaceful

quiet. It behooves the community to inquire whether the houses of to-day

are fulfilling the primary purposes of the race in the midst of the

various other uses to which modern man is putting them.

As already shown, shelter in its first derivation, as well as in its

common use, signifies protection from the weather. Bodily warmth saves

food, therefore is an economy in living. From the first it also implied

protection from enemies, a safe retreat from attack and a refuge when

wounded. But above all else it has, through the ages, stood for a safe and

retired place for the bringing up of the young of the species.

The colonial houses of New England with large living-room, dominated by

the huge fireplace with its outfit of cooking utensils, with groups of

buildings for different uses clustered about them, giving protection to

the varied industries of the homestead, illustrate the most perfect type

of family life. Each member had a share in the day's work, therefore to

each it was home. To the old homestead many a successful business man

returns to show his grandchildren the attic with its disused loom and

spinning-wheel; the shop where farm-implements were made, in the days of

long winter storms, to the accompaniment of legend and gossip; the dairy,

no longer redolent of cream. These are reminders of a time past and gone,

before the greed of gain had robbed even these houses of their peace. The

backward glance of this generation is too apt to stop at the transition

period, when the factory had taken the interesting manufactures out of the

hands of the housewife and left the homestead bereft of its best, when the

struggle to make it a modern money-making plant, for which it was never

designed, drove the young people away to less arduous days and more

exciting evenings.

This stage of farm life was altogether unlovely, not wholly of necessity,

but because the adjustment was most painful to the feelings and most

difficult to the muscles of the elders.

Because the family ideal was the ruling motive, the house-building of the

colonial period shows a more perfect adaptation to family life than any

other age has developed.

Where is the boasted adaptability of the American? He should be ready to

see the effect of the inevitable mechanical changes and modify his ideas

to suit. For it cannot be too often reiterated that it is a case of

_ideas_, not of wood and stone and law.

This homestead has passed into history as completely as has the Southern

colonial type, differing only in arrangement. Climate, as well as domestic

conditions, demanded a more complete separation of the manufacturing

processes, including cooking, laundry, etc., otherwise the ideal was the

same. "The house" meant a family life, a gracious hospitality, a busy hive

of industry, a refuge indeed from social as well as physical storms. Work

and play, sorrow and pleasure, all were connected with its outward

presentment as with the thought. For its preservation men fought and women

toiled, but, alas! machinery has swept away the last vestige of this life

and, try as the philanthropist may to bring it back, it will never return.

The very essence of that life was the _making of things_, the preparation

for winter while it was yet summer, the furnishing of the bridal chest

years before marriage. Fancy a bride to-day wearing or using in the house

anything five years old!

There are no more pioneer and colonial communities on this continent.

Railroads and steamboats and electric power have made this rural life a

thing of the past. Let us not waste tears on its vanishing, but address

ourselves to the future.

There are two directions in which great change in household conditions has

occurred quite outside the volition of the housekeeper. They are the

disappearance of industries, and lack of permanence in the homestead.

Those who are busily occupied in productive work of their own are

contented and usually happy. The results of their efforts, stored for

future use--barns filled with hay or grain, shelves of linen and

preserves--yield satisfaction.

Destructive consumption may be pleasurable for the moment, but does not

satisfy. The child pulls the stuffing from the doll with pleasure, but

asks for another in half an hour. The delicious meal daintily served is a

joy for an hour. A room put in perfect order, clean, tastefully decorated,

is a delight to the eye for three hours and then it must be again cleaned

and rearranged. Is this productive work? Is there any reason why we should

be satisfied with it or happy in it?

In an earlier time, that from which we derive so many of our cherished

ideals, the house built by or for the young people was used as a homestead

by their children and their children's children. Customs grew up slowly,

and for some reason. Furniture, collected as wanted, found its place; all

the routine went as by clockwork. Saturday's baking of bread and pies went

each on to its own shelf, as the cows went each to her own stall. If the

duties were physically hard, the routine saved worrying.

To-day how few of us live in the house we began life with! How few in that

we occupied even ten years ago! And this number is growing smaller and

smaller. The housewife has not time to form habits of her own; she engages

a maid and expects her to fall at once into the family ways, when the

family has no ways.

In the sociological sense, shelter may mean protection from noise, from

too close contact with other human beings, enemies only in the sense of

depriving us of valuable nerve-force. It should mean sheltering the

children from contact with degrading influences.

Charles P. Neill, United States Commissioner of Labor, in his address at

the New York School of Philanthropy, July 16, 1905, said: "In my own

estimation home, above all things, means privacy. It means the possibility

of keeping your family off from other families. There must be a separate

house, and as far as possible separate rooms, so that at an early period

of life the idea of rights to property, the right to things, to privacy,

may be instilled."

There may be such a thing as too much shelter. To cover too closely breeds

decay. Are we in danger of covering ourselves and our children too closely

from sun and wind and rain, making them weak and less resistant than they

should be? The prevalence of tuberculosis and its cure by fresh air seems

to indicate this. The attempt to gain privacy under prevailing conditions

tends this way.

Hitherto students of social economics have usually considered the most

pressing problem in the life of the wage-earner to be that of sufficient

and suitable food. But in any large city and in most smaller communities

there are found those who have refined instincts, aspirations for a life

of physical and moral cleanness, who by force of circumstances are obliged

to come in contact with filth and squalor and careless disorder in order

to find shelter. If they can be kept from degenerating, their rise when

it comes will lift those below them, but it is a Herculean task to lift

them by lifting all below as well. The burden which presses most heavily

on this valuable material for social betterment is that of shelter rather

than of food.

The thought underlying this whole series on Cost is that the place to put

the leaven of progress is in the middle. The class to work for is the

great mass of intelligent, industrious, and ambitious young people turned

out by our public schools with certain ideals for self-betterment, but in

grave danger of losing heart in the crush due to the pressure of society

around them and above them. They fear to incur the responsibility of

marriage when they see the pecuniary requirements it involves.

This growing body makes up so large a proportion of the whole in America

that, once aroused, it may become an all-powerful force for regeneration,

thanks to the pervading influence of public-school education when enlisted

on the side of right. Faith in the uprightness of American youth is so

strong that strenuous effort for their enlightenment is justified. Once

they have their attention drawn to the need of action, they will act.

Self-preservation is one of the strongest instincts, and it may be

dangerous to call upon the self-interest of these inexperienced souls; but

for the sake of the results we must risk the lesser evil, if we can

develop a resolution to secure a personal and race efficiency.

When the young people, with a deep appreciation of the possibilities of

sane and wholesome living, marry and attempt to realize their ideals, the

conditions are all against them. They find little sympathy in their

yearnings for a rational life, and soon give up the effort, deciding that

they are too peculiar. They slip almost insensibly into the routine of

their neighbors. There is great need of a cooperation of like-minded young

married people to form a little community, setting its own standards and

living a fairly independent life. Two or three such groups would do more

than many sermons to awaken attention to the problem before the race

to-day. Shall man yield himself to the tendencies of natural selection and

be modified out of existence by the pressure of his environment, or shall

he turn upon himself some of the knowledge of Nature's forces he has

gained and by "conscious evolution" begin an adaptation of the environment

to the organism? For we no longer hold with Robert Owen and the socialists

that man is necessarily controlled and moulded by his surroundings, that

he is absolutely subject to the laws of animal evolution. A new era will

dawn when man sees his power over his own future. Then, and not till then,

will come again that willingness to sacrifice present ease and pleasure

for the sake of race progress, which alone can make the restrained life a

satisfaction.

The environment is, more largely than we think, the house and the manner

of life it forces upon us. Therefore the first point of attack is the

shelter under which the family life of the newly married pair establishes

itself. If it is too large for their income, it leads to extravagance and

debt before the first two years have passed; if it is too small, it cramps

the generous and hospitable impulses. If unsuited to this need, it

irritates and deforms character, as a plaster cast compresses a limb

encased in it.

Imagine the young people beginning life in the average city flat, at a

rent of twenty to thirty dollars a month, with its shams, its makeshifts,

its depressing, unsanitary, morally unsafe quarters for the maid, its

friction with janitor and landlord--the whole sordid round necessitated by

the mere manner of building, and by that only.

A few strong souls flee to the country. Counting the cost and finding that

all the earnings go to mere living, they decide to get that living in

company with nature under free skies--their own employers. Such may live

in Altruria with the happy zest of the authors of that charming sketch.

It is not given to many of earth's children to be so well mated and so

heavenly-wise. The young man has been brought up to consider the house the

young wife's prerogative, and she--well, she has been trained to believe

that housewifely wisdom will come to her as unsought as measles.

Two thirds the friction in the early years of married life is caused by

the house and its defects, resulting in dissatisfaction, disenchantment,

and the flight to a hotel or non-housekeeping apartment.

If some of the problems to be faced and the difficulties in solving them

could be presented to the young people to be studied and discussed before

the actual encounter came, they would be more prepared.

In discussing this part of the subject, as in the consideration of the

Cost of Living in general and the Cost of Food, we shall deal in

particular with incomes of from $1000 to $5000 a year for families of

five, recognizing that under present-day conditions the annual sum of

$1500 to $3000 means the greatest struggle between desires and power of

gratifying them.

On the surface it appears that the things which go to make up delicate

cleanly living cost more and more each year, with no limit in sight. It is

not only the poet who moves from one boarding-house to another; the young

clerk and struggling business man go into smaller and smaller quarters

until the traditional limit of room to swing a cat is reached.

The constantly diminishing space occupied by a family seems to prove that

the 40% increase in the cost of living within a few years is not caused

by an advance in the necessary cost of food; it is certainly not due to

the increased cost of necessary clothes. It is more than probable that the

increasing cost of shelter and all that it implies--increased

water-supply, service, repairs, etc.--is the main factor in the

undoubtedly increased expense. This will be considered in some detail in

Chapter VIII.

While the socialist may take the ground that salaries must be raised to

keep pace with the rise in living expenses, the student of social

ethics--Euthenics, or the science of _better_ living--may well ask a

consideration of the topic from another standpoint. Is this increased cost

resulting in higher efficiency? Are the people growing more healthy,

well-favored, well-proportioned, stronger, happier? If not, then is there

not a fallacy in the common idea that more money spent means a fuller

life?

Recent examination of school children in various cities in England and

America has revealed a state of physical ill-being most deplorable in the

present, and horrifying to contemplate for its future results. One has

only to keep one's eyes open in passing the streets to become aware of the

physical deterioration of thousands of the wage-earners. One has only to

listen to the housewife's complaints of inefficiency, lack of strength

among the housemaids, to realize that the world's work is not being well

done in so far as it depends upon human hands.

This loss of efficiency is usually attributed to insufficient food and

long hours, but it is at least an open question if housing conditions are

not the more potent factor not only in the case of the very poor, but even

in the case of the family having an income of $2000 a year. Life in a

boarding-house adapted from the use by one family to that of five or six

without increase of bathing and ventilating conveniences, with old-style

plumbing, cannot be mentally or bodily invigorating.

The house cannot be said to be a place of safety so long as the "great

white plague" lurks in every dark corner--tuberculosis, colds, influenza,

etc., fasten themselves upon its occupants. Explorers exposed to extremes

of weather do not thus suffer. The dark, damp house incubates the germs.

But homes there must be: places of safety for children, of refuge for

elders. Men will marry and women may keep house. How shall it be managed

so as to be in harmony with present-day demands? Certainly not by ignoring

the difficulties. Progress in any direction does not come through wringing

of hands and deploring the decadence of the present generation. President

Roosevelt's advice is to bring up boys and girls to overcome obstacles,

not to ignore them. Let the educated, intelligent young people join in

devising a way to surmount this obstacle as the engineers of 1890 invented

new ways of crossing impassable gorges and "impossible" mountain ranges.

The writer has no ready-prepared panacea to offer. Patent medicine is not

the remedy. This kind cometh out only by fasting and prayer. A long course

of diet is needed to cure a chronic disease.

This little volume is intended merely as a spur to the imagination of the

indolent student, to arouse him to the mental effort required to deal with

the readjustment of ideas to conditions before it is too late.

It is no exaggeration to say that the social well-being of the community

is threatened. The habits of years are broken up; sad to say, the

middle-aged will suffer unrelieved, but the young can be incited to

grapple with the situation and hew out for themselves a way through.

Certain elements in the problem will be touched upon in the following

pages as a result of much going to and fro in the "most favored land on

earth." Certain questions will be raised as to what constitutes a home and

a shelter for the family in the twentieth-century sense of both family and

shelter.

CHAPTER II.

THE HOUSE CONSIDERED AS A MEASURE OF SOCIAL STANDING.

It is not what we lack, but what we see others have,

that makes us discontented.

There has been noted in every age a tendency to measure social preëminence

by the size and magnificence of the family abode. Mediaeval castles,

Venetian palaces, colonial mansions, all represented a form of social

importance, what Veblen has called conspicuous waste. This was largely

shown in maintaining a large retinue and in giving lavish entertainments.

The so-called patronage of the arts--furnishings, fabrics, pictures,

statues, valued to this day--came under the same head of rivalry in

expenditure.

In America a similar aspiration results in immense establishments far

beyond the needs of the immediate family. But, unlike society in the

middle ages, social aspiration does not stop short at a well-defined line.

In the modern state each level reaches up toward the next higher and,

failing to balance itself, drops into the abyss which never fills.

There is no contented layer of humanity to equalize the pressure; heads

and hands are thrust up through from below at every point. Democracy has

taken possession of the age and must be reckoned with on all sides.

At first sight sumptuous housing might seem to be the least objectionable

form of conspicuous waste. Safer than rich food, less wasteful than

gorgeous clothing, but, as Veblen truly says, "through discrimination in

favor of visible consumption it has come about that the domestic life of

most classes is relatively shabby. As a consequence people habitually

screen their private life from observation." This is from a different

motive than the instinct of privacy, of personal withdrawal for rest and

quiet. This shabby private life is why true hospitality is disappearing.

The chance guest is no longer welcome to the family table; we are ashamed

of our daily routine, or we have an idea that our fare is not worthy of

being shared. Whatever it is, unconscious as it often is, it is a canker

in the family life of to-day. It leads to selfishness, to a laxness in

home manners very demoralizing. It is doubtless one of the great factors

in the distinct deterioration of children's public manners.

Because the house is held to be the visible evidence of social standing,

because its location, style of architecture, fittings and furniture may be

made to proclaim the pretensions of its inhabitants, it is often dishonest

and one of the sources of the prevalent untruth in other things, since

dishonesty in housing has been not infrequently one of the first signs of

dishonesty in business. To move to a less fashionable quarter is to

confess financial stress at once.

It is because the concomitant expenses of an establishment may be

curtailed without attracting public notice that a moral danger exists. The

outside shell is not the whole nor even the chief outlay. The operating

expenses run away with more money than the house itself, and it is in

these that the family, conscious of impending ruin, curtail, and thus

become dishonest in their own souls.

The moral of it all is to live just a little below the probable limit,

whatever that may be, rather than to assume a greater income than is quite

certain. Granted that in the quickly changing conditions of to-day this is

difficult, it is not often impossible.

It is only needed to set some other standard of social position than

shelter and to use the house for its legitimate purposes only, that of an

abode of the family in health and joyful cooperation. The class for which

this series is written should seek a shelter sufficient for these normal

uses, and make it so home-like that friends will gladly share it when

permitted.

Let good manners, keen intelligence, bright and entertaining conversation

take the place of the showy but frequently uncomfortable houses and

wholesale entertainments of to-day.

It is time that a beginning was made of that form of social pleasure and

mental recreation which the century must develop, or fail of its promise.

What is the value, of present-day knowledge if not to stimulate the

conscious group, through the individual perhaps, but the group finally, to

better use of its powers and opportunities toward a higher form of social

life?

We have been told that the house should be as much an expression of

individuality as clothes. Since clothes are constantly and easily changed,

and a family home built to order is comparatively permanent, such

expression in wood or stone should be carefully thought out; but how

rarely do we gain a pleasant impression from the houses built for the

purpose of setting forth social standards! The owner and the architect

have neither of them the highest ideals, and a sort of ready-made,

composite, often irritating, always displeasing result follows. The

pretence shows through more often than the occupant realizes.

Society has the power to regulate its own conventions. Once convinced that

it is dangerous to put the strain of living on to mere superficial

pretence, mere location, ornament, new standards will be set up; as,

indeed, they are under other conditions. In frontier life, for instance,

where shortness of tenure is recognized, dress and the table take the

place of the house as indications. In a mining town, one is astonished at

the costumes seen on persons issuing from insignificant houses, and at the

excellent bill of fare in a restaurant with the barest necessities of

furnishing. Cursory observation often reads the signs of civilization

wrongly. The eastern traveller, accustomed to the outward glitter and the

finish of settled communities, fails to interpret the real efficiency of a

more flexible society. West of the Mississippi, that new empire we are

just beginning to appreciate, good food is recognized as of prime

importance, dress gives an opportunity for showing conspicuous waste, and

buildings are made for show only when permanence of residence is assured.

Let society once thoroughly understand that safe shelter is essential to

its very life, that this safety is threatened, if not lost, by present

habits, and, by quick money-making schemes in house-building, it will

establish standards of living which shall not only be for the material

welfare, but for the mental, moral, and spiritual progress of the race.

This progress can be secured by applying centrifugal force to congested

districts, by interesting capitalists to consider housing at the same time

with manufacturing plants, not only providing safe, economical houses, but

by making it socially possible to live in them on moderate incomes.

The rising half, we must remember, is more affected by social conventions

than the submerged tenth.

The well-to-do should consider more conscientiously those who recruit

their ranks, who, if started right without danger of debt, will have

freedom to advance. The present muddle has come about in part because no

one has taken the trouble to investigate the reasons. The young family

with $3000 a year has ideals for the manners and morals of the children

which are not satisfied with those of the inexpensive tenement quarter.

Prevention they consider better than cure, hence they pay higher rent than

the income warrants to secure elevating examples and morally wholesome

surroundings.

[Illustration: The Morris Company's Block of Single Houses, with Central

Heating Plant (*remainder cut off).]

[Illustration: The Morris Building Company's Block of Single Houses, with

Central Heating Plant, Brooklyn, New York.]

A single family cannot control a whole street, although cooperation can

accomplish a great deal in the way of congenial neighborhoods. But the

risk involved, the liability to error of judgment, as well as the large

outlay of capital, at once prevents the adoption of this means of

satisfactory housing for the business and professional class to any great

extent, at least in the city. The acumen needed to discover the profitable

in real estate, the skill to acquire large contiguous tracts of land, both

belong to the capitalist. Only when he is a philanthropist besides, is the

housing question safe in his hands. Such an example we find in the Morris

houses, Willoughby Ave., Brooklyn, N.Y. This set of family dwellings was

put up to meet this very need. Congenial neighborhood, safe

playgrounds for the children, labor-saving devices for the housekeeper.

When first built they were in advance of anything in an eastern city of

their class. To-day Mr. Pratt has even more advanced ideas which will take

form in the future.

[Illustration: Aerial-view Drawing: The Morris Building Company's Block of

Single Houses, with Central Heating Plant, Brooklyn, New York.]

These attractive and comfortable houses, so near the working places of

the teachers and professional and business men who occupy them, were

possible only because of the comparative cheapness of the land, which had

been held undesirable for high-class single houses, not for sanitary

reasons, but solely on account of social conditions. This cluster of forty

houses makes its own atmosphere. This is the lesson to be learned. Let

groups of like-minded families make their own surroundings. The capitalist

will soon learn where his interest lies.

[Illustration: Floor-plan Drawing: The Morris Building Company's Block of

Single Houses, with Central Heating Plant, Brooklyn, New York.]

[Illustration: Floor-plan Drawing The Morris Building Company's Block of

Single Houses, with Central Heating Plant, Brooklyn, New York.]

Very probably it will be necessary to enlarge the scope and, perhaps, to

build two stories higher, so that the elders and perhaps bachelors of

both sexes, who do not care for the garden, may help to bear the expense

of the children's playground. Whatever form the advance may take, this is

a sign-post in the right direction.

In the nature of things, however, the first experiments will be costly and

must be combined with business of a sure kind. In this instance the

heating and hot-water supply was made possible by a combination with

factory plant. But if a larger group of, say, one hundred houses were run

by a central establishment, the Morris Building Company estimates the cost

at about fifty dollars per year.

These houses will be referred to again under Chapter VI, but the especial

value of this experiment was its social significance. How much better to

keep desirable land for residential purposes by such means than to permit

families to move away and give up satisfactory dwellings solely because

the lower end of the street has a few foreigners! Our older cities abound

in instances of this quick abandonment of most desirable streets without

any concerted effort to retain their character.

The dangerous sanitary degeneration of these abandoned houses is one of

the worst features of the situation and a prolific cause of the

overcrowding of cities.

The more thoughtful students of progressive tendencies are grouping

themselves in "parks" where houses are put up with the aid of the

capitalist under such restrictions as to price as is supposed to insure a

congenial neighborhood, and under such regulations as to land as to

prevent manufacturing establishments. When these plans are not purely

speculative, designed to entrap the young people by their best hopes of a

permanent home, much satisfaction may come from the plan. But even in this

country or suburban life the shadow of fashion falls sooner or later, and

the savings vanish with the years. Some deeper principle must come into

play, some stronger force than mere whim of society leaders, before our

young people can be released from the bondage of living on the right side

of a street under penalty of social ostracism.

There are gratifying indications of an awakening. The following statement

appeared in a newspaper of a recent date:

"A corporation of women has been formed in Indianapolis, Ind., for the

purpose of building small but artistic houses for people of moderate

means. All of the directors are business women; one of the vice-presidents

is Miss Elizabeth Browning, the city librarian, and another is the

principal of one of the public schools. The secretary has for some time

been in charge of the office of a savings and loan association and is the

only woman member of the Indianapolis fire insurance inspection board. Six

houses are to be erected at once in various parts of the city."

No better use of money or effort can be made at the present time than in

similar endeavors to meet the needs of the time. The study of conditions

will prove an education in itself and a stimulus to invention.

When the social conscience is once awakened the bride with $2000 a year

will not be expected to begin where her mother left off.

The young people will be provided with just as comfortable and just as

sanitary homes, but they will not be expected to entertain lavishly in

order to show the wedding presents before they are broken. They will be

visited, even if they live in an unfashionable quarter on a side street.

Is it not more honest?

If society would put its stamp on the manner of life adapted to the

welfare of the young people, it would not be unfashionable to live within

one's income.

The tyranny of things is very real and most distressing in connection with

this problem of shelter and all that it involves.

There is only needed a social awakening to result in an adjustment of

men's views as to what is good and right. New social habits adapted to the

age we live in will be accepted by the next generation as good form.

CHAPTER III.

LEGACIES FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY NOT ADAPTED TO CHANGED

CONDITIONS CAUSE PHYSICAL DETERIORATION AND DOMESTIC FRICTION.

"A large part of the evils of which we complain socially to-day

are due to the kind of houses we live in and the exactions they

make upon us."--H.G. WELLS.

Four classes of houses have come down to us:

(1) The family homestead in the country set low on the ground with damp

walls and dark cellar, one of a cluster of rambling buildings; with a

well, the only water supply, in close proximity to various sources of

pollution. These houses are for the most part now abandoned to the

foreigner, who uses them for the primitive purposes of shelter without the

ennobling intellectual life they once harbored. Now and then a grandson

rescues the old place, brings water from a spring or brook, digs a drain,

lets light into the cellar, and builds on a kitchen and dining-room.

The expense is often greater than to build anew, but the effect is usually

very good when the changes are made under sanitary supervision.

(2) The village or suburban house set in its own grounds, too near the

street usually, but with garden and fruit-trees in the rear, and possibly

a stable for horse and cow. This was the compromise made by the generation

just from the free life of the farm-house, who, consciously or

unconsciously, clung to the green of grass and trees, and the blue of the

sky. So long as habit or love of caring for the things lasted all went

well. The father found his recreation in planting the garden before

breakfast, as in his boyhood. The mother cared for flower and

vegetable-garden, as she recalled her mother's life; she picked her own

beans and corn, even if she did not cook the dinner.

But the _children_ had to hurry off to school, and it was a pity to call

them early: they had lessons to learn in the afternoon. To them the garden

was work, not play as it should have been; so they failed to gain that

contact with mother earth which gives inspiration as well as health; they

failed to acquire a love of nature, became infected with the germ of

gregariousness, preferred the glare of lights, the rush of hurrying

crowds, and lost the relish for fresh air and quiet. This second

generation came to the city boarding-house and flat as soon as they were

free, leaving their parents' houses to go the same way as the

grandfather's farmhouse, into the hands of the foreigner not yet

Americanized to high standards of cleanliness and orderliness.

These houses, too, are settling down into unkempt grounds with

dilapidated porches and blinds. Such eyesores as one finds on the

trolley-lines in any direction! They may have town-water supply, or they

may depend on wells, but they are frequently without sewer-connection.

It is costly to be neat and clean, and only those whose minds require such

surroundings in order to be comfortable will pay the cost in time,

trouble, and money.

(3) Some families made a compromise and built what is called a modern

house with bath-room and furnace (after the air-tight-stove craze passed),

with jigsaw ornamentation outside and in, pretentious-looking dwellings

with no proper kitchen accompaniments, and an unsavory garbage-barrel in

the small back yard, under the next neighbor's windows. These houses are

so close together that sounds and smells mingle; there is so little land

that there is no satisfaction in caring for it. Houses of this sort are

altogether too frequently found, occupying good locations and jarring on

the nerves of the better-trained young people of to-day. What is to be

done with them? They are too expensive to pull down, and hence are the

last resort of those who find they must retrench. They are mere temporary

shelters, not loved homes.

The plumbing is usually of a cheap order, and the drains are not

infrequently broken, so that sanitarily these dwellings are often more

suspicious than the abandoned farmhouse.

(4) The influx from village and country made demand for city housing of

an inexpensive sort, and there came into being all over the land the type

of the family house squeezed by the price of land to four stories high, 16

to 20 feet wide, built in long rows and blocks. The "ugly sixties" bred

not only distressful village "villas," but unpleasant city houses of this

type, which are to-day a real menace to wholesome living. Many such blocks

may be found in any of our older cities, casting a depressing influence

upon all who come in sight of them, and deteriorating the manners and

morals of all who live in them. For these have gone the way of the other

classes mentioned and become perverted from the uses they were designed

for. In the seventies there were still motherly women who had come to town

to make a home for the children no longer content out of it. They were

willing and capable of mothering a few other children and lonely teachers

and clerks, so the boarding-house began as a real family home for the

homeless. There were not enough of these women to go around, and soon

boarding-houses began to be run for profit only. Home privileges were

fewer and fewer, the common parlor was rented, the one-family kitchen was

made to do duty for twenty persons. The house became pervaded with burned

fat and tobacco-smoke--a most villainous combination, gossip flourished,

and the limit of discomfort was reached. What wonder that a good Samaritan

built the first flat where the wearied nerves could find peace in the

thicker walls, and could escape the eternal "fry" by going out to meals!

It is a perfectly natural evolution from the impossible conditions which

the eighties and nineties developed.

The early attempts, built on the old lines after the old ideas, before the

new life was accepted, are not satisfactory and, being built of brick or

stone, they are even more difficult to get rid of than the preceding. So

each type goes down in the scale of decent living. A given roof is made to

cover more people crowding closer and closer, causing home in the sense of

privacy and comfort to recede farther and farther away, until the lover of

his kind stands aghast at the magnitude of the problem before society when

it awakens to the task confronting it. Fortunately these rows of houses

are disappearing under the demand of business. The invasion of the

residential district is a real blessing, in that it pulls down these

houses which in twenty years have outlived their usefulness and can serve

a good purpose no longer.

Let us hope that either the demands of business or the common sense of

society will also sweep away the fifth class: (5) City flats put up by the

conscienceless money-maker with only that idea of giving the public what

the public wants (because it knows no better) which gives the newspaper

its pernicious influences. At first it was supposed the flat-dwellers

would keep house, and arrangements of a sort were made. This compressed

the work of the house into such small quarters that the maid was given a

room down in the basement along with the furnace, or in the top story

adjoining ten or more other rooms--a dormitory arrangement without

supervision and without the quiet needed for rest. The difficulty of

securing good service under these conditions, together with the thousand

and one annoyances of living at too close quarters, noisy children and

pianos, grumpy janitors, smelly garbage, have led to the latest phase:

non-housekeeping flats with daily care of a sort supplied by the janitor

if desired, a kitchenette where eggs and coffee for breakfast and dishes

for invalids may be prepared, and restaurants galore for other meals. Thus

the women of the family are set free to roam the streets in search of

bargains and to join others like unto themselves for matinées and

promenades.

This sort of shelter is increasing more rapidly than any other in all the

cities investigated. An estimate has been made that 80 or 90 per cent of

the recent building has been of this sort. Six rooms in an unfashionable

locality rent for about $25 or $30 a month; in a fashionable quarter, for

$200 to $250 per month, with a floor-space one half larger. These latter

cost about 50 cents per week per room for daily care, whereas the former,

if cared for from outside, are served only at intervals of two weeks or a

month. The inmates do most of the daily care themselves. While the

building is new and fresh this means little work; but as time goes on the

poor construction shows, the surface varnish wears off, cracks come, and a

general shabbiness appears, so that the tenant prefers to move into a new

building. The owner, or more probably the agent, puts on a little shining

varnish, and rents again without real repair, and these buildings also go

from bad to worse. Many of them are known to change tenants two or three

times a year. There is always a demand for the newest house.

A study of social conditions reveals the fact that for the larger part of

the wage-earners the house has come to be the place where money is spent,

not earned or even saved. It has gone back to its primitive use--shelter

from weather and a sleeping-place, a temporary one at that. A real-estate

authority has made the assertion that three fifths of the rent-payers in

large cities are made up of non-householders and one half of these are

confined to one room--mostly women. This indicates a change in

requirements for the housing of the individual as distinguished from the

family. And it is this element which has complicated city living to a

great extent, and to which attention has been drawn by the accusation that

home life is shirked by it.

To the bachelor man and maid are added the commercial traveller who leaves

wife and possibly child behind four fifths of the time. For him, as for

several other classes of young business men, the locality which he can

choose for headquarters changes with the requirements of business. He is

under orders and must go at a moment's notice across the continent,

perhaps. It is not his fault but the exigency of business that destroys

the desire for a permanent abiding-place. The numbers of such homeless

young people are far greater than any one but the real-estate agent

realizes. Then this loosening of the home tie renders easy the shifting

from city to country and seashore. A considerable proportion of the $2000

to $5000 class shut up the flat or leave the boarding-house several times

in the year. There is usually one place where the furniture and

bric-a-brac and the other season's clothing are kept, but it is only a

storehouse or a temporary retreat that holds their property, growing less

and less as they move, until they may practically live in their trunks.

The legacy which outranks all the others in disastrous consequences is the

notion that the young people must begin where their parents left off; that

the house must be, if anything, a little more elaborate. Therefore in

starting life the rent is allowed to consume one third the income in

sight, without considering the cost of maintaining such an establishment.

With a probable income of $2000 a year the young man does not hesitate to

pay $500 for a house, not realizing that at least half as much more should

be spent on wages for the care of the nineteenth-century house, and as

much more on incidentals, car-fares, and unexpected demands. What wonder

that the young people find themselves in debt by the second year?

The parents are quite as much, if not more, to blame for encouraging this

extravagance. The father and mother are entitled to their ease and to the

use of their income for it, but the newly married pair have, in this age,

no right to assume the same attitude. They have their way to make, their

work to do in the years ahead of them. They should not mortgage the future

for the sake of the present luxury; and because of the uncertainties of

occupation and of health it is wise to take out of the expected income one

fourth or one third for a reserve fund and divide the remainder for

expenses. For instance, from $2000 a year subtract $500, then divide the

$1500 into $300 for rent, $300 for food, $300 for operating expenses, $200

for clothing, $200 for travel, leaving $200 for the other expenses. If

unlooked-for expenses must be incurred, there is the $500 to draw upon;

but do not court the extra outlay: save the nest-egg if possible.

The ideals of the home are said to rule the world. The young business man

who does not take the sane view of his own expenses will not rightly

consider his employer's interests. It is more than probable that the

much-deplored laxness, to call it by no harsher name, in business circles

is directly traceable to this falseness and dishonesty in standards of

home life. This moral effect is what makes the housing problem so serious.

It leads to an outward show not balanced by an ability to maintain an

inner life in harmony. It leads to an attempt to carry on a four-servant

house with two servants, or a three servant establishment with one.

Lack of study and experience leads the family living in the suburbs, in

one of the worst legacies of the past, to attempt the same style as

friends maintain in a lately built apartment house, without in the least

understanding wherein the difference lies.

From the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Maine to Texas, comes the same dull

and sullen roar of domestic unrest. Lack of faithful service is causing

the abandonment of the family home, and the fear of the obstacles in the

way of establishing new ones threatens the whole social fabric.

The housewife is inclined to connect this state of things almost entirely

with food preparation, and is prone to fancy that if eating could be

abolished peace would return.

The trouble goes much deeper, however, even to the foundations. The

nineteenth-century house is not suited to twentieth-century needs. In

other words, lack of adaptation to present conditions of the houses we

live in is a large factor in the prevailing domestic discontent. The next

largest has been referred to as attempting a style of living beyond one's

income.

In all other walks of life, in transportation, in manufacturing, machinery

has come in to replace the heavier and more mechanical portions of labor.

The steam-shovel, the hoisting-engine, an infinite combination of

mechanical principles have been applied to the doing of things to save

human muscle. To stand by the machine which turns out the familiar

grape-basket, ready to fill with the fruit, and then to watch the

housemaid bending over some piece of work, is to realize the difference.

In few, very few operations is it necessary to-day that men should bend

their backs, but in how many household processes is the worker expected to

get down on all fours? The free-born American rebels. Perchance it is the

unconscious protest over a four-footed ancestry, or it may be that disuse

has really weakened the spinal column. Whatever the cause, the fact

remains. It is not the idea of work, of service, but of bending the back

to work that is so repugnant; likewise the effect on the hands of hot

water and scrubbing. Close observation has convinced me that care of the

hands has become an indication of freedom from manual labor quite

unthought of fifteen or twenty years ago. The increase of

manicuring-rooms, like the increase of restaurants, is a clear sign of the

trend of the times. Not only the class who likes to waste conspicuously,

but many a teacher, many a young man in State or Government employ with

an income of one, two, or three thousand a year patronizes these rooms.

This daintiness reflects downward, and the girl whose acquaintances in her

high-school days are in a position to keep well manicured, if not

"lily-white," hands does not like to have hers show the effect of

housework, when that means scrubbing the floor and cleaning the stove.

Gloves? Ah, well, James Nasmyth once wrote: "Kid-gloves are great

non-conductors of knowledge." I believe that gloves of any kind are a

makeshift in real cleaning of dirty corners; but _there should not be

corners to catch dirt_.

The unnecessary nastiness of the scrub-water with its fine soot which

works into every pore is a great objection to the girl who must work for

her living. If she goes to visit her friends, her hands betray her. She

can remove the other badges of her toil, her cap and apron; she may go out

on the street as brave as her mistress; but the moment her gloves are

removed her hands tell the tale. With the means at hand this need not be.

It is one of the legacies which have come down to us, and which we have

connected with the servant problem. The work in the most modern apartments

does not require the soiling of the hands in a serious way. With hard wood

floors, bright gas-stoves, porcelain lined dishes, no pots and kettles,

all the stairs, halls, etc., cared for by the janitor, the work is of a

far less smutting kind than in the suburban house, where there is still

need for much cleaning up of a roughening sort which cannot be escaped.

This has more to do than we are apt to think with the distaste for the

country, unless several servants are kept, some for this work only. In the

old type of city house the travel up-and down-stairs to answer bell and

telephone has demanded strength of back not possessed by the modern maid.

The house is not yet adapted to the new demands of the workers, and they

shun it. The mistress herself finds it beyond her strength, even if the

traces of rough work were not quite so distasteful to her.

Miss Pettengill in her story of domestic service brings out the great part

played by sooty dust, sifting in even through closed windows, in the

burden of the waitress who is expected to keep the dining-room immaculate.

This is only one instance where the blame really belongs on the actual

material house rather than on the mistress, except that she does not

discover a remedy, does not even know where to look for the cause. I have

great faith in the business woman, who does see much that is better done

and who will bring it back into the home.

Fashions in philanthropy do not yet tend in the direction of house

betterment.

"A busy man cannot stop his life-work to teach architects what they ought

to know," says Wells; but on the other hand "we cannot be expected to

teach men and their wives, as well as draw plans for them," says the

architect who has tried it.

The centrifugal forces that our social prophets are so fond of invoking,

holding that the words "town" and "city" may become as obsolete as

"mail-coach," will have to reckon with these features of country life.

It is assumed that the work of women is "housekeeping." I should like to

put the question suddenly to a thousand men. What is twentieth-century

housekeeping? I venture the guess that less than a hundred would take into

account the utter difference in their wives' duties from their mothers',

as they remember them; and yet the house, even the flat, is built more or

less along the old lines. The women do not know enough to assert

themselves, and have not the skill to show the builder what is wrong. The

architects could tell tales if they would. The utter ignorance of what a

house means, of the steps necessary to make a successful livable place, is

appalling. The young man who has $3000 as a legacy feels he can build. His

wife chooses the location near her friends whose houses she likes, and the

architect is called in. Do you wish back stairs? Are you to keep three

servants or none? Do you wish the rooms separate or connecting? All such

questions find a blank stare. "What difference does that make in the style

and price?" the would-be owner says. The architect is not always able to

show him that these little things are the whole problem in building a

_home_. The house as a home is merely outer clothing, which should fit as

an overcoat should, without wrinkles and creases that show their

ready-made character. The woman, born housekeeper as she considers

herself, is rigid in her ideas of what she thinks she wants, but when the

builder has followed her plans she is far from satisfied with the result.

She is used to material which puckers and stretches in her clothing; she

cannot understand the inflexibility of wood and stone. The remedy is for

high-school girls, probably even grammar-school pupils as well, to have

along with their drawing some problems in house-planning and some lessons

in carpentry.

It will be seen from the foregoing glance at the rapid change and steady

deterioration of houses that the care of such living-places must involve

special discomforts in most cases.

The time required to keep clean old splintered floors, to carry pails of

water up and down stairs, to dry out the cloths--the base boards with

their grimy streaks tell the story of carelessness--is not counted in the

wage schedule.

Why is there so much dirt brought into the house? Because shoes and

streets are muddy. Why is there so much lint? Because we have too many

things in a room--too much wear and tear.

And unnecessary dirt is found even in the newer apartment-houses with the

ever-changing population and ever-lessening space for maids' quarters,

together with the sham character of construction due to the fact that most

of these houses have been put up by speculators at the lowest cost of the

cheapest materials which will show wear in a few months. Flimsy

construction is a direct result of the notorious lack of care taken by the

tenant, so that quick returns must be the rule; also of the probability

that the neighborhood will deteriorate and that a class which will bear

crowding and be less critical will replace the first tenants.

Conveniences for doing work in the houses built to rent, that is to bring

in the greatest returns in the shortest time, will not be put in (for the

first cost is great) unless the house will rent for more. The sharpest

Hebrew or Irish landlord will allow his architect to add bathtubs if he

believes the flat will rent for a few dollars more, where he will not do

it for the sake of cleanliness. The supply of hot water, together with the

gas stove, has done much to reconcile the housewife who does her own work

to the cramped quarters of the flat, and also has done more than anything

else to render the maids discontented with that legacy from the nineteenth

century which requires the building of a coal fire before hot water can be

had. The coal fire makes necessary rising an hour earlier and this, after

the late hours the seven-o'clock dinner enforces, causes friction all

along the line.

The acceptance by young women without a study of cause and effect of

whatever presents itself makes them bad housekeepers, in the sense of

ignorant ones unable to cope with present conditions, because lack of

experience is not supplemented by a spirit of investigation and a

resolution to work out the problem. They seem to think that housekeeping

is to go on in the same old way no matter whatever else may change,

whereas it is most sensitive to the general direction of progress if they

but knew it. The wage-earner is more fully aware of the currents of the

irresistible river modern life has become (the slow-moving car of

Juggernaut is no longer an adequate symbol) than is the money spender.

Indeed is any part of the house, as we now most frequently find it,

adapted to the uses of the twentieth century?

The careless capitalist who makes possible the "cockroach landlord," he

who sublets and crowds and skimps the tenants for his own gain, is greatly

to blame for the distressing conditions of the lower income limit of the

wage-earner, but I fear he is not altogether blameless for the sort of

house the $1500 man has to look for in the city. Decent living with light

and air within half an hour of work is growing so rare that society must

take a hand in the matter.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PLACE OF THE HOUSE IN THE SOCIAL ECONOMY OF THE TWENTIETH

CENTURY.

"We have entered upon the period of conscious evolution, have

begun the adaptation of the environment to the organism."--Sir

OLIVER LODGE.

The hopeless pessimism of the past, that saw in the unmerciful progress of

organic evolution no escape for the human animal from the grip of fate, is

about to give way to the enthusiasm of conscious directing and controlling

power.

This is the beneficent result of the age of the machine. Man has

discovered that he can not only change his environment, but that by this

change he can modify himself. The hope of the future lies in the moulding

of man's surroundings to his needs. In physiological terms, "the

adaptation of structure to function."

The day is long past when shelter implied chiefly a tight roof and a dry

floor. The housing of the twentieth-century family means location, central

and fashionable. It means in cost far more than what the roof covers and

the floor supports. It means plumbing and interior finish; it also means

a finish on the outside, smoothly shaven lawns and immaculate sidewalks.

Sigh as we may for the colonial house, we confess that the standards of

the time did not include the comfort of hot baths, polished floors,

plate-glass windows, elevators, ice-closets, and lawn-mowers. These are

necessary adjuncts to what is held as merely decent living; _how_ can the

$2000 man have them, not why _will_ he not?

What then is the house and the life in it to become for the great majority

of families and individuals with an income of $3000 a year and necessarily

nomadic habits. I say necessarily, because these families are at the mercy

of business and social conditions quite beyond their control and

impossible to foretell.

So far as prophetic vision sees through the mists of time, the aim of the

twentieth century is to live the _effective life_.

The simple life has been preached, the strenuous life has been lauded,

but, as William Barclay Parsons recently stated it:[1] "We need force, we

need a vigorous force; we need that direction and avoidance of the

unnecessary which is simplicity, but with either one alone there is

something lacking. Instead of latent force and great energy without

control, instead of quiet gentleness, of power of control without vigor

to be controlled, what we need is force and energy applied where necessary

and always under control, always working to a definite purpose, and at the

same time avoiding complications and unnecessary friction.

[Footnote 1: William Barclay Parsons, N.E.A., Asbury Park, 1905. _Eng.

Record_, Aug. 12, 1905.]

"That is to have a life whose great underlying motive is effectiveness.

Instead of speaking of the strenuous life or the simple life, let us have

as a doctrine 'the effective life.'

"What we need is not merely a man who acts, but one who _does_; that is,

one who will do what he has to do regardless of intervening obstacles.

Efficiency and effectiveness are the key-notes of success in actual life.

They are also the lessons taught by every parable in the New Testament,

even if that work is regarded as a code of ethics, and they form the

spirit of that stirring definition of engineering[1] which is based on the

direction of the vital forces of nature and the doing of things for

mankind."

[Footnote 1: "Ability to do and the _doing_, efficiency, and the use of it

all for mankind."--Tredgold's definition of Engineering.]

Manufacturing concerns have found it pays them to provide decent tenements

for their workers, but society has not yet awakened to the fact that the

rank and file of the great army of salaried employees is left to fend for

itself in a world only too prone to take advantage of its necessities.

There is danger in this neglect of wholesome living surroundings, because

from this stratum develops normally the intelligence of the future, and

how can mentally active children grow up under the prevailing unsightly

and unsanitary conditions?

Of course with the passing of pioneer conditions will pass in a measure

the courage and adaptability which braced itself to meet and overcome

obstacles. The salaried position in a great combine, instead of work for

one's self in an independent business, tends to magnify the value of mere

money-income gained through smartness rather than by ability. If life is

made too easy, men will settle into indolent sterility, just as animals

and plants degenerate with too much food.

The future will surely bring greater mechanical perfection and thus leave

it possible for the individual, for each member of the family group, to do

for himself many little things which are not comfortable to do now. But

will he be willing to do them? Not unless he feels it to be a duty or a

pleasure. Not unless there is an undercurrent of principle which carries

him along. Without this principle strong enough to give an impetus over

hard places in the early stages of life, the individual and the family

will surely drift into the hotel and boarding-house, where everything is

done on a money basis and nothing for love of one's kind; where a tip

salves the hurt of menial work. These habits once gained are hard to break

up; therefore it is much better for young people to begin life doing some

things for themselves in a house where machinery responds to their call

without a tip, where they may economize without loss of self-respect. We

need to revive some of the pagan ideals of the beauty and value of the

human body and human life which consists in the care and use of this body.

There is no menial work in the daily living rightly carried out; that

which the last century wrongly permitted is made needless by the machinery

of to-day.

The point of view is most important.

The first steps toward social betterment will come through a cooperation

of three forces: (1) a recognition of the need; (2) an awakening of social

conscience to the duty of supplying the need; and (3) the movement of

moneyed philanthropy to fulfil the requirement quickly.

As was natural, sympathy flowed first to the class which had the most

visible need, not necessarily the greater need.

The New York Model Tenement Association has shown the world how easy it

is, when there is a will, to find a way. That association has already

taken the first step in advanced housing, and reduced the cost of safe and

rentable city shelter to its lowest terms. Fireproof, sanitary, and

convenient so far as rooms go (it is quite a climb for the mother with a

baby in her arms to the sixth story), with neighbors carefully sorted,

repairs well looked after, a sympathetic woman as agent always in the

office; _but_ only a minimum of light and air and sun; bedrooms 7x8,

living-rooms 10x13; the smallest spaces the law allows; no grass, no

flowers outside, no pets, nothing of one's own that cannot be put in a

cart; common stairways where only partial privacy is gained; clothes-yards

on the roof, and laundry in the basement, to be used in turn by twenty

tenants. Because this is better than the slums for the emerging class, and

because they like the gregariousness, is no argument for continuing the

type up into the range of the $2000 group. But this is just what most of

the small apartments do--those built to make all the money that they will

bear. Hardly any better facilities are given. It will be easy for more

roomy living-places to be built on similar plans, with elevators and

labor-saving devices, and yet within the limit of moderate incomes, such

blocks to be always under competent sanitary supervision.

From these model tenements it will not be difficult to advance to the

suburban square with sufficient variety in house plans to content those

who are willing to yield small personal whims. Hitherto the erratic fancy

of would-be tenants, the dissatisfaction with the arrangements provided,

has made building _en masse_ difficult. As long as the builder was called

upon to suit those who had lived in houses of their own for many years his

task was difficult, but now he will have to do with the young people who

know no other life and who will more readily fall in with the standards

set by the house itself.

For this very reason those who have social welfare at heart must come to

the rescue, and devise and put up samples, of the best that modern science

can offer, to rent for $300 to $500 a year. Let any one who loves his

kind, if he have a talent this way, not wrap it in a napkin, but give it

to the builder and the philanthropist to materialize. Now is the time to

set standards for the next thirty years. The electric car is opening new

country as never before. Who will make the practical advance?

These new houses will be roomy and yet, I think, will not fail of

sun-parlors or enclosed piazzas which will serve as extensions of the

house when occasion demands. I am sure they will not contain the

forbidding "front room" set apart for weddings and funerals and rare

family gatherings. More open-air life will be fashionable and practicable

as soon as we have learned that a wind-break and not a tightly-enclosed

space is what we need. In northern latitudes especially it is the wind

which makes the climate seem so inclement. The amount of accessible

sunshine may be doubled with great advantage in most of the

semi-country-houses. Shelter should not suggest a prison.

The education of the child demands that housing shall include land for

pets, for vegetables and flowers; not merely to increase beauty and

selfish pleasure, but for the ethical value of contact with things

dependent on care and forethought. The thoughtful sociologist recognizes

as one of the greatest needs for the children of to-day a closer

companionship with fathers--is urging that even money-making should be

secondary to the time given to moulding the character of the little ones,

instead of leaving them to nurses and coachmen or to the school of the

streets. Companionship in the garden-work will secure this opportunity in

a natural way.

It is only by going into the country that sufficient land for a simple

house with yard in front and garden in the rear--the ideal English

home--can be had. There will be a sacrifice of some of the things the city

gives, but a compromise is the only possible outcome of many claims.

Those who are feeling the return to Nature, who find pleasure in gardening

and in all the soothing effects of country life, or who can bring

themselves to it with moderate pleasure for the sake of the children who

must be encouraged to delight in it, should go out at least ten miles from

the city. In a well-regulated household the early breakfast will be a

natural thing, and the meal will be no more hurried than any other. It is

the class which tries to be both city and country that fills the columns

of the magazines with the trials of the commuter. The father need not see

less of his children, and the common occupation and interest will furnish

opportunities for wise counsel. Much nonsense is written about the perils

of habit and the dangers of routine. It all depends upon what those habits

are. All animal functions are better performed as a matter of habit,

without thought; it saves energy for more intellectual pursuits, which, I

grant, are better kept under volitional control. The animal act of

breakfasting at a given hour, of taking a given train, can be accomplished

as unconsciously as breathing. Early rising should be the rule, because

the children are then available as they are not at night.

We shall assume that the sane man will hold the little home in the country

with all outdoors to breathe in as worth the half-hour journey and the

early breakfast, and that the woman will have time set free by the

labor-saving devices sure to come as fast as she will use them wisely.

This free time she will give to the aesthetic side of life and will make

of her home a more attractive place than the club.

_But_ once a week let them both go into town either to the club or to some

other place for dinner and an entertainment afterward. This will be

sufficient to keep them out of an intellectual rut, will brighten the

appetite with needed variety, and make the next quiet evening more

delightful.

Once a week is sufficient to break the monotony of diet and routine, and

not often enough to create that insatiable appetite for the glare of

lights and the rush of people which makes all family life "deadly dull,"

as one café-haunting woman confessed.

While this country life is the only thing for a family of young children

and for those who really enjoy the country, there is a larger number

needing rational housing which will be left behind, let us hope with more

room because of the flitting of these others.

Much as I deprecate the evils of the present apartment system, I do

believe that an idealized modification will be needed for many years,

especially for the elderly, for the commercial traveler, for the bachelor

men and maids temporarily or permanently living single, for the newly

married as yet unsettled in business or profession, for the man who does

not know his own mind or whose employers do not know theirs. An instance

has come to the writer's knowledge of a young man who, after his wedding

cards were out, was ordered to take charge of an office in another city.

Marrying for shelter is and should be no longer necessary; and as for the

fear that this habit of bachelor quarters will be hard to break up and

tend to delay marriage, it will all depend upon whether it comes from the

merely animal layer of the brain or from the intellectual.

This housing of the individual instead of the family has introduced an

entirely new problem into house-building.

Formerly when a widow or widower, a maiden aunt, a homeless uncle or

cousin made his home with relatives, it was "as one of the family"; only

the minister was recognized as having need for a separate sitting-room.

The trials of this forced companionship have been told in many a witty

story; and pathetic instances that never came to print are matters of

common knowledge.

Will any one dare question the fact that the sum of human happiness has

been increased by the freedom given to these prisoned souls by the small

independent apartment?

I have been reminded that here is no provision for the different

generations to live together under the same roof; that the nineteenth

century held it to be of great social value to have the children grow up

with the elders. I am sorry for the twentieth-century grandparents if they

are obliged to live in a flat with the twentieth-century child; some

readjustment of manners and ideals must be made before such living will be

comfortable, and it seems as if they are better apart until the new order

is accepted or modified. The comfort of those whose work is done and who

have leisure to enjoy life was never so easily secured as to-day. To turn

the key and take the train at an hour's notice, leaving no cares to

follow, tends to a serene old age.

Moralists may squabble over the discipline of living with one's

mother-in-law, and of the loss to the children of grandmother's petting,

but at least physical content and mental satisfaction have increased. Has

selfishness also? Who shall say? And anyway it is a part of the progress

of the age, and what are we to do about it?

For one group of single persons the change has been only beneficial. It

was a strict code of the early nineteenth century that a single woman

should find shelter under the roof of some family house, however

independent, financially, her condition. Latch-key privileges were denied

her. Result, the boarding-house of the later half of the century,

nominally a family home, actually a hotbed of faultfinding and gossip,

most wearing to the teacher and fledgling professional woman, however

acceptable to the milliner and seamstress. Privacy could not be maintained

in a house built for a family of five made to do duty for twelve, with one

bath-room, thin-walled bedrooms with connecting doors through which the

light streamed when one wished to sleep, and words frequently came not

intended for outsiders. Who that has experienced the two could ever think

the bachelor apartment with its neat bath-room and double-doored entrance

an objectionable feature in modern intellectual life? Ah! here is the key.

We are to-day living a life of the intellect far more than ever before,

and for that a certain amount of withdrawal from our fellow man is

needed, at least a withdrawal from that portion which finds its interest

in the affairs of others.

But if we eliminate the house itself, and the heavy furniture from the

"home" possessions, what have we left? The little girl was right: "My home

is where my dishes is." My _possessions_, whatever they are--the things I

can call my own under all circumstances make my home. These circumstances

change from time to time, but the ideal is there. As a concrete instance:

let us have books, not a lot of books, but books that are friends with

whom one may spend a comforting hour anywhere; books that have power to

charm away the gloom of discontent, books to lend gayety to festal days.

Rugs and draperies a few, those you find satisfying to your sense of

color, of design, and with which you feel at home. Ugly tables, chairs,

and "sofas" disappear under an Indian shawl. A Persian or a Navajo blanket

covers a multitude of aesthetic sins. Only let these harmonize with each

other, let them be chosen once for all to go in company; then if they are

distributed, it will not matter; but in any case avoid the "museum" look

given by mere collecting. Alas! these are expensive articles, and the

young people may not be able to get all at once. Let society then turn

over a new leaf in the wedding-present line, and cease this senseless

giving of cut-glass and silver to those who may go to a mining-camp in the

Rockies or to Mexico, or even into a ten-by-twelve New York apartment.

Let there be a committee--we are so fond of committees--to receive

contributions in a money-bank or in sealed envelopes, and then when all is

collected, let this committee scour the shops for articles of value, and

when found consult the bridal pair as to their preferences. The choice may

be made of one or more, as the money permits. The particular gift will

still be a surprise and yet of permanent value. Lace and embroideries are

always good, but let the waste of money on the "latest" in orange-knives,

oyster-plates, go up higher, that is, to the class with money for

conspicuous waste, if it must still exist, but let sensible people be

sensible, and not require the young folks to live up to their hopes for

future advancement. Wedding gifts are meant to be kindly help to a young

housewife, not a burden which drags her down to the level of a drudge. But

if the house is surely their own, and in the country, there will be

shelves to fill and walls to cover; _then_ is the opportunity for

individual gifts of china, glass, and pictures.

To make the best of the increasing tendency to a semi-country living,

there is need for students of domestic architecture, women with a trained

taste added to an experience in doing things, not merely seeing them

already done. Let these evolve beautiful exteriors, with interiors so

finely proportioned that they will be a delight to all beholders, so

adapted to their purposes that no one will wish to change them. There is a

right dimension, in relation to other dimensions, which is always

satisfying and independent of furniture or decoration.

The ugly houses, ill adapted to any useful purpose, which line the

roadside bear witness to the ignorance of the women of to-day. The effort

for mere decoration, for pretentious show, is so evident that one wishes

for an earthquake to swallow them all.

Another cause for rise in rent demanded for a given space is the heavy tax

borne by real estate for public improvement, for good lighting, clean

streets, plentiful water, sufficient sewerage, free baths, parks, and

schools. Again, this falls heaviest on our three- to five-thousand dollar

class, who pay more than their share, especially when the millionaire

shirks his duty by paying his taxes elsewhere. What can the man with

limited income do but avoid the responsibility of a family? Has he a moral

right to bring unhappiness to his wife and two children? Having been

caught in the trap, why give him all the blame if he tries to increase his

income by speculation?

The more one studies this question of shelter for the salaried group, the

more is one convinced that it lies at the root of our social discontent

and is a large factor in our moral as well as physical deterioration.

CHAPTER V.

POSSIBILITIES IN SIGHT PROVIDED THE HOUSEWIFE IS PROGRESSIVE.

"We are far from the noon of man:

There is time for the race to grow."--TENNYSON.

"There appears no limit to the invasion of life by the machine."

H.G. WELLS.

The house as a centre of manufacturing industry has passed (for even if

village industries do spring up, the work-rooms will be separate from the

living-rooms); the house as a sign of pecuniary standing is passing: what

next? Why, of course, the house as the promoter of "the effective life."

Rebel as the artistic individual may at this word, it expresses the spirit

of the twentieth century as nothing else can. Social advance must be made

along the line of efficiency, even if it lead to something different and

not at first sight better. The appeal to self-interest is soonest

answered. The man or woman with any ambition will keep clean, will buy

better milk for the baby, will pay more for rent if he or she is convinced

that it will bring in or save money in the end, because money has been the

measure of success in the nineteenth century. But as the full significance

of this "machine-made" age is grasped it will be seen that it has set free

the human laborer, if only he will qualify himself to use the power at

his hand. The house will become the first lesson in the use of mechanical

appliances, in control of the harnessed forces of nature, and of that

spirit of cooperation which alone can bring the benefits of modern science

to the doors of all. One family cannot as a rule put up in a city or in

the suburbs--and half the world lives in cities--its own idea of a house

without undue expenditure; but ten families may combine and secure a

building which fairly suits them all. I say fairly, because all

cooperation means some sacrifice of whim or special liking. The

well-balanced individual will, however, choose the plan yielding on the

whole the greater efficiency, thus following a law of natural selection

which, so far, the human race has ignored--a neglect which has been

carrying him toward destruction as surely as there is law in nature. Is

this neglect to go on, or is man to turn before it is too late to a

cultivation of the effective life? In everything else he has advanced, but

in his intimate personal relations with nature and natural force he has

acted as if he believed himself not only lord of the beasts of the field,

but of the very laws of nature without understanding them. Mechanical

progress has come from an humble attitude toward the powers of wind and

water. Home efficiency will arrive just as soon as the home-keeper will

put herself in a receptive frame of mind and be prepared to learn her

limitations and the extent of her control of material things. When she

will stop saying "I do not believe" and set herself to learn patiently the

facts in the case, then will housekeeping take on a new phase and the

house become the nursery of effective workers who will at the same time

enjoy life. To manage this machine-driven house will require delicate

handling; but let women once overcome their fear of machinery and they

will use it with skill.

The undue influence of sentiment retards all domestic progress. Because

our grandfather's idea of perfect happiness was to sit before the fire of

logs, we are satisfied with the semblance in the form of the

asbestos-covered gas-log. "It is not for the iconoclastic inventor or

architect to improve the hearth out of existence." Sentiment is a useful

emotion, but when it held open funerals of diphtheria victims, society

stepped in and forbade. With a certain advance in social consciousness

public opinion will step in and regulate sentiment in regard to many

things depending on individual whim.

Heating might now be accomplished without dust and ashes, without the

destructive effects of steam, if enough houses would take electricity to

enable a company to supply it in the form of a sort of dado carrying wires

safely embedded in a non-conducting substance, or in the form of a carpet

threaded with conducting wire. Both heating and cooling apparatus could be

installed in the shape of a motor to replace the punkah man and the

present buzz-wheel fan, and to give fresh air without the opening of

windows which leads to half our housekeeping miseries. O woman, how can

you resist the thought of a clean, cool house, sans dust, sans flies and

mosquitoes, sans the intolerable street-noise, with abundance of fresh

filtered air at the desired temperature! It is all ready at your hand. A

windmill on the roof can store power, or a solar motor can save the sun's

rays, or capsules of compressed air may be had to run the machine, if only

you were not so afraid of the very word machine that no man dares propose

it to you. Of what use is all the invention of the time if it cannot save

the lives of the children, half of whom fall victims to house diseases, if

it cannot sweep away consumption and influenza and all the kindred

diseases arising from over-shelter and under-cleanliness of that shelter

(lack of air). Both men and women are sentimental and non-progressive, but

education is assumed to make wiser human beings. Women are said to be

monopolizing the education; is it making them more amenable to

reasonableness and less under the control of unprogressive conservatism?

It does require quick adaptation to keep up with the possibilities of

invention, but should we not aim at that which will advance our race on a

par with its opportunities? Every other department is getting ahead of us.

We should hang our heads in shame that we have neglected so long the means

for saner living.

[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Old Kitchen Remodelled. (Stone, Carpenter &

Wilson, Architects, Providence, R.I.) Looking toward the range. Servants'

sitting-room beyond; porcelain sink at left; boiler (*remainder cut off).]

[Illustration: Fig. 7.--Old Kitchen Remodelled. Showing glass shelves

and labelled glass jars for all stores. Glass mixing table at left

(*remainder cut off).]

It has been said that the highest modern civilization is shown not so

much by costly monuments and works of art as by the perfection of house

conveniences. Where then do we stand? And in what direction are we to look

for the coming advance? We have had some sixty years of public sanitation;

we have secured a supply of sanitary experts to whom all questions

affecting the physical welfare of masses of people may be referred. We

have a few architects who know the requirements of a _livable_ house, not

merely one which shows off well as first built.

We _need_ sixty years of private-house sanitation. We need to educate

house experts, home advisers, those who know how to examine a house not

only while it is empty but while it is throbbing with the life of the

family. This adviser must be, for many years at least, able to suggest

practical methods of overcoming structural defects (more difficult than

fresh construction), as well as of modifying personal prejudices.

These house experts will, I think, be women of the broadest education,

scientific and social. They will have not only a certain amount of medical

knowledge, but also the tact and enthusiasm of the missionary which will

bring them as friends and benefactors to the despairing mother and the

discouraged householder.

That there is a beginning of this demand, I can testify; that it will

grow, I believe. As soon as a group of trained women are ready, they will

find occupation if the advance in housing conditions which I foresee is to

become a reality.

Within the last two or three years the author has received requests from

all over the country for suggestions as to kitchen design and

construction.

The two illustrations here given show one little step in the right

direction. The cuts represent a remodelled kitchen in Providence, R.I.

The floor is of lignolith laid down in one sheet and carried up as a

wainscoting so that no crevice exists for entrance of insects or dust.

Such floors are yet in their infancy and need suitable preparation for

laying, just as macadamized streets fail if the foundation is faulty. The

idea is all that we are here concerned with. One of the features to be

especially noted is the use of glass for shelves. Why should the hospital

monopolize the materials for antiseptic work? When it is understood how

much hospital work is caused because of dirt in the preparation and

keeping of food, the kitchen will receive its share of attention.

To-day the cost of shelter is about one third for the house and two thirds

for the expense of running it, largely due to dirt and its consequences.

Mr. Wells wisely says: "Most dusting and sweeping would be quite avoidable

if houses were wiselier done."

When the real twentieth-century house is put up our young engineer and

college instructor will be willing to pay $400 to $500 rent, because wages

and running expenses will be $100 less and the company owning the houses

will not expect more than 4%, largely because repairs will be less and

permanence of tenure more assured. The old type of wooden house used by

the old type of tenant could not be expected to last more than a few

years, which justified a higher rate of interest. For the tenement tenant

of the better class twenty years has been the estimate, so that the cost

of building could not be distributed over fifty years as it should be.

The house will be made of reinforced concrete or its successor; certainly

not of wood. Whether a single house or one of two or more "compartments,"

each family will have a side, that is, the entrance doors will not be side

by side. Such have been built in Somerville, Mass., by a railroad company

for its employees. Those who wish to have a garden may; but no one will be

obliged, for there will be regulations about the general appearance of the

whole park, and every man his own lawn-mower will not be true. The

cultivation of taste will have so far advanced that the grouping advised

by the landscape architect will appeal to the occupant more than his own

fancied arrangement.

Since the heating will be supplied from outside, there will be a hothouse

and cold-frames for those who wish to have a share in the garden, just as

now there are bins in the basement. The care of these may replace the

exercise now gained in scrubbing the front steps. The windows of the house

will be dust-proof, fly-, mosquito-, and moth-proof; the air supplied will

be strained by galleries of screens, if indeed social advance has not

eliminated soot from chimneys and grit from the streets. Most certainly

dirt will not be permitted to come in on shoes and long dresses. Warmed or

cooled, moistened or dried air will be circulated as needed. In such a

house rugs may stay undisturbed for a month or more, books for years, and

the dust-cloth be rarely in evidence; the redding will consist of putting

back in place the things used; but as each member of the family will do

this as soon as he is old enough, there will be but a few minutes' work.