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: “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.
“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 which is based on the
direction of the vital forces of nature and the doing
of things for mankind.”
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 cafe-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.