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.

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.

The breakfast will be of uncooked or simply heated food, parched grains and cream, fruit fresh or dried, and nuts. If coffee or cocoa is desired, the electric heater serves it to the requisite degree of heat. Each adult member of the family will probably take this in his own room or at his own convenience, without the formality of a meal. The few glasses and other dishes may be plunged into a tank of water and left for future cleaning. Luncheon will depend altogether on the habits of the family, but dinner, at whatever hour that may be, will be the family symposium. Dressed in its honor, with a sprightly addition to the conversation of experience or information or conjecture, there will be form and ceremony of a simple, refined kind, such that once again the family may welcome a guest without anxiety. Good conversation and fresh interests will thus come into the children’s lives. How much they have missed in these days of the barring out all hospitality! Is it perchance one reason, if not the chief, why manners have degenerated?

This meal will not have more than four courses of food carefully selected and perfectly cooked, whether in the house or out matters not so it is served fresh and of just the right temperature. No kind of cooking will be permitted which “meets the guest in the hall and stays with him in the street”; therefore the dishes may be washed by neatly dressed maids or by the children, who thus learn to care for the fitness of things; plenty of towels and hot water, with all hands doing a little, leaves everything snug and no one too tired. We will let Mr. H.G. Wells describe the bedroom of the future house:

“The room is, of course, very clear and clean and simple: not by any means cheaply equipped, but designed to economize the labor of redding and repair just as much as possible.

“It is beautifully proportioned and rather lower than most rooms I know on earth. There is no fireplace, and I am perplexed by that until I find a thermometer beside six switches on the wall. Above this switchboard is a brief instruction: one switch warms the floor, which is not carpeted, but covered by a substance like soft oilcloth; one warms the mattress (which is of metal with resistance coils threaded to and fro in it); and the others warm the wall in various degrees, each directing current through a separate system of resistances. The casement does not open, but above, flush with the ceiling, a noiseless rapid fan pumps air out of the room. The air enters by a Tobin shaft.

“There is a recess dressing-room, equipped with a bath and all that is necessary to one’s toilet; and the water, one remarks, is warmed, if one desires it warm, by passing it through an electrically-heated spiral of tubing. A cake of soap drops out of a store-machine on the turn of a handle, and when you have done with it, you drop that and your soiled towels, etc., which are also given you by machines, into a little box, through the bottom of which they drop at once and sail down a smooth shaft. [Better stay in the box and not infect the shaft. Author.]

“A little notice tells you the price of the room, and you gather the price is doubled if you do not leave the toilet as you find it. Beside the bed, and to be lit at night by a handy switch over the pillow, is a little clock, its face flush with the wall [no dust-catcher].

“The room has no corners to gather dirt, wall meets floor with a gentle curve, and the apartment could be swept out effectually by a few strokes of a mechanical sweeper [sucked out by the now-used cleaning-machine. Author]. The door-frames and window-frames are of metal, rounded and impervious to draft. You are politely requested to turn a handle at the foot of your bed before leaving the room, and forthwith the frame turns up into a vertical position, and the bedclothes hang airing. You stand in the doorway and realize that there remains not a minute’s work for any one to do. Memories of the fetid disorder of many an earthly bedroom after a night’s use float across your mind.

[In America the use of the sleeping-room as a sitting-room is more common than in England, and the fetid disorder is far greater.]

“And you must not imagine this dustless, spotless, sweet apartment as anything but beautiful. Its appearance is a little unfamiliar, of course, but all the muddle of dust-collecting hangings and witless ornament that cover the earthly bedroom, the valances, the curtains to check the draft from the ill-fitting windows, the worthless irrelevant pictures, usually a little askew, the dusty carpets, and all the paraphernalia about the dirty black-leaded fireplace are gone. The faintly tinted walls are framed with just one clear colored line, as finely placed as the member of a Greek capital; the door-handles and the lines of the panels of the door, the two chairs, the framework of the bed, the writing-table, have all that exquisite finish of contour that is begotten of sustained artistic effort. The graciously shaped windows each frame a picture since they are draughtless the window-seats are no mere mockeries as are the window-seats of earth and on the sill the sole thing to need attention in the room is one little bowl of blue Alpine flowers.”

The true office of the house is not only to be useful, but to be aesthetically a background for the dwellers therein, subordinate to them, not obtrusive. In most of our modern building and furnishing the people are relegated to the background as insignificant figures. This is largely why the home feeling is absent, why children do not form an affection for the rooms they live in.

Let there be nothing in the room because some other person has it; this shows poverty of ideas. Let there be nothing in the room which does not satisfy some need, spiritual or physical, of some member of the family. How bare our rooms would become! Let the skeptical reader try an experiment. Take everything out of a given room, then bring back one by one the things one feels essential not merely because it fills space but for the presence of which some one can give a good and sufficient reason. It will mean a trial of a few days, because it is not easy to separate habit from need. A table has stood in a certain spot: that is no reason in itself why it should continue to stand there unless it supplies a need.

If a fetish stands in the way of social progress, do away with it. If the idea of home as the shell is standing in the way of developing the idea of home as a state of mind, then let us cast loose the load of things that are sinking us in the sea of care beyond rescue.

It is quite possible that we may return to that state of mind in which there was a pleasure in caring for beautiful objects. The housewife of colonial days did not disdain the washing of her cups of precious china or doing up the heirlooms of lace and embroidery. When our possessions acquire an intrinsic value, when all the work of the house which cannot be done by machinery is that of handling beautiful things and has a meaning in the life of the individual and the family, service will not be required in the vast majority of homes: then we may approach to the Utopian ideal of the nobility of labor.

“The plain message that physical science has for the world at large is this, that were our political and social and moral devices only as well contrived to their ends as a linotype machine, an antiseptic operating-plant, or an electric tram-car, there need now, at the present moment, be no appreciable toil in the world, and only the smallest fraction of the pain, the fear, and the anxiety that now make human life so doubtful in its value. There is more than enough for every one alive. Science stands as a too competent servant behind her wrangling, underbred masters, holding out resources, devices, and remedies they are too stupid to use."