Incidentals…………………… 300 ” 600 Savings, _nil_.
—– —–
Total…………………………$3000 to $4000
This goes far toward justifying the saying that a young man cannot afford to marry on less than $3000 a year.
With these figures in mind, what can our $2000 family with two children do? The rent that they can pay will not cover service or heat. There must be a maid to fill the lamps, see to the furnace, help with the cooking, and the wife must stay by the house pretty closely and probably decline most invitations. For the five persons, ten dollars a week for raw-food materials and five for its preparation is the lowest limit likely to be cheerfully submitted to.
Rent, heat, light, etc………………… $400 Food………………………………… 800 Clothing hardly less than……………… 400 Children’s education, even with free
schools, and their illnesses will use up. 100 Car-fares, church, etc………………… 100 Wages and sundries……………………. 200 ——
Total………………………………. $2000
In the bank nothing.
But what shelter can this refined, intelligent family find to-day for $400? Certainly nothing with modern conveniences. The lack of these is _made up by women’s work_–hard, rough work. And that is the crux of the servant problem to-day. It is the reason why more families do not go into the country to live. The work required in an old house to bring living up to modern standards is too appalling to be undertaken lightly.
In England the Sunlight Park and other plans, in America the Dayton and Cincinnati schemes, are samples of what is being done for the $500 to $800 family, but where are the examples (outside the Morris houses) for the salaried class for whom we are pleading? The great army of would-be home-makers are forced into a nomadic life by the exigencies resulting from the great combines–a shifting of offices, a closing of factories, a breaking up of hundreds of homes. I believe this to be the _chief factor_ in the decline of the American home–a hundred-fold more potent than the college education of women.
The unthinking comment on this rise in the cost of shelter is usually condemnation of greedy landlords and soulless capitalists; but is that the whole story?
In the present order of things it seems to be inevitable that the gain of one class in the community is loss to another. Probably the law has always existed, and only the very rapid and sudden changes bring it into prominence, because of the swift readjustment needed, an operation which torpid human nature resents when consciously pressed.
For instance, the efforts of the philanthropist and working man together have succeeded in shortening hours of labor and increasing wages–without, alas! increasing the speed or quality of the work done, especially in the trades which have to do with materials of construction, so that house-building has about doubled in cost within twenty-five years, largely due to cost of labor. This increased cost has fallen heavily on the very group of people least able to bear it, the skilled artisan, the teacher, and the young salaried man. Again I call attention to the need of a philanthropist who shall raise his eyes to that group, the hope of our democracy, those whom he has held to be able to help themselves–and given time would do so; but time is the very thing denied them in this motor age. Help to make quick adjustment must come to the rescue of those to whom time more than equals money.
One used to wait patiently for seed-sown lawns to become velvety turf. Money can bring sod from afar and in a season give the results of years. So the housing of the $2000 family can be accomplished just as soon as it seems sufficiently desirable. It needs a research just as truly as the cancer problem or desert botany, and affects thousands more.
One other cause of increased cost in construction and operation which does, if wisely carried out, increase health and efficiency is the sanitary provision of our recent building laws.
The instalment of these sanitary appliances becomes increasingly costly because of the rise in wages of the workmen, plumbers, masons, etc. The careful statistics of the Bureau of Labor show conclusively that all building trades have decreased hours of labor and increased wages per hour, so that cost of construction has doubled, and the sanitary requirements have again doubled the cost, so that it is easy to see why the family with a stationary income has quartered its dwelling-space.
The end is not yet: the new devices mentioned in previous chapters will at first increase cost of construction.
From lack of business training the public is at fault in estimating relative costs. A well-built “automatic house” costs too much, they say. Yes, but what does it save? Cost looms large, saving seems small. Moreover, the value of mental serenity, of that peace of mind consequent on the smooth running of the domestic machine, is undervalued. The American child such as he is is largely the product of the American house and its ill adapted construction. I must reiterate my belief that the modification of the house itself to the life the twentieth century is calling for is the first step in social reform.
CHAPTER VII.
THE RELATION BETWEEN COST OF HOUSING AND TOTAL INCOME.
“It must be made possible to live within one’s income.”
The thrifty French rule is one fifth for rent. In towns where land is cheap and wood abundant, or in college communities exempt from taxes, comfortable housing is found in this country for as little as fifteen or eighteen per cent of the total income. In some mining towns where all prospects are uncertain and the house has no particular social significance the rent may be even lower, although it is often very high. It depends on the demand, on competition rather than quality. In our older and more settled communities it is most common for rent to use up one fourth the salary of all town dwellers with incomes within our limits. This was true in Boston fifty years ago, and it is true to-day in dozens of cities and towns personally investigated. It is not unknown that a teacher or business man should exceed this in the hope of a rise in salary by the second year. Adding the expenses of operating the house, of repairs and additions and improvements if the house is owned, nearly half the money available must go for the mere housing of the family.
If it is true, as I believe it is, that for each fraction over one fifth spent for rent a saving must be made in some other direction–in the daily expense, less service, less costly food, or less expensive clothing, or, last to be cut down, less of the real pleasure of life,–it will be seen what a far-reaching question this is, how it touches the vital point, to have or not to have other good things in life.
A large part of the increase is due, as we have said, to increased demand for sanitary conveniences, but far more potent is the pressure resulting from the price of land.
This pressure has led to the building of smaller and smaller apartments, so that four and six rooms are made out of floor-space sufficient for two. It sounds better to say we have a six-room flat, even though there is no more privacy than in two rooms, for the rooms are mere cells unless the doors are always open. It is not uncommon in such suites renting for $50 to $60 per month for six rooms, to find three of them with only one window on one side, with no chance for cross-ventilation unless the doors of the whole suite are open.
This style of building prevails even in the suburbs where air and sunshine should be free. The would-be renter looking at such suites with all the doors open and the rooms innocent of fried fish and bacon does not think of the place as it _will be_ under living conditions when privacy can be had only by smothering.
The model tenements in New York rent for one dollar per week per room; the better houses for double, or two dollars for 450 cubic feet. Many of those I have examined renting for forty to sixty dollars per month give no more space for the money, only a little better finish–marble and tile in the bath-room, for instance.
The three-room tenement does, however, shelter as many persons as the six-room flat, hence there is more real overcrowding. In all these grades of shelter it is fresh air that is wanting. What wonder the white plague is always with us? What remedy so long as millions sleep in closets with no air-currents passing through?
Accepting the French rule, the artisan who rents the model tenement at $3.50 per week should earn $3 a day wage for six days. If he earn only $2, then more than one quarter must go for housing. There are hundreds of Italian families in New York who pay only $2 _per month_ for such shelter as they have, but it is only providing for the primitive idea of mere shelter, not for the comforts of a true home life. After the fashion of early man, these people spend their lives in the open air, eat wherever they may be, and use this makeshift shelter as protection from the weather and as a place of deposit for such articles as they do not carry about with them and for such weaklings as cannot travel.
As man rises in the scale of wants he pays more, in attention and in money, for housing, because he leaves wife and children to its comforts while he goes forth to his daily tasks. As ideals rise, the proportion rises until even one third of his earnings goes for mere shelter. But this limits his desires in other directions, so that it becomes a pertinent question, when is it right to give as much as one third of the moderate income for housing? As every heart knows its own bitterness, so every man knows his own business and what proportion of his income he is _willing_ to spend for a house, for the comforts of life pertain largely to bed and board. It must be acknowledged, however, that comfort and discomfort are so largely matters of habit and personal point of view that education as to ideals is an important duty of society in its own defence.
If two people without children prefer to spend more on shelter than on any other one thing, then with $3000 a year, $1000 may be given for rent if that covers heat, light, and general outside care. But the _family_ with children to consider must not think of allowing one third for rent under our very highest limit of $5000 a year, and it is unwise even then. In fact the ratio must be governed by circumstances. It is true, however, that the conditions must be interpreted by a fixed principle in living and not by any mere fashion or prejudice of the moment.
The one question every person asks when these suggested improvements are discussed is, but how much will it cost? Thus confessing that cost, not effectiveness, is the measure; that old ideals as to money value still rule the world. It costs too much to have a furnace large enough to warm a sufficient volume of air, it costs too much to put in safe plumbing, it costs too much to keep the house clean, and so on through the list. We have been too busy getting and spending money to study the cost of neglect of cardinal principles of right living. The farmer knows the cost of his young animals, but the father cares little and knows less of what it ought to cost to bring up his children–of the economy of spending wisely on a safe shelter for them.
A new estimate of what necessary things must cost has to be made before the present generation will live comfortably in presence of the account-book.
Here again a readjustment is coming; some expenses in house construction common now will be lessened or done away with; for example, fancy shapes, grooved and carved wood, projecting windows and door-frames.
It is usual, when the various new methods are brought up, to estimate the cost as additional to all that has gone before, rather than to see in it a substitute for much that may go.
Our family with $1500 income may safely pay $300 for rent, if that covers enough comfort and does not mean too much car-fare.
The house may cost $3000 if built on the old lines, and if the land it is placed on is not too expensive.
A fire-proof house such as is described in the July number of the _Brickbuilder and Architect_, 85 Water St., Boston, and probably also a house of reinforced concrete, will cost at present some $10,000 besides the land. Because of freedom from repairs it should be possible to rent such houses for $500, which will bring them within the reach of our $3000 a year family, but not within the means of the $2000. What is to be done?
It will be remarked by some that little attention has been given in these pages to the various so-called cooperative plans, like Mrs. Stuckert’s oval of fifty houses connected by a tramway at each level, with a central kitchen from which all meals come and to which all used dishes return, with a central office from which service is sent, etc.
Frankly, to my mind this is not enough better than the apartment hotel, as we now know it, to pay for the effort to establish it. As now evolved by demand, the establishments renting from one to fifteen thousand a year are on progressive lines. According to Mr. Wells, this shareholding class is on the way to extinction in any case, fortunately he also thinks, and the student of social economics need not concern himself with its future, only so far as its example influences the real bone and sinew of the republic, the working men and women who make the world the place it is.
Within the ten-mile radius it has been usual to include a front yard, if not a garden, in the house-lot. The cost of keeping this in the trim fashion decreed as essential, of planting and pruning of shrubs, of maintaining in immaculate condition the sidewalks and front steps, like most of the items in cost of living, is due to changed standards, just as the cost of table-board has advanced from $3 to $6 without a corresponding betterment in quality.
Engle’s law, “The lodging, warming, and lighting have an invariable proportion whatever the income,” does not hold under modern conditions for the group we are considering, for our wise ones need the best, and not a few of them are unwilling to buy their family sanctity at the price of a closet in the basement for the faithful maid.
Plans may look well on paper, the completed house may seem attractive, but when the family _live_ in the house its deficiencies become apparent. Cheap materials, flimsy construction, damp location, any one of a dozen possibilities may make the family uncomfortable, may cost in heating and doctor’s bills, may compel a moving before the year is out. Cheap houses in this decade are suspicious; the more need for a knowledge on the part of young people of what may be expected.
For this reason it is a part of sound education to give a certain amount of attention to living conditions in the high-school curriculum. It is as important as book-keeping; for of what avail are money and business, if the home life is perilled? Besides, some of the pupils may have attention called to deficiencies which they may show talent in overcoming.
Courses in Home Economics and Household Administration in colleges and universities should be directed to careful study of this branch of sociology.
There is a great opportunity before women’s clubs and civic-improvement associations to arouse an interest in the provision of suitable shelter for the young families in their several neighborhoods. Concerted movement by the Federation could revolutionize public opinion within a decade.
The student of social science may well say that the first effort should be directed to a rise in the pay of these educated young men; that no family should be expected to live on the sums here considered; that it is not right even to consider a way out on the present basis. Possibly so. Much agitation is abroad in relation to the pay of teachers, clerks, and skilled workmen, but that is another question which cannot be considered here.
The salaried class has so enormously increased of late years because of the great consolidation of business interests that the final adjustment has not been made. The one fact of uncertain tenure of position and uncertain promotion has profoundly affected living conditions, ownership of the family abode, and, incidentally, marriage.
There are prizes enough, however, to keep the young people on the alert for advancement, and they feel it more likely to come if they establish themselves as if it had arrived.
There is no denying that in the estimation of a large number of the groups we are considering, the question of neat and orderly service, the capped and aproned maid, the liveried bell-boy and butler, express–like the smoothly shaven lawn–a certain social convention; and because it means expense, the house in working order means more than shelter: it sets forth pecuniary standing in the community. So long as this means social standing also, so long will the professional and business family on $2000 a year be shut out, because these adjuncts to a luxurious living are impossible. Can society afford to shut out the intellectual and mentally progressive element, or must it accept as normal these salaries and make it respectable to begin on them? It is the strain which unessential social conventions give to the young families that leads the business father to speculate in order to get into the $10,000-a-year class, and that leads the young scientific and literary man to take extra work outside of his normal duties. This sort of thing cannot go on without serious danger to the Republic. Cleanliness and good manners should be insisted upon, but they may be secured on $3000 a year if too much else is not required. How to secure them on $1500 is a problem to be solved, for cleanliness costs more each decade.
After all is said, if the young people have an earnest _purpose_ in life it is easy to plan a method of living and to carry it out. The sacrifices one must make in the house superficially, in the consideration of a certain class, are cheerfully borne and soon forgotten.
Little discomforts which affect only one’s feelings and not one’s health make rather good stories after they are over. What is worth while? Are we become too sensitive to little things? Do we imagine we show our higher civilization by discerning with the little princess the pea under twenty-four feather beds?
Let our shelter be first of all healthful, physically and morally. If to gain these qualities we must take a house in an unfashionable neighborhood, it should not cause distress. Why is this particular region unfashionable? Is it not merely because certain would-be leaders choose to live beyond their means in company with those who are able to spend more?
Why not be honest and happy? Live within your income and make it cover the truest kind of living.
CHAPTER VIII.
TO OWN OR TO RENT: A DIFFICULT QUESTION.
“Half the sting of poverty is gone when one keeps house for one’s own comfort and not for the comment of one’s neighbors.” –Miss MULOCK.
When the ideals of an older generation are forced upon a younger, already struggling under new and strange environment, the effect is often opposite to that intended. The elders in their pride of knowledge, and the real-estate promoters in their greed for gain, have been urging the young man to own his house on penalty of shirking his plain duty. They say he must have a home to offer his bride, as the bird has a nest. Building-loan associations, homes on the instalment plan, appeal to the sentiments they think the young man ought to heed.
The young man is often modest, almost always sensitive, and he prefers to bear dispraise rather than to tell the real reason he hesitates. His ear is closer to the ground, he feels even if he cannot express the doubt of the disinterestedness of the land-scheme promoter, of the wisdom of his father. He knows better than his elders the uncertainties of salaried men, young men with a way to make in the unstable conditions of to-day.
The effect of this well-meant advice is not to hasten his marriage, but to put it off because he is not allowed to take the course he feels safest. Or if he is willing, the parents of his prospective bride are not, and so young people do not marry on $1000 a year, for fear of the elder generation and their supposed wisdom.
The young people are not justified by present-day conditions in owning a house on an income of $2000 a year _unless_
(1) They have money to put into it which it will not cripple them for life to lose;
(2) They care so much for the idea of ownership that they are willing to take the risk of losing one half the investment should they be compelled to move;
(3) They possess the fortitude to give it up at the call of duty after all they have lavished on it;
(4) They care enough for the real education and the real fun they will get out of it to save in other ways what the running and repairs will cost _over and above the amount estimated_. This saving will be largely by doing many things with their own hands.
To be bound hand and foot either by unsalable real estate or by sentiment is an uncomfortable condition for the young family who may find itself in uncongenial surroundings, in an unhealthful situation, or who may need to retrench temporarily.
Another serious objection to building and owning a house in the first years of married life is the chance that the house will be too large or too small, or the railroad station will be moved, or the trolley line will be run under the garden window, or a smoking chimney will fill the library with soot (although the latter will not be permitted in the real twentieth-century town).
A new element has come into the question of ownership by the family of limited means which did not meet the elder generation of house-owners. In the past the repairs were confined to a coat of paint now and then, new shingles, an added hen-house, or a bay window. The well might have to be deepened, but little expense was put into or onto the house for fifty years. The married son or daughter might add a wing, but the main house once built was never disturbed. In the modern plastic condition of both ideals and materials this is all changed. In any city well known to my readers how many streets bear the same aspect as five years ago? In any suburban village made familiar by the trolley how many houses are the same as five years ago? Even if their outward aspect is not changed, that worst of all havocs, new plumbing, has been put in. The installation of neither furnace nor plumbing is accomplished once for all; at the end of ten years at most repairs or replacement must be made on penalty of loss of health. As the community grows in wisdom and in knowledge it makes sanitary regulations more stringent notwithstanding the fact that the increase in expense bears most heavily on the small householder with a family whose need is out of proportion to the income. Many a parent who grieves the loss of his child would gladly have paid a reasonable sum for repairs, but would have been in the poor debtors’ court if he had allowed the plumbers to enter his house. The new laws made since he bought his house require diametrically opposite things, and the old fittings must all be torn out as well as four times as costly put in.
It is a sad fact that the advantages of all modern sanitation are so often denied to those who need and who would appreciate them. The renter has here an advantage over the owner. He can call for an examination by the city or town inspector before he takes a lease; the capitalist owner must then put matters right. But as yet a man has a right to live with leaky sewer- or gas-pipes in his own house without being disturbed by an inspector. How far into the century this will be allowed is uncertain; in time there will be an inspection of the premises of the small owner.
The only remedy in sight is for an investment of capital in up-to-date houses of various grades in city, suburbs, and country; such investment to bring 4 per cent, not 40, or even 15, unless by rise of land values. No better use of idle money could be made at the present time. In “Anticipations” Mr. Wells writes: “The erection of a series of experimental labor-saving houses by some philanthropic person for exhibition and discussion would certainly bring about an extraordinary advance in domestic comfort; but it will probably be many years before the cautious enterprise of advertising firms approximates to the economies that are theoretically possible to-day.” This is truer now than when Mr. Wells was writing.
The great difficulty in the way is the first outlay. So many things will have to be designed, patterns made and machinery built to make them; for this advance in construction will not be by hand-made things. There will be more head-work put into the various articles, but the mass of constructive material must be machine-made, at least for the family of limited income. And these articles need not be ugly. There must be many of the same kind in the world, to be sure; but if the design fits the purpose, this may not be an evil. No one objects to a beautiful elm-tree in his field because in hundreds of fields there are similar elm-trees. Slight variations in finish, color, etc., can give individuality to the simplest chair.
Therefore the first outlay for the new order will be beyond the purse of any single family of this group. If we had learned to cooperate sanely, a group might undertake it, but the most probable method will be for some far-sighted men to agree to sink a certain amount of money in experiment, just as they now sink money in prospecting a mine with all the uncertainty it brings. Ability to _risk_ in an experiment must go hand in hand with capital to use.
The objection commonly made is that all individuality will be taken away, that each one must live like every one else in the neighborhood. This is not an essential consequence, but will it be so impossible to have a certain similarity in the dwellings of like-minded people? In “Anticipations” it is declared that “Unless some great catastrophe in Nature breaks down all that man has built, these great kindred groups of capable men and educated adequate women must be under the forces we have considered so far, the element finally emergent amid the vast confusions of the coming time.”[1]
[Footnote 1: Anticipations, pp. 153-4.]
The practical people, the engineering and medical and scientific people, will become more and more _homogeneous_ in their fundamental culture.
The decreasing of the space one can call one’s own within urban limits has so steadily increased, and the need for freer air has become so fully recognized, that the case of the single householder in the suburbs and even in the country is bound to press harder and harder. The group system elsewhere referred to, with central heating plant and workers of all grades at telephone-call, will make possible at a reasonable rent within easy reach of the city the single household of one, two, or three, as the case may be, and if without children of their own, to such shelter may come some of those homeless little ones we have with us always, to share in the sun and wind and garden. In the real country, with acres instead of feet of land, much of the same kind of elaborate simplicity will be found. Certainly the same kind of fire-proof house of only one story with more light, “roofs of steel and glass on the louver principle,” will obviate so frequent a change of air as a shut-in house requires, and give more equable temperature.
In the city? Since physicians will surely be more insistent on light, as well as fresh air, roof-gardens and balconies and glazed walls, so to speak, will be arranged by the architect so as not to offend the eye and yet to accomplish the results. He will cease from trying to put the new ideas of the twentieth century into the old houses of the eighteenth or fifteenth even, and that beauty, which is fitness, will come forth from the tangle of ugliness everywhere. If, as the economist tells us, “cost measures lack of adjustment,” then the perfectly adjusted house will not be costly in reality, it will be adapted to the production and protection of effective human beings.
The cellar has for some years been changing to a storage for trunks instead of vegetables. The old-fashioned housewife exclaims at the lack of storage in the house of to-day, and we are eliminating it still more. A twentieth-century axiom is, “Throw or give away everything you have not immediate or prospective use for.” It is as true of household furniture as of books; only the very best is of any value second-hand. Our young people may have heirlooms, but they will buy very little in the way of sideboards or first editions. The moral of modern tendencies is, buy only what you are sure you will need or what you care for so intensely that you will keep it come what may. Housing of possible treasures is far too costly.
At the foundation of the ethical side of ownership is the primitive impulse of possession, that ownership which led to wife-capture, to feudal castles, to accumulation of things, and to-day is expressed by the man who prefers to have his steak cooked in his own kitchen even if it is burned.
It is notorious that most of us put up with discomfort if it is caused by _our own_. A family of eight will use one bath-room without murmur if the house is theirs, but will complain loudly if the landlord will not add two without increasing the rent.
At the foundation of what seem exorbitant rents is this demand for modern improvements in old houses, and the atrocious carelessness of tenants of property. It is not their own, and they do not obey the golden rule in the use of it.
Every five years or so plumbing laws are changed, and if an old house is touched the fixtures and pipes must be all renewed. Tenants have learned to fear the sanitation of old houses, and yet abuse the appliances they should care for.
Public ownership or corporate ownership or an increased lawlessness are accountable for a disregard of others’ rights and of property which is unnecessarily increasing the cost of living.
I have said elsewhere that it is not because the landlord does not want children in the house but because he does not want such ill-bred children, vandals, who have no respect for anything. He charges high rent because his investment is good for only ten years.
The shibboleth of duty to own a home has so strong a hold on the moral sense of the people that it is made use of by the promoter who may in some cases think himself the philanthropist he intends others to call him. I mean that the duty of owning and the heinousness of paying rent are so ingrained that buying on the instalment plan has seemed a righteous thing, even with the examples of broken lives in plain sight. As an incentive to save, if there were anything to save, it might have been justified in the days of feudalism. But for an independent American to confess that he cannot put money in the bank, and that he must bind himself and his family to slavery, for the sake of owning a bit of property which they will probably wish to sell before they have it paid for, is disgraceful. Intelligent men should see that here is the profit in the transaction; that enough go to the wall to pay for the trouble of the rest, just as in life insurance enough die before the expected time to put money in the pockets of the riskers.
A drunken father may need to be held, but the young professor, the lawyer, the engineer, should have sufficient self-respect and firmness to save that which in his judgment is necessary, without being tied by “the instalment plan.” This method is a very viper in the finances of to-day. The wise business man never ventures more than he can afford to lose in a risk, but the man who takes bread and milk from his children to invest in “a sure thing” takes a risk with what is not his to give.
To buy land for investment is another supposed virtue, an inheritance from the time when slow growth, once started in a given direction, kept on, so that great acumen was not needed to buy; but that is all changed to-day. Only those “in the ring” can tell where the “boom” will go next.
In these days of unparalelled rapidity of change in industrial and social conditions it is most undesirable for a man to be hampered by a shell which is too large to carry about with him and too valuable to be left behind. To each reader will occur instances of the refusal of an advantageous offer because the family home could not be realized upon at once, the location once so favorable had become undesirable, and the values put into it could not be recovered because of social conditions following industrial changes.
The keen observer hesitates in view of all these conditions to advise any young man to invest in real estate for a home beyond a sum which he can afford to lose if need arises to move. These changes carry a need for mobilization of its army of workers. The encumbrance of family Lares and Penates cannot be tolerated. Only a small per cent of young men are to-day sure of remaining in the city in which they begin business. What folly to encumber themselves with real estate which, sold at a sacrifice, brings barely half its price! Moral exhorters have not carefully considered this side of the question in their arguments for house-owning and family-rearing as anchors to the young man.
The fact noted earlier is a case in point. After the wedding-cards were out the bridegroom was transferred to the charge of the company’s office in another city.
The expenses necessitated by these frequent removals make an unaccounted-for item in many incomes.
If the young couple have saved or inherited between them, say, $3000, shall they build a home with it? Decidedly not. Because the house will cost $5000 before they are done. Not only because of the unexpected in strikes and change in prices of materials, but because, as the plans take shape, the wife or the husband or both will see so many little points which they will ask for, the paper plan not having conveyed a definite idea to either. An excellent plan was carried out by a college woman. She made a model to scale in pasteboard, of such a size that every essential detail was shown in its relation to other portions of the structure.
Even if these young people do not yield at the moment of building, they will probably wish they had yielded when they come to live in the house. There will be nothing for it but to mortgage the place to make it satisfactory. One cannot take up a newspaper without finding notice after notice, reading, “Must be sold to pay the mortgage.”
Exorbitant rent is of course social waste, and society must protect its ablest young people from their own folly; but when they understand the rules of the financial game better they will lend themselves more readily to some cooperative plan of relief.
It is, as I well know, rank heresy, but I firmly believe that building and owning of houses can be afforded only by those having the higher limit of income, $3000 to $5000 a year, _unless_ the person has a permanent position or a business of great security, and in these days who can be _sure_ of anything?
When the land-scheme promoter advertises homes on the instalment plan, beware of the trap!
Let no one buy in the suburbs from a sense of duty and then hate the life.
Comfort in living is far more in the brains than in the back.
It is so easy for a man or woman with one set of ideals to do that which another would consider impossible drudgery.
My final advice is that the sensible young couple both of whom agree about essentials, and who are willing and glad to work together for a common end, and who love nature and gardening and believe in family life so strongly as not to miss the crowd and theatres, may safely start a home in the country with a garden, and pets for the children, if they have a reasonable prospect of ten years in one spot. Let them make the place attractive for some family, even if they have to leave it.
The women of this group will, I believe, have the qualities Mr. Wells predicts: not only intelligence and education, but a reasonableness and reliability not always found to-day.
Unless a reasonable prospect of ten years’ occupancy is assured, then begin life in a rented house, not necessarily in a flat. Begin with a few things of your own some which have been yours for years, some which you have bought together and which have a meaning for one of you and are not irritating to the other.
Devote a part of your leisure to a critical study of the house you would like, draw plans, make sketches in color, study color effects, learn about fabrics, collect them for the future. You will find an amusing and instructive occupation.
The essential point is to begin this life on two thirds of what you have reason to expect as the year’s income; keep the rest invested or in the bank. There are to-day many temptations to spend for things attractive in themselves but not necessary to the effective life. If friends are so silly as to rally you on living in an unfashionable quarter, ask them in to see your sketches and plans, and talk them into enthusiasm over the idea. Do missionary work with them rather than be ridiculed out of your convictions. It sometimes seems as if young people had no convictions, as if they drifted with the wind of newspaper suggestion. So do not allow your friends to drive you to greater expense than you have determined upon, lest the end of the first two years of life find you in debt with no fair start for the baby, whose life should begin in an atmosphere of quiet assurance that all is well. It is not impossible that the nervous irritability and recklessness of many are due to the atmosphere of childhood. Then remember that _the welfare and security of the child is the watchword of the future_.
A FEW BOOKS.
Anticipations. H.G. Wells.
Mankind in the Making. H.G. Wells. Scribners.
A Modern Utopia. H.G. Wells. Scribners.
Twentieth-century Inventions: a Forecast. Geo. Sutherland. Longmans, Green, & Co.
The Level of Social Motion. Michael Lane. Macmillan.
The Theory of the Leisure Class. Thorstein Veblen. Macmillan.
The Woman who Spends. Whitcomb and Barrows.
Physical Deterioration: Its Causes and their Cure. A. Watt Smyth. E.P. Dutton.
Shelter. Syllabus 94, Home Education Dept, Univ. of N.Y. State Library, Albany.
Report of the Tenement-house Commission.
INDEX.
A
Adaptation
lack of
“Anticipations”
Advisers, home
Age, spirit of the
Air
Altruria
Albert’s, Prince, advice
Apartment houses
Architects
Architecture, domestic
Arts, constructive
B
Bachelor
apartment
Back, bending the
strength of
Badges of toil
Boarding houses
origin of
Breakfast
Building
laws
loan associations
Building trades
Bureau of Labor, U.S.
C
Capital
Care of rooms
human body
Carpentry in high school
Centrifugal force
Children
deterioration of manners of
Choice
City
houses
Civilization
Class to work for
Cleaning machine
Cleanliness
Clothing
Colonial houses
period, housebuilding of
Southern type of, houses
Commuter, trials of
Companionship
Compromise
Concrete
Consciousness, social
Construction
Consumption, destructive
Conveniences
Cooperation
Cost
increasing
of housing and total income
per person and per family
Country
Crowding
D
Dayton scheme
Debt
Demand
business
Democracy
Deterioration of houses
Dirt
Discomforts
Discontent
Dishonesty in standards
Dole, Charles
Domestic comfort
machine
progress, retarded
unrest
Drainage
Drudgery
Dust
E
Economics, home, exhibit
household
social
Economist
Economy
Effective life
workers
Effectiveness
Efficiency
loss of
Energy
Engineering, definition of
Engle’s law
Environment
Euthenics
Evolution
Expense
Expenses
operating
Experience in doing
lack of
Experts, house
Extravagance
F
Family
table
Farm life
Flat
Flats
Floors, hard-wood
lignolith
Food
Force
for regeneration
Foreigner
Friction due to house
G
Garden
Gardening
Gas-stoves
Group system
H
Habit, perils of
Habits
Hands
Heating
Home
abandonment of
advisers
Anglo-Saxon meaning of
building of
Home economics
feeling
life
love of
makers
means privacy
ties loosened
Homeless
Homestead
Hospitality
Hot water
House
building
Colonial
evidence of social standing
-keepers
-keeping, twentieth-century
-maids, physical inefficiency of
planning in High School
plans
suburban
Houses
city
Colonial, of New England
four classes of
modern
Housing
I
Ideal
Ideas
Improvements
Income
Individual
Industries, disappearance of
Installment plan
Invasion of residential districts
Invention
Investment
K
Kitchen
accompaniments
remodelled, in Providence
Kitchenette
L
Labor, Bureau of
-saving devices
Lack of
adaptation
business training
experience
faithful service
harmony
study
Land
Landlord
Land-scheme promoter
Lane, Mr. Michael
Leaven of progress
Legacy
“Level of Social Motion”
Life
effective
frontier
fuller
home
open air
private, shabby
restrained
Light
Living, decent
sane
cost of
Location
Lodge, Sir Oliver
M
Machinery
Maid’s rooms
Making of things
Man, early
primitive
Manners
Marriage, responsibility of
Meals
Mechanical
progress
Menial
Middle, leaven of progress in
Model Tenement Association, New York Money
basis
measure of success
spender
value
Morison, Geo. S
Morris Building Co
Mulock, Miss
N
Nasmyth, James
Natural selection
Nature
love of
return to
Neill, Chas. P., extracts from address by New Epoch, The
O
Opinion, public
Owen, Robert
Own or rent
Ownership
P
Parks
Parsons, Wm. Barclay
Patronage of the arts
Permanence in homestead, lack of
Pettingill, Miss [Transcriber’s Note: Pettengill in text.] Philanthropist
Philanthropy
Physical ill-being in
domestics
school children
wage-earners
Place of the house
Plans
Plumbing
Possibilities in sight
Preeminence, social
Primitive man
Principle, fixed
race
Privacy
Private life shabby
Productive work
Progress
leaven of
race
Protection
Q
Question, a difficult
R
Race principle
Readjustment
Real estate
Refuge
Regeneration, force for
Rent
or own
-payers
Residential districts, invasion of
Responsibility of marriage
Restaurant
Restrained life
Return to nature
Rights to property, etc.
Roosevelt, President
S
Sanitarian
Sanitary
English, Inspectors Association, President of Sanitation
Saving
Schools, public
Science
Scrubbing
Selection, natural
Self-interest
-preservation
Service
faithful, lack of
Sewer connection, houses without
Shelter
Shelter, marrying for
Sheltering the children
Simplicity
Social advance
aspiration
betterment
conditions
Social conscience
consciousness
convention
economics
ostracism
pleasure
preeminence
science
significance
standing
welfare
Society
Sociologist
Sociology
Somerville
Space
diminishing
Spender
Spirit of the age
Standards
Stone, Mary Lowell, Home Economics Exhibit Structure
Stuckert, Mrs
Study, lack of
Suburban
houses
living
square
Suburbs
Sun-parlors
Sunlight Park, England
T
Table, family
Tax
Temporary home
Tenant
Tenement
N.Y. Model, Association
Tennyson
Tenure,
permanence of
shortness of
uncertain
Transition period
Tuberculosis
U
U.S. Bureau of Labor
Unrest, domestic
Unsanitary
Utopian
V
Veblen
Ventilation
Village houses
influx from
W
Wage-earners
Waste, conspicuous
Watchword of the future
Water, hot
Wedding presents
Well-being of community threatened
Wells, H.G.
White plague
Wife
Window
Woman
Women, corporation of
Women’s work
Work,
menial
productive
women’s
Workers, effective
Working men
Y
Young people
Youth, American