ot
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."[1]

[Footnote 1: H.G. Wells.]

CHAPTER VI.

THE COST PER PERSON AND PER FAMILY OF VARIOUS GRADES OF SHELTER.

"The strongest needs conquer."

An outlay of $1500 to $2500 will secure a cottage in the country, or a
tenement with five or six rooms in the suburbs, for a wage-earner's
family. The rent for this should be from $125 to $200 p