owledge of structural strength and elasticity, and then
slowly change the partitions, relay the walls, let in the light through
new apertures, improve the ventilation; until finally, a generation or two
from now, the scaffolding will be taken away, and there will be the family
in a great building whose noble architecture will at last be disclosed,
where men can live as a single community, co-operative as in a perfected,
co-ordinated beehive, not afraid of any storm of nature, not afraid of
any artificial storm, any imitation of thunder and lightning, knowing that
the foundations go down to the bedrock of principle, and knowing that
whenever they please they can change that plan again and accommodate it as
they please to the altering necessities of their lives.

But there are a great many men who don't like the idea. Some wit recently
said, in view of the fact that most of our American architects are trained
in a certain _Ecole_ in Paris, that all American architecture in recent
years was either bizarre or "Beaux Arts." I think that our economic
architecture is decidedly bizarre; and I am afraid that there is a good
deal to learn about matters other than architecture from the same source
from which our architects have learned a great many things. I don't mean
the School of Fine Arts at Paris, but the experience of France; for from
the other side of the water men can now hold up against us the reproach
that we have not adjusted our lives to modern conditions to the same
extent that they have adjusted theirs. I was very much interested in some
of the reasons given by our friends across the Canadian border for being
very shy about the reciprocity arrangements. They said: "We are not sure
whither these arrangements will lead, and we don't care to associate too
closely with the economic conditions of the United States until those
conditions are as modern as ours." And when I resented it, and asked for
particulars, I had, in regard to many matters, to retire from the debate.
Because I found that they had adjusted their regulations of economic
development to conditions we had not yet found a way to meet in the United
States.

Well, we have started now at all events. The procession is under way. The
stand-patter doesn't know there is a procession. He is asleep in the back
part of his house. He doesn't know that the road is resounding with the
tramp of men going to the front. And when he wakes up, the country will be
empty. He wi