THE PRACTICAL SIDE OF COOPERATIVE HOUSEKEEPING. 519 



skill to attach to the associated kitchen a staff of 

 general house-servants, by whose organized ser- 

 vices a greater efficiency and subdivision of labor, 

 with their ensuing economy, might be obtained. 

 The abolition of the private house service, as 

 well as the private kitchen, marks the second 

 stage of associated housekeeping. 



At this point the question naturally presents 

 itself, " Are our present dwellings so situated and 

 arranged as to permit their tenants to get the 

 greatest benefit from such an,associated kitchen 

 and chamber service ? " Not only are they very 

 far from being so, but it is notorious that they are 

 so ill adapted from want of variety in their size 

 and plan, together with their relatively enormous 

 rents, to the growing wants and changing de- 

 mands of modern life in large towns, that build- 

 ings in flats, or apartments differing in the num- 

 ber and arrangement of their rooms, such as 

 have long been universal abroad, are becoming 

 more common and more and more in demand, 

 at all events in London. Such buildings, if con- 

 structed with a due regard to variety of room 

 arrangement, to economy in stairs and corridors, 

 and to height, offer, quite apart from the com- 

 mon kitchen and service, great advantages both 

 in convenience and economy. 



Great height being one of the elements, lifts 

 become an essential feature ; and it then becomes 

 an object so to lay out the building that, with a 

 due regard to safety and efficiency, the greatest 

 possible number of apartments shall be served 

 by the fewest possible stairs and lifts with their 

 attendant expenses. One stair and lift, which 

 may be necessary for twenty apartments, may, 

 with a slight increase of size, be equal to the re- 

 quirements of one hundred apartments. But the 

 very modifications of plan which would be neces- 

 sary to afford the greatest efficiency and economy 

 in the arrangement of the rooms, in the stairs, 

 the lifts, the porters, engineers, etc., would also 

 be those under which the cooperative kitchen 

 and general staff of house and chamber servants 

 would work to the greatest advantage. There- 

 fore, if to the mansion, so built as to secure the 

 greatest economy and comfort in its individual 

 apartments or dwellings, the associated kitchen 

 and staff be added, we find ourselves brought to 

 the associated mansion — not, indeed, fully de- 

 veloped, but sufficiently complete for practical 

 working. No sooner, however, is the idea of 

 such an associated mansion grasped, than we 

 jump to the conclusion that in the interests of 

 economy a coffee-room or general dining-room 

 would be, if not an essential, at least a desirable 



feature of such an establishment; for it is ob- 

 vious that the one, two, or five hundred meals 

 cooked in the common kitchen could be much 

 more cheaply served in one or two large rooms 

 than in as many rooms as there were meals. This 

 introduction of the coffee-room at once affords 

 us a fresh argument in favor of the assertion 

 that largeness of scale is the first essential of the 

 scheme. For if the number of meals to be served 

 is small, economy practically demands that they 

 shall be served as tables d'hote. This I believe to 

 be undesirable — first, because it argues a common 

 scale of living and common hours for eating; 

 secondly, because, though dining at a table d'hote 

 while on a tour is often amusing, it becomes as 

 a daily system tiresome, and a possible fruitful 

 source of unpleasantness between the people who 

 sit next each other day after day. The great 

 American hotels have long given up the table 

 d'hote for what we may call the restaurant system 

 of separate tables. 



If my argument so far is sound, it may be 

 stated as an axiom that the associated mansion, 

 like the kitchen, must be at least on a scale large 

 enough to support professional management, and 

 from that point, within certain very wide limits, 

 we may say the larger the scale the greater the 

 economy and efficiency. 1 Many may here object 

 that, after ah, the proposed mansion is only a 

 modified grand hotel. Very true, but the modi- 

 fications are most important, as a slight reference 

 to the principles on which ordinary hotels and 

 boarding-houses are conducted will show. In 

 ordinary hotels and boarding-houses the object 

 is to make the greatest possible profit. This 

 profit is made both in the board and lodging, but 

 it is generally well understood that the greater 

 proportion is made in the board ; therefore it is 

 an object to accommodate the greatest possible 

 number of boarders, which in turn raises the 

 price of private sitting and reception rooms. The 

 result of this is that where economy is an object, 

 the luxury of private reception-rooms is foregone, 

 and domestic privacy is almost destroyed. At the 

 same time it is well to bear in mind that no more 

 exclusive privacy can be enjoyed than in a great 

 hotel, more especially perhaps in one of tbe co- 

 lossal American caravansaries, always supposing 

 that money is no object. In the associated man- 



1 Subject to being built with due regard to the essen- 

 tial conditions of size, and of the dwellings being so 

 grouped as to afford the greatest privacy compatible with 

 the efficient and economical working and administration 

 of the whole, the cooperative mansion may take any form 

 or shape which the ingenuity of architects may be able to 

 \ devise. 



