ORG AX IZ ED HOMESTEADS AXD HOUSEHOLDS. 735 



the solitary houses. A finely-appointed kitchen, laundry, heating, 

 lighting, and elevating apparatus, with telegraphic and other means 

 of communication, sufficient for the wants of a hundred families, would 

 replace one hundred sets of inferior work-rooms and apparatus in the 

 separate houses. But one or more work-rooms would be provided in 

 each domicile for minor or exceptional use. 



The cost of carrying on the People's Household, including warm- 

 ing, lighting, water and food supply, cooking, and the laundry, with 

 superintendence and general service, would not be more than two- 

 thirds the cost of living in separate houses of the same class, all pur- 

 chases being made at wholesale, and the work being performed by 

 organized labor, using the best machinery. Each individual or family 

 would be charged (perhaps against a monthly advance) for precisely 

 what they consumed. The difference of cost between meals served 

 in family alcoves of a great hall, or by dunib-Avaiter, or equivalent 

 machinery, in each domicile, would be small, and, like all other arrange- 

 ments, at the option of each proprietor. In previous experiments of 

 this general character, it has not been found that any family would 

 long prefer the more costly and inferior method of private purchase 

 and labor in the departments of cooking and washing, although pro- 

 vision could easily be made for a limited use of the public machinery 

 by individuals having such preference. 



This estimate leaves to the Avomen of each family the greater part 

 of their time. Here is one of the greatest existing wastes of labor. 

 The separate house necessarily and permanently dooms woman to 

 drudgery. Under the present system she necessarily carries on a 

 hundred trades eA^ery day by hand-work, as wasteful of productive 

 force as the old spinning-wheel. The labor of women, saved in this 

 way, would find new channels. The steam-power in the unitary 

 building, in constant use for elevators, pumping, washing, cooking, 

 heating, lighting, would always furnish a surplus of motive power for 

 sewing-machines and small industries which would naturally grow up. 

 In the People's Palace a Kindergarten for the youngest children, and 

 schools more or less industrial and technical for those older, would 

 have a natural and inevitable place. While this would still further 

 relieve the mothers, it would also be a field for the occupation of 

 women aud men living in the Homestead who were specially gifted 

 in these directions. Other collective work of the People's Home 

 would give occupation to some of the inmates. Halls for lectures 

 and social purposes, a library and reading-room, Avould also be among 

 the endowments of every People's Palace. 



Rising higher in the social scale, the question of domestic service, 

 now so difficult of solution, would be summarily settled. In palatial 

 buildings, occupying with inclosed and surrounding gardens a Avhole 

 city square, erected with the wealth of a hundred rich families, nine- 

 tenths of all the work would be done by the collective lnbor of em- 



