736 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ployes, who would have no personal relations or contact with the in- 

 dividual proprietors. The remaining one-tenth of domestic service 

 would admit of such selection and improvement of present methods 

 as to get rid of the principal part of the evil. It is much easier to 

 drill and actuate a corps of one hundred operatives in a public ser- 

 vice than to direct a single domestic ; and the elements of personal 

 collision and suffering self-respect, inseparable from the latter rule, 

 are absent from the former. 



The Federative Homesteads, or People's Palaces, would especially 

 need "Building Associations" for their establishment. But these 

 associations would be neither charitable nor speculative ; they would 

 be mutual-insurance companies, not for rebuilding houses destroyed 

 by fire, but to build each a palace, as perfect as modern art could 

 make it, for the occupancy of its members, and subsequently to carry 

 on the Palatial Household. The comparison of the Philadelphia sys- 

 tem of separate houses, poorly constructed, and purchased by install- 

 ments from building corporations not always purely mutual, should 

 be made with such collective, self-owned homesteads, not with hired 

 tenements, even should these be on the scale and with the appliances 

 of the Peabody tenement-houses in London, erected by a magnificent 

 charity. 



The People's Palace, to replace the people's hovels, is no fanciful 

 project or arbitrary contrivance, but the natural, inevitable form of 

 the household required by our civilization, corresponding strictly 

 with all our improved methods of productive industry ; correspond- 

 ing also with the social instincts and convictions of the time in which 

 we live. Opposed to its practical introduction is the want of intelli- 

 gence and mutual confidence in the masses, and also a selfish and ex- 

 clusive spirit, which is short-sighted and defeats its own end. "Wit- 

 ness the insecurity and ruinous waste of our separate households, the 

 drudgery of women, and the slavery to servants. In agriculture 

 witness also the loss of at least one-half the natural product by in- 

 coherent labor in the fields, and by the isolated farm-house and barn. 1 



I began this presentation of the "People's Palace" with the de- 

 mand for an architecture and structural law which should throw 

 around each individual and family a fortress of privacy, and which 

 should secure a home-sphere more inviolable than is possible in our 

 isolated houses, invaded daily by a horde of carriers, and pervaded 

 by an alien caste of servants. This largest freedom and independence 

 of the individual and family can only be assured by the perfect 

 organization of the Homestead and Household. 



In the vegetable and animal kingdoms the law of organization 

 requires 1. The establishment of each individual molecule or cell in 



1 Reference is here due to an American sociological novel, entitled "Fapa's Own 

 Girl," by Marie Howland, which furnishes a vivid description of the Familistere at Guise, 

 and its supposed adoption in this country. 



