CHAPTER FORTY 



CO-OPERATIVE HOUSES 



NY one who has penetrated to the less fashionable outskirts of 

 a modern town must have observed those long rows of mean 

 dwellings which encroach on the surrounding country, and 

 must have felt what a melancholy thing it must be to live there. 



One cannot but think that there should be some better way 



of living than that which finds expression in these sordid streets. The house 

 of a civilised people should convey something more than the callous 

 commercialism of the speculative builder, and should be arranged on some 

 better principle than that which merely aims at crowding as many as 

 possible into a given space. In this matter the savage who decks his 

 primitive dwelling with brightly painted carving is more advanced than 

 we, and of all the habitations of man, surely none have quite reached 

 such an expression of sordid meanness as the modern street of modern 

 villa residences. 



Let us a consider for a moment one of these rows of little houses, all 

 exactly alike, and each with its gas-meter under the stairs, its scraper on the 

 front doorstep, its linoleum in the narrow hall, the patent cooking-range and 

 its incapable cook in the kitchen. 



Here it would seem that a great saving of labour and expense might be 

 effected by centralising the functions of cooking and heating in these houses, 

 and by providing one large fire and one capable cook to take the place of a 

 dozen incapable cooks and a dozen miniature cooking-ranges. 



The difficulty of such a reform would appear to be that in the combina- 

 tion of the family units, which it would involve, what is gained in convenience 

 and economy may be lost in privacy and comfort ; for while, as the copy- 

 book maxim says, " union is strength," the strength of the community is 

 generally obtainable only at some sacrifice of its individuals, and while the 

 bundle of arrows is not so readily broken as the single shaft, their feathers 

 may be sorely ruffled by their close contact with each other. 



And so the centripetal force, which urges the desirability of combination, 

 is opposed by a centrifugal one which, in the interests of individual develop- 

 ment, tends to keep our houses isolated and self-contained. And thus the 

 problem seems to resolve itself into a compromise between these opposing 

 tendencies to secure the benefits of union and co-operation, and yet not to 

 lose the advantages of privacy. 



It is proposed, in the scheme for an arrangement of small houses here 

 illustrated, to replace the servants of the individual house by a central staff 

 of trained domestics under skilled supervision, and to provide the necessary 

 accommodation for their work and habitation in the shape of one well- 

 appointed kitchen, with the necessary offices, sitting-room and bedrooms, 

 thus removing from the house all that portion of the premises devoted to the 

 servants. 



Again, the small dining-rooms of the houses are replaced by one large 

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