July, 1905 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



45 



The Household 



Syndicated Service 



I OR a number of years Dr. Robert Ellis 

 Thompson, of Philadelphia, an educator 

 and political economist of international rep- 

 utation, and widely known as a writer and 

 lecturer, has been preaching the gospel of 

 the syndicated household, in which as much 

 household work as possible will be done by corporations, and 

 in which women will have nothing to do but to attend to the 

 higher duties of the home. 



It is an alluring picture he draws. There will be no 

 Monday washdays, for convenient corporations will under- 

 take this service for whole communities on the largest scale. 

 There will be no sweeping, for hydraulic apparatus will per- 

 form this service both for the house and the streets alike. 

 There will be no stairs to climb up or tumble down, for auto- 

 matic elevators will be placed in every dwelling house. The 

 cooking will be performed at central agencies, where the food 

 for whole villages and towns will be prepared at smallest cost 

 and with the slightest waste. Whatever labor is to be per- 

 formed will be done by men, and of household work there 

 will be none whatever for the women. 



All of these things, on various scales, are already in opera- 

 tion. Dr. Thompson differs only from other prophets in 

 looking forward to their general and universal application. 

 The automatic elevator is to be found in many American 

 houses, but its use in this country is as yet chiefly limited to 

 costly private dwellings, in which stairs are still employed 

 for ornamental and useful purposes. Laundering establish- 

 ments have long been sources of profit to their owners, but 

 the charges asked for the work they do have as yet been too 

 great to permit the abolition of the home washtub. Our 

 great hotels and office buildings are largely cleaned by me- 

 chanical means, and every inhabitant of a large city is 



familiar with the labors of the window cleaning companies. 

 Various efforts have, from time to time, been made toward 

 establishing central food supply agencies, but the individual 

 home cook, notwithstanding her scarcity and her failings, 

 still commands a high price and still enjoys a wide popularity. 



But Dr. Thompson is confident that all the things he has 

 in mind will come to pass, and come quickly. Expert workers 

 dominate the manufacturing world, and so he thinks expert 

 laborers in the household will become both essential and nec- 

 essary. Already certain lines of such work have gone into the 

 hands of expert laborers, and so he looks cheerfully forward 

 to the time when we will have expert sweepers, expert dust- 

 ers, expert window cleaners, expert bed makers, expert wait- 

 resses, expert child nurses, expert scrubbers, and experts in 

 every line of household work. No doubt many a house- 

 keeper will long for the day when these well-trained persons 

 can be had. 



The destructive prophet is a much less certain person than 

 the constructive prophet. It is much safer to look abroad, 

 note the tendency of effort in one direction, the movement of 

 the same result in another, and draw conclusions as to the 

 finality, than to argue simply that thus and so are impossible. 

 When William the Conqueror built his great church in Caen 

 he could not foresee the time when it would be lit by the 

 electric light. Yet this has come to pass, and stranger things 

 as well, and Dr. Thompson's dream of a syndicated house- 

 hold service may be realized sooner than he thinks. Mean- 

 while it may be observed that while eloquently arguing for 

 this new state of affairs he himself lives in a charming house 

 in a remote Philadelphia suburb, so situated that many, many 

 years must elapse before he himself can call in the most ef- 

 ficient syndicate for the administration of his own household 

 affairs. 



Taste in Household Decoration 



The great requirement in household furnishings is taste. 

 It is, of course, thoroughly delightful to have as much money 

 to spend on a house as one wishes to, and to be indiiterent, 

 so far as the money goes, as to how much is spent; but it is 

 much more important, as to results, to have only good things, 

 disposed in a good way, charming wall papers, refined orna- 

 ments, exquisite combinations. These are the elements which 

 go to make an artistic interior, not the mere amount of money 

 paid for them. 



The price of an article is no criterion of its merit, except 

 that high priced articles should have greater art value than 

 low priced goods. Art, real art, is costly, because much 

 time and effort goes into its production. The genuine artist 

 works slowly; if he belongs to the first rank he will produce 

 but one or two masterpieces a year, perhaps not more than 

 one in several years. He will use costly raw materials, be- 

 cause he knows his use of them will result in a fine produc- 

 tion. He will apply to his task the knowledge and experi- 

 ence gained by many years of effort, possibly years of unre- 

 munerative effort. And the meanwhile he has lived and 

 must live, and he expects to be recouped for his expenses. 

 All these things make his prices large, although his profits 

 may be very small. 



On general grounds, therefore, good art is expensive. So 

 also is bad art. Very high prices are often charged for very 

 bad objects, and, which is very much worse, obtained for 



them. The result is much more disastrous than being simply 

 a bad purchase, for many people are fascinated by high 

 prices, and will pay large sums for false works of art which 

 not only have no right place in a house, but which destroy 

 the effect of whatever symmetry and harmony and beauty 

 may have been obtained by artistic effort. 



Nothing so completely destroys the effect of any room so 

 much as the introduction of a gaudy, conspicuous, unartistic 

 object which has no right place in any well designed and 

 artistically arranged home. It is bad enough when such 

 things are given to one; it is scarcely short of a crime to 

 deliberately purchase them under the singular notion that 

 something of genuine art value is being obtained. It is bad 

 in every sense. It shows that the possessor has no real taste 

 herself, and it encourages the production of fake art objects, 

 which would quickly disappear from the shops were there no 

 market for them. 



Any one with good taste can accomplish very much more 

 in household decoration than one who simply has money to 

 spend. Such a person gives thought and care to the problems 

 presented in the household scheme. She realizes the value 

 of every individual object, and if she starts fresh, can pro- 

 duce effects in beauty that the most lavish expenditure will 

 fail to produce. And it is good taste which accomplishes 

 this result, not money. 



