204 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



June, 1907 



Monthly Comment 



|HE purchaser of rural property — property 

 so far removed from the city as to scarce 

 justify the clesignation "suburban" — has 

 many difficulties to contend with, not a few 

 of which are completely unanticipated. 

 The essentially rural characteristics of the 

 natives of the soil present, to the new- 

 comer from the city, strange and unusual aspects of human 

 character. This is particularly the case if the new purchase 

 includes buildings of any sort, and the situation becomes 

 acute if the former owner continues to reside in the near 

 vicinity of his old home. As likely as not that precious 

 heirloom has been disposed of at an exorbitant figure, at a 

 price, at least, that represents vastly more than the actual 

 value to the seller; else why should he sell? Having sold, 

 and the purchaser having paid, the latter, somewhat natural- 

 ly, expects to obtain undisputed and exclusive possession of 

 the property. As likely as not, however, the person who has 

 sold, fails to realize that the place is no longer his, and 

 that he must not only remove instantly and completely every- 

 thing that belongs to him, but that he is expected to put in 

 no claims whatsoever for anything that he may have left 

 behind him. The newcomer has packed all his goods and 

 chattels in moving vans or upon railroad cars, and by the 

 time they have reached his new home the old one may be 

 filled with the belongings of a new tenant. He knows, as 

 a matter of fact, that he must bring everything he has, and 

 that he certainly cannot make continuous trips to the old 

 place for articles that may have been purposely left behind 

 or which may have been carelessly forgotten. 



The point of view of the seller, however, may be very 

 different. Accustomed for years to live among people with 

 whom a certain amount of rude accommodation for each 

 other is universal, he does not realize any necessity for swift 

 action. Being a countryman, any idea of swiftness in motion 

 is opposed to his natural state of being. His thought and his 

 movement are actuated by a spirit of torpidity that is highly 

 exasperating to those who realize that life is short and that 

 there are many things to do. The newcomer will convey 

 his goods in a huge and lofty conveyance, almost top-hea\ y 

 in its dimensions and in weight of contents. The native 

 will move deliberately in the smallest available wagon and 

 with the minimum of help. He will not do this with the 

 deliberate intention of creating annoyance, but simply be- 

 cause he knows no other way. His moving will be a matter, 

 not of days, but of weeks and even months. If there is an 

 apparently \'acant room in the house he has sold he will 

 store goods in it until he can get some accommodating soul 

 to help take it away. His outbuildings will be filled with 

 truck, to which he will return again and again for a bit of 

 tin, or a bar of iron or something else which he needs in the 

 new house, and which he knows can be obtained from the 

 old by simply picking it up. 



The newcomer is helpless before these doings. It is a 

 line of action quite unthought of. He knows the seller means 

 no harm, he knows the odds and ends taken out from time 

 to time are articles of no value, but he also thinks it should 

 not be done, and that, having purchased the place, he should 

 be left in undisputed possession of it. The regrettable part 

 of the whole situation is that neither party understands the 

 point of view of the other. The newcomer may realize that 

 no harm is intended, but the native could not, by any possi- 

 bility, be brought to see the other's point of view. And 

 yet there are people who do not understand why the new- 



comers into the country do not always get along as well with 

 the old timers as they should. They do not understand the 

 friction that so often arises between the city man and the 

 country man. It is simply a failure on all hands to under- 

 stand human nature. It is a condition that is surely agree- 

 able to no one, and yet there must be a greater leavening 

 of the rural regions by the city folk before this state of 

 affairs can be really bettered. 



A HIGHLY significant factor in the erection of concrete 

 buildings, which are rapidly attaining a widespread popu- 

 larity, is the realization that stability and security in such 

 structures cannot be obtained without the exercise of unusual 

 care and skill on the part of the workmen. In buildings of 

 the old type — of brick and iron and wood, the responsibility 

 for safety rested almost wholly upon the architect or the 

 engineer who designed them and estimated, with more or less 

 careful precision, the strains, pressures and other forces the 

 structure must sustain and resist in order to remain upright. 

 With this, of course, goes an inspection during the process 

 of erection, a task generally performed with no great dif- 

 ficulty, although, it is true, it is often shirked and often dis- 

 honestly done. But the concrete construction calls for es- 

 pecial skill and care in applying the concrete, and builders in 

 this material have awakened to the fact that it can only 

 be properly done by workmen of a high grade and with 

 most rigid inspection in every part of the work by the fore- 

 men and overseers. While this type of building is but in 

 its infancy, it has already been realized that special care 

 must be taken or it will fail to yield compensating advan- 

 tages in such essential matters as economy and safety. 



The many serious railroad accidents of the past winter 

 have brought squarely before the whole people the question 

 of safety in railroad travel. The history of railroading in 

 America has been blurred by many an unnecessary and avoid- 

 able accident, but the tragedies of the past year have been 

 so numerous and so seemingly needless, that the attention of 

 the whole people has been concentrated on this subject. Just 

 how far the question of great speed is a factor in these acci- 

 dents only an expert railroad man can determine, but it is 

 significant that this aspect of the matter has been widely 

 discussed, and even some very fast trains withdrawn in def- 

 erence to recent agitation. Even among the uneducated 

 classes in Europe the rapidity of American railroad trains is 

 put down as explaining the awful slaughter of human life by 

 this means — a reflection that is supposedly might'ly comfort- 

 ing to those who jog through the sequestered regions of 

 the Continent on the slow-going "omnibus." The reasoning 

 is hardly so acceptable to the commuter who finds his accus- 

 tomed express taken off and his attention invited to the sur- 

 roundings of every little station on his line. But that rapid 

 railroad travel — unduly rapid travel — is dangerous seems 

 now to be generally admitted, a point of value, since, if 

 people become afraid to ride on the railroads, steps must 

 be taken, and taken at once, to better existing conditions. 

 The removal of the fastest trains will hardly accomplish the 

 desired result, and may, indeed, react disastrously, as being 

 a confession of weakness and inability. But in a broader 

 way it is a gain for many people to realize that the chief 

 object of life is not to rush madly from point to point, 

 caring only when one leaves one's place of departure and 

 when one arrives at one's destination. There is always 

 something between the beginning and the end, and in travel 

 this is often of the utmost interest. It is hardly possible that 

 we will become a slow-traveling nation. 



