the economies of a continuous house under one roof and of railroad and steam shovel, rather than hand and dump cart methods, are sufficient to make the line construction far more economical than any method now in vogue, but even they are greatly exceeded by the additional saving involved in the installation and operation of the pipes and wires of the roadtown.
witness the present situation. the farmer’s house is alone in the middle of his farm. for every pipe, wire or rail utility with which he is supplied, he must have a plant of his own. if he wishes steam heat, he must put in a boiler; if he wishes electric lights, an engine and dynamo.
in practice the farmer, with the occasional60 exception of the rural telephone, is limited to the products of civilization that can be hauled home in a wagon.
the city man is a little better off. city dwellers are close together, close enough that one electric, gas or steam producing plant will do for many hundreds or thousands of families, but by the present plan which enables them to have these improvements, they pay not only the expense of periodic tearing up of the pavements and the house foundation, but a far greater price in the loss of air, sunlight and privacy.
the roadtown has these god-given utilities of country air and light on two sides of the house. upon the other two sides it has blank walls, but the examination of the average isolated residence will show that there is little to be gained in light or air by the two extra sides and much to be lost in privacy. upon the two remaining sides, i. e., the top and bottom, the roadtown house has its sidewalk on the roof and its transportation by rails, pipes and wires that are now in the city streets, it has on a far better and economical plan in61 the basement, now used principally to store old trunks, rubbish and coal.
picture the installation of a new pipe line through a paved street. the expense and the unsightliness, the danger to human life—and this has nothing to do with getting the pipes into a private house.
now suppose you are a resident on that line and conclude a couple of months later to install the utility in your home. again the pavement is torn up, a gang of laborers spend several days on the job, and you as consumer will pay the bill either in a lump or as stiff rates on the utility sold. the result of this clumsy system has been that pipe and wire utilities in the city are limited to those people who use them to a sufficient extent to stand this criminal waste and expense.
moreover, in all large cities the matter of installing pipe or wire conveyed utilities is also a question of reckoning with franchise-selling politicians and private monopolists who generally work “hand in hand.”
compare these conditions, mechanical and political, with the roadtown where all pipes62 and wires will be bracketed in a runway beneath the floor of a machine-made house on land at farm prices. to put in a new pipe conveyed utility will cost the price of the twenty-one feet of main and a branch pipe leading to the apartment above through suitable openings made when the building is constructed. the expense will be about equal to that of maintaining the red lanterns which are now placed about the torn up city streets.
as a result of these differences there will be added to the roadtown home—and i mean to the home of the man of average means—a number of utilities now available only to the rich, or not available at all.
beginning with the following paragraph i will enumerate some of the inventions that will be available in the roadtown home. i may include in this list some inventions which, while demonstrated on a small scale, may for some reason not now discernible, develop an objection or difficulty in its use. but for every such a one that i may here include, there will be several others that science has already or will yet devise and which can be63 installed in roadtown as soon as perfected and demonstrated with no more expense than there would be if it were put in when the houses were built. this feature alone is a tremendous argument in favor of the roadtown, for every previous form of house construction once finished is set in its equipment and soon gets behind the age and must be torn down to make room for the new. at this time considerable humorous comment is being made in the newspapers over the tearing down of a twenty-two story building in wall street to make room for a forty story one. the old one is only thirteen years old. the roadtown will always be “modern,” and increase in efficiency as it increases in length while the separate building is a complete unit with its height and utilities stationary.
water.
the water systems of great cities are enormously expensive, as it is usually necessary to build great conduits dozens and even as much as one hundred and fifty miles long. the trouble with such cities is that a very large64 population must be supplied with water from a very limited area. the roadtown with a population of about 1,000 to the mile will be able to get its water supply from suitable sources all along the way. the length of line to be supplied from one public station will not be great, but the entire main may be opened so that one station can relieve another in case of excessive use of water at any given point.
sewerage.
the sewage system of the roadtown will, like the water system, be built in comparatively small units, and will require none of the large and expensive sewers seen in city systems. wherever the roadtown crosses a natural valley in the land the sewage can be led off to a reasonable distance from the house line in pipes and used in irrigating non-food crops. the income to be derived from the use of this sewage for fertilization and irrigation will be a considerable source of profit and wholly without the expense attached to city sewage disposal works because of distance from the65 land and the fact that the point of the city sewer outlet is almost always below the level of land available for such uses.
heating.
the roadtown heating system will be of hot water circulated by pumps. the heating plants will be located every two or three miles, which, according to the engineers’ figures will be more economical than to have them either at greater or less distance. the temperature will be regulated to suit each and every tenant by the use of the thermostat with a push button regulator in each room of every apartment. this simple, but marvelously useful device, is now in general use in thousands of first class hotels.
refrigeration.
the refrigerating system of roadtown which will be required for food and drinking water purposes could be turned into the radiators and a circulation of cooled water or brine pumped through the houses. i do not say that such house cooling will be established, for the66 roadtown house, through which the breeze will have a full sweep, and in which the electrical fans will be plentiful, will have little need for a system of house cooling, but if the people in hot countries wish it and care to pay for it, eventually they can have it.
drinking water.
the next utility for the roadtown house will be that of pure, cool distilled water for drinking purposes, cooled only to a healthful temperature. because of the small expense for piping, this separation of the system of drinking water from that used for bathing and for spraying the lawn will mean that no method known to science for purifying the former need be spared.
in present city life the peddling of so-called “spring water” in bottles, is a farcical affair, which would have about as much chance to survive in roadtown as an independent oil producer shipping oil in barrels would have in competing with the trust’s tank cars and pipe lines. if the roadtown is piped for refrigeration, cooling will be very simple. if67 this is not done the coolers may be placed in the basement and filled with ice manufactured at the central refrigeration plant and distributed by train. in either case, the efficiency will be great as compared with any present system.
bath and toilet.
it goes without saying that every home in roadtown will be provided with good bath and toilet facilities. because of the fact that the house is of cement and has no lath and plaster ceiling to get soaked, shower baths will probably be much in vogue in roadtown. if at any time it proves desirable to give up the space for the purpose there can be shower baths installed in every sleeping-room at a cost of only a few dollars for each. the soap for bath and wash basin will probably be liquid, and while there will not be enough used to make it worth while to pipe it, it can be supplied ten gallons at a time by a man who will make the rounds and fill the reservoirs at each home. this is comparatively a small matter and i merely mention it to show the extent to68 which the natural co?peration of line house building will gradually lead.
gas.
for light cooking and local heating in the roadtown home, to such extent as is desirable, gas will be used.
vacuum.
during the last few years a great vacuum sweeper craze has swept the country. we are literally deluged with every type of apparatus, from systems for installation in hotels and office buildings, or wagon outfits that chase about the street and run a hose into the parlor window, to the little pop gun arrangement that is worked by hand. the ease of adaptability of the best features of vacuum cleaning systems to roadtown is too apparent to need comment further than to say that a small pipe, with an opening at each home, and a suction fan every half mile, will be sufficient to give the best possible results.
a further use of this vacuum may be made in connection with automatic movement of69 windows, doors, etc. compressed air is now frequently used for this purpose as in elevator doors in office buildings. vacuum will, of course, work equally well.
disinfecting gas.
a pipe dream of roadtown that is absolutely practical, cheap and a crying need, will be gas for disinfection.
electric light.
electricity for lighting will, of course, be available in roadtown at a fraction of the present cost.
electric power.
electricity will be used for fans, vibrators for massage, shoeshining, and other household devices that may demand it as time rolls on. besides this there will be an industrial use for power which i will discuss in a later chapter.[a]
[a] until some cheaper source of power is developed electric heating will remain an expensive luxury.
telephones.
70 electric buttons and signals and bells can be used for the “top” and “bottom” doors of the house, signaling to central stations when preferable to the telephone. the telephone, the cheapest of the pipe and wire group of civilizing agents, common though it is, has not yet come into universal use. in new york city alone there are over three million people who have no telephones and in the united states there are 60,000,000 deprived of that great necessity. in roadtown the cost of installing telephones will be practically the cost of the instruments, switch-boards and twenty-one feet of wire. if the automatic system is used, which is likely, in local service between a public service center and the houses they wait upon, the cost will be but those of interest on installation and cost of repairs. a telephone expert has estimated that the system complete would be less than ten dollars per family, and that the expense of operation or telephone rent less than one dollar a year, net, per family, or eight cents per month. 71
dictograph.
at the present date there is in practical operation a loud speaking telephone called the dictograph. if this modern invention is installed in the roadtown home, it will be possible by simply pressing a button to talk over the telephone while sitting in a chair or lying in bed. this instrument has been most successfully utilized in conveying music, which, if received through a horn can scarcely be told from the first-hand product. this wonderful invention, as many other similar ones that now exist, cannot be put into practical use on a large and systematic scale, because of the present city construction, the conduit and other trusts.
since the preceding paragraph was written, m. k. turner, the inventor and proprietor of the dictograph, has donated the use of all of his wonderful patents to the roadtown, and in addition has offered to design an entire system of loud speaking telephones especially adapted to roadtown use, because of the great72 uplifting influence he recognizes in its principles when put into practice.
this donation, together with the house pouring scheme of mr. edison and the boyes monorail, gives to roadtown fundamental patents on house building, transportation and intelligence transmission—the three great essentials of a new civilization.
telegraphone.
the telegraphone, or recording telephone, is also a most wonderful invention. the telegraphone records any sound sent over a telephone by means of magnetic changes in a disc or wire. these steel disc records or wire records can then be reproduced any number of times with no loss of distinctness. as the dictograph may be used to give a sermon, lecture or piece of music to any number of people at one time, so the telegraphone may be used to record and repeat it any number of times.
i could add other inventions to the list, but will not, for these already given, though all practical existing devices, will be so wonderful73 in application that i will not extend the list to any less thoroughly proven inventions, lest the reader who can but judge from the viewpoint of the present imperfect city civilization, confuse the roadtown which is the plan grouping of proven inventions with the dreams of novelists who revel in inventions yet to be.
