an ideal social life is one in which people can be together when they wish to be together, and alone when they wish to be alone. the better the transportation facilities, the more nearly of attainment is such a condition. the roadtowners in all thickly-populated sections will be within commuting distance of nearby cities and the attractions of these centers will be open to them. but such social life, even for those who live in the city, is sadly deficient. city people have theaters, libraries, churches and crowds, but they do not have neighbors with common interests. the roadtowners who get the food at the same kitchen, and hear the same band play, and sell their products co?peratively, and promenade on the same endless roof garden, and send their children to the same instructors, are going to get124 acquainted if they so desire. the entire roadtown will be in connection by the loud speaking telephone, and folks can call on each other on a stormy night without so much as getting out of their comfortable rockers, but, for that matter, while there will be more to keep a roadtowner at home, there will be less to keep him from going away from home when he wants to. if anyone is lonesome in roadtown, it is simply because he has no friends, and if he has no friends, it can scarcely be anyone’s fault but his own.
but the social life of roadtown will not be limited to city trips and neighborly calls. the roadtown will have co?perative amusement centers, just as it will have co?perative kitchens and stores. at spots where the roadtown crosses streams or passes the mountains or the sea shore and at certain distances apart, amusement parks will be located. here will be the athletic grounds, swimming pools, gymnasiums and the means of entertainment common and uncommon to like resorts. at more frequent intervals in the roadtown, and so distributed as to give picturesque variety to the125 house line will be museums, art galleries, theaters, lecture halls and dance halls. all such features that are supported by the corporation must, of course, be open to all residents. organizations that are not for the benefit of the majority of the inhabitants will be supported by their adherents. the halls of the association will be open to all meetings, religious or otherwise, where nonconflicting dates can be arranged.
the roadtown will offer opportunity for the revival of athletics upon a scale unheard of since the olympian games of ancient greece.
roadtown athletics.
the roadtown community, because of the spirit of co?peration and mutuality which will pervade all phases of life, will extend into mature years the institutional patriotism which forms such a large part of modern school and college life. under such conditions we may expect to see developed a grand series of meets in all manner of competitive arts and sports. the winners of the local meets or exhibitions126 will again compete at the grand athletic and art centers.
the roadtown will bring the opportunity to indulge in the sports and recreations much nearer the life of the whole people than in the present civilization.
there is no reason why every boy, big and little, should not attend the ball games and athletic meets on the home field as well as the grand finale in which his team participates.
transportation will cost him nothing, the ball ground will be owned by the community and the hours of roadtown labor will be set by the will of the worker and not by the greed of the capitalist’s purse.
education for old as well as young.
roadtown education will apply to all ages of both sexes. the whole living scheme of roadtown will be a vast school. the modern school, a place where we send our children to be herded in immense droves under the care of girls who use the teaching profession as a makeshift until an opportunity of marriage arrives, is far from perfection as a means of127 child development. the disciplinarian system of education which crushes out individuality and molds all children in the industrial-political virtue of being bossed, is likely to vanish as a population is freed from economic slavery.
roadtown will provide instruction for those who wish to learn and citizenship prizes and privileges will go to the educated, and compulsory education and graded schools in time will have no excuse for existence. these are striking statements and i am simply calling attention to the change that i believe will come about naturally and unresisted.
the roadtown will have to pay county taxes, but on account of its 1,000 population to the mile will influence the location of these schools in roadtown. at first the use of the present public school methods must necessarily be employed; gradually as the roadtown gains influence and better teachers are secured the educational system can be adapted more closely to roadtown life.
in the first place, the roadtown home will be an enlightened one. the roadtown library will be a book store house, not a reading-room.128 if the citizen wants a book or magazine he telephones the library and in a few minutes the book is delivered to him by mechanical carrier. the kind of free library we have to-day requires ten cents car fare and much time to get a book.
there will be a library of telegraphone records, which do not have to be duplicated for every household, but one set at a central office will suffice, where one girl can run a complicated programme of music and lectures for many homes.
eyes to be used less and ears more.
excessive reading is hard on the eyes and it lacks much of the efficiency that auditory methods have of conveying ideas. our education has been entirely too much from the printed page and too little from the use of the ear. the roadtown dictograph and telegraphone will change all this. the child who has not yet learned the letters can be taught to speak german and told stories of nature and history. and in all this education the parent will learn along with the child and become129 fascinated by such a wonderful process. the significance of this telegraphone and dictograph will never be appreciated until we have it in operation. the telegraphone is not a cheap instrument to build, but when operated on a large scale will be extremely economical for each family. from a programme announced in advance a choice may be had from a hundred pieces kept playing at once. more than one wire can lead to each house if desired. the family may be in the drawing-room, listening to grand opera or a lecture on philosophy, and jimmy may be upstairs, tucked in bed with ear muffs clapped over his curls, being put to sleep by sinbad the sailor or the twenty-third psalm, according to his mother’s idea of child psychology.
outside of the visual and auditory library in the home, the second great new feature in roadtown education will be the home work of the child’s parents. in work room and garden the child will learn what the world is for. about the most pitiable thing imaginable is a child whose parents do not believe in child labor. i do not mean the killing of children in130 mines and mills, but the child labor such as you see on the wholesome farm, where the child does his part along with the rest of the family.
the present system of keeping a child from all work until his body and mind are formed and then plunging him into industrial life is only exceeded in folly and cruelty by the child slavery system commonly known as “child labor.” “all work and no play makes jack a dull boy,” but all school and play and no work makes jack a jackass.
the roadtown child will learn his parent’s occupation, and his uncle’s and aunt’s occupation, and his neighbor’s occupation, and will have more ability to take care of himself when he is ten years old than the present city-bred college man of twenty.
but the community as a whole has some claim on the child’s life and the child’s future as well as the parents—a fact that all intelligent parents will recognize. for this reason instruction outside the family is desirable and will be arranged by the roadtown public school system.
the occupation of housekeeping having131 been eliminated, the kindergarten teaching force of roadtown will be composed of women of mature minds, many of whom will have borne children and are therefore equipped with actual experience in caring for them.
with the entire population to select from more real or natural-born teachers will be found than under the present régime, where most married women are limited in occupation to family food manufacturer and household drudge.
mothers for public school teachers.
to these instructors the children will go at hours as arranged for. one woman will take little tots into her home to amuse and care for them while their mothers are away or at work. another will instruct the children in mathematics. the man skilled in botany will instruct groups of children in his garden, and the chemist and mineralogist in their laboratories. instead of grade schools we will have child universities; instead of college degrees there will be citizenship examinations, with rewards of positions of trust in roadtown management.132 instead of college young folks and old fogy old folks there will be an industrial university and universal athletics and sports. the roadtown school system will be the most versatile imaginable. it will develop the greatest geniuses the world has ever known and save the most money. pounding literature into the head of a natural born mechanic is both economic and mental waste. the universal query in roadtown will not be what does he know, but what can he do.
physical education will be fully as much a matter of public concern in roadtown as mental education. it ought to be, for disease is contagious, ignorance is not. the roadtown child will play in the open country like farm boys. he will be brown and sturdy and fall out of trees and go swimming in the creek, but he will not be a wild animal, or a pet to be taken out and aired by the nurse—distinguishable from the poodle only by the absence of the chain. 133
lowest death rate in history.
the roadtown death rate will be the lowest in the history of the world. roadtown will give the freedom to choose from the work and play of city and country, the exercise and rest, which is necessary to the development of a good physique. the roadtowner will eat pure food, drink pure water, breathe pure air. his bedding and clothes will be aired and when necessary fumigated. his laundry will be disinfected. his house will be made germ proof. the result will be that consumption and typhoid and pneumonia will disappear with the first generation. a few diseases which are transmitted by contact and the occasional cripples that are born so will persist, but sickness and premature death in roadtown will be so rare as to cause wonder. dissipation and the use of patent medicines and narcotic drugs cannot be prevented, but with co-operative industrial organization and no one profiting by the trade, these and other health-destroying fakes will have far less chance to grow or even survive.
134 the public utilities of roadtown will include hospitals and nurseries. public sanitary officers will supervise and consult with residents. private physicians will be available if there be any demand for them, and when a doctor is wanted he will be able to come quickly. for the liniment and bandage for a cut thumb, a speedier service than the monorail will be available, for the telephone and the mechanical carrier will be brought into play. no one in roadtown can live more than two or three minutes from the drug store.
with all the co?perative utilities and mechanical perfections that roadtown offers there is a very natural tendency to associate the essentials of home life with certain forms and locations of houses that our experience connects with the best home life we have known rather than to get down to the real causes and principles involved.
much of our present sense of house architecture is indeed destined to be quite lost, for the roadtowner enters his home from above or below, and the pleasurable emotions aroused by the view of one’s cottage as he comes135 up the walk must be attached to other sensations. but home is a place for companionship as distinct from the swirl of business and the jostle of the crowds; nor is all companionship necessarily human. a lawn to keep and some chickens and garden to care for are far closer to the essence of home than the gable on one’s cottage.
in the first place the roadtown will be freer from noise than either city or village. there will be no lumbering vehicles and no tramp of either horse or man upon unshielded pavement. all stairs, roof promenade, hallway and monorail platform will be matted; while the noiselessness of the transportation service is one of the fundamental conceptions of roadtown. there is no clanking furnace in the roadtown dwelling. there is no common dumb-waiter through which one receives unwelcome knowledge of his neighbor’s business. that the sound will not enter from the roof above or the open windows of one’s neighbor’s was explained in a previous chapter. to be spied upon by one’s neighbors is even more objectionable than to be overheard. in this respect136 roadtown is superior to any type of dwelling yet devised, for in all other forms of residence the windows of the house look out upon the street. the roadtown passersby are above and below and no one may look into the windows unless he is in a private garden. this unique arrangement gives the roadtown home a sense of privacy and a freedom in the use of light and air now known only upon isolated farms.
the actual nearness of strangers to the roadtown homes is of no concern, since one has no knowledge of their presence. that we meet them upon the roof promenade or at the monorail station is certainly not an objection.
the roadtown inhabitants rent of the community, not of a private individual. such a lease will be permanent as long as the lessee pays the rent and does not offend the rules of the commonwealth. sales for taxes and arrest for the breaking of the civil law are present limitations to individual liberty, from which the principles of roadtown departs not one iota, but simply extends it in keeping with the137 greater number of common projects in which the community is interested.
a home in the truest sense.
the only further sense that attaches to the idea of home is as a protection from the poverty of old age. a plan whereby the roadtown corporation will give permanent rent to a person who has paid a sufficient sum into the corporation treasury may be developed co-operatively by the tenants. but a place to live in is only half insurance against poverty of old age, and we can hardly doubt that a community trained in co?peration, as the roadtown community will be trained, will not only ultimately insure its aged inhabitants’ rent but a sufficient sum to keep them in decent comfort. the first generation will never quite forget the egoistic pleasure that is derived from our present forms of deeds for houses and lands, but the sentiment of home ownership as we now know it will die with the generation.
the individual pleasure of house construction will be lost in roadtown, just as we have already lost the pleasure of vehicle construction.138 the man who argues that people will not live in roadtown because they cannot build and own their own homes is a lineal descendant of the man who said they would not ride on railroads for similar reasons. the roadtown inhabitant will simply transfer his sentiments and put his individuality into other arts. the builder of a modern private railroad car furnishes trucks and couplings which will enable him to be carried by engines and over rails used in common.
carriages, railroads, automobiles, in their time, were at first opposed by the artists of the day.
the roadtown now looks like a chinese wall—when it is realized it will look like a roadtown, and roadtown will mean comfort, contentment and prosperity, and new sentiment and new art will replace the old.
