the only effective way to fight the trusts is to cease to patronize them and the only way to cease to patronize them is to move into an environment which is more economically efficient.
every labor saving invention in the history of man has thrown someone out of work. the grain binders were broken and burned by the old fashioned harvest hands. the hand type-setters opposed the introduction of the linotype. but the economic invention came in spite of this opposition. the roadtown is a new arrangement of civilization, a new plan for all commerce and all city building; it will do for the entire programme of transportation what the linotype did for the type setting industry. the entire industrial life of the world will desert the present economic system just as164 the farmers deserted the old scythes and flails. as a result a large proportion of the people who now work with the crude systems will be thrown out of employment. who are these people? they are teamsters and expressmen, and clerks, messengers, and bookkeepers, and others too numerous to mention, but these people are merely the servants of private corporations. and the corporations own the warehouses, wholesale and retail stores, and the little shops, and street cars, and cabs, and conduits, and the gas and electricity, and hundreds of other things. these, corporation or trust owners, and their political henchmen who live on the fat of the land and who by employing a lot of servants distribute our goods and intelligence to us by a crude, wasteful, dishonest, and disorganized system, will also eventually lose their jobs. the men who drive the wagons will learn to raise vegetables, and the girls behind the hat counters will learn to make hats. but their bosses with appetites whetted to luxury will be out of a job “for fair” for with the exception of the mines and foreign commerce, the roadtown will leave them no165 chance to graft off the producer and consumer by the aid of a privately owned and barbarously inefficient mechanism of distribution and house construction.
verily, there will be weeping and wailing, and soft hands blistered, and fair names of the privileged families without prestige in the world, for the trusts will have lost their jobs, and there will be but one trust, and that will be owned by the people.
shall we miss them?
the roadtown is remarkable for the new things that it will add to civilization, but it is even more remarkable for the things that will be conspicuous for their absence. in the roadtown there will be no streets, no street cars and no “subway air”; no kitchens, no coal bins, no back yards or back alleys full of crime and tin cans; no brooms, no feather dusters, no wash day; no clothes line, no beating the carpet or shaking the rug out the window; there will be no clothes brushes, no pressing clothes by hand, no lugging the beds out to air them; the roadtown home will have no dish washing, no166 cooks, no maids, no janitors, no furnace, no ashes, no dust, no noise, no kindling to split nor buy for five cents a bundle; there will be no moving vans, no coal wagons, no ice wagons, no garbage carts, no ash carts, no milk wagons, and no delivery wagons; no horses except for pleasure drives and no need for a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals; in roadtown there will be no fire engines, no cabs nor taxi-cabs, no mixing of pedestrians and vehicles, no street car blockades, no grade crossings and no “death avenues”; there will be no bargain rushes, no small shops, no middleman’s profits, no bill boards, no advertising of useless and harmful articles, no waste of money for little bottles and cans and bags, no adulterated food, no wilted vegetables, no unsanitary “loose” milk, no systems of cesspools and wells to spread typhoid and other disease germs; for the roadtown farmer there will be no hitching the horse to go to church nor driving to town to get the mail, no kerosene lamps, no slipshod ungraded country school, no lightning rod peddlers and no book agents; in roadtown there will be no need for umbrellas,167 rubbers nor overcoats in the daily routine of business—such protection from the weather being only required by the keepers of live stock and upon occasional visits to the old style city; there will be no snow to shovel, no slipping of horses or humans on icy streets, no street cleaners, no water wagons, no swill tubs, no rain barrels, no manure carts, no dumb-waiters to pull up, no popping and sizzling steam radiators (hot water heating instead); no beds to make, no expensive strings of funeral carriages, no fire escapes, no waiting in rain or snow to catch a car, no canned goods, no delicatessen diet; in the roadtown there will be no unemployed problem and no men out of a job except those who are too lazy to work, and yet there will be many changes in occupation, for the roadtown will have no news boys, no messenger boys, no mail carriers, no traffic policemen, no teamsters, no cabbies, no street car conductors, no expressmen, no delivery boys, no peddlers, no push cart men, no waiters to tip, no insurance agents; no organ grinders, no rag pickers nor old clothes men, no street fakirs nor sandwich men; no beggars, no liveried168 flunkies; no sweat shops, no child labor, no wage slavery, no rent on fictitious land values, and no trusts to gobble up the fruits of labor.
the history of civilization shows that mechanics control economics, that economics control morality, and that the morality of the time is expressed through the law; and conversely law does not control morality nor morality economics nor economics mechanics. mechanics is the foundation of all that is good and bad in civilization, law the paint on the finished structure. the painters who are constantly retouching the exterior get credit for a good deal of change but their work is of little real moment compared with the changing of the fundamental structure.
the roadtown religion.
a tremendous step toward the perfection of civilization will be made when the world recognizes the two following principles:
(1) that cities should be built in long continuous lines.
(2) that housing, as a framework, and scientific transportation, as a compact mechanism169 to fit therein, should be developed as a single enterprise.
the roadtown will tend to perfect transportation as applied to people, commodities and intelligence. highly perfected transportation means opportunity to get together or to get apart. it means socialism for the socialist, together with all the advantages of individualism, and individualism for the individualist, together with all the advantages of co?peration.
the mission of the roadtown is to assist in the development of the physical, mental and moral qualities of mankind through the gradual elimination of all physical, mental and moral waste, thus creating an environment where selfishness and inequality of opportunity will gradually disappear and where man will finally enjoy all the fruits of his labor.
the above expresses the principles of the roadtown religion—a faith which holds that the kingdom of god can be realized on this earth and points a practical way by which such realization may be attained.
if you accept these principles and can add170 them to the faith of your present religion you are indeed a roadtowner.
the roadtown is as humanitarian and revolutionary in its principles as is single tax or socialism and like these is destined to become a great social movement enlisting the minds and hearts of those who have developed the social conscience—who believe in it and are willing to work for a civilization wherein the equitable distribution of wealth may be realized. but these other movements depend for their results largely upon the conversion of the majority of the population to their creeds. roadtown will be a great social “movement” but it will be more than a movement—it will be a realization and that speedily. in fact the object of the author in painfully preparing this little volume (for i am a round peg in a square hole at book writing) is to lay the roadtown plan before the public to a degree that will stimulate the active interest of enough people to accomplish through their co?peration the financing, and building the first section of roadtown. the first section built, no human power can stop the roadtown revolution.
171 so if you find in the spirit of roadtown a response to the feeling within your own soul write to the author that you may be counted upon as a roadtowner to believe and to perform.
if you do not understand the mechanics of roadtown, write. there are engineers who do and who can explain this to you. if you are an architect or an engineer, an inventor or an agriculturist with a criticism or practical idea that will make roadtown better, write. if you live in a locality suitable for the construction of a roadtown line, write. if you know of any one else who can help the cause write to them to write.
whether you be preacher, carpenter or publicist; bookkeeper, broker or blacksmith, if you wish to play a part in founding the new civilization, talk, preach, speak, write or publish the roadtown gospel. send the book to one friend and advise the rest to buy it. write an article on the subject and get your editor friend to publish it.
if you fear that the crookedness of finance that has blackened many a fair gift to humanity172 may smirch this latest boon—make it your business to investigate fully; consult with men of wide experience and unquestionable honor who are well posted on this particular subject who may help you to establish in your mind the true nature and phenomenal significance of this movement. and above all if you are but a man among men toiling at your allotted task and taking the stinted portion which the “system” allows you, write, that your name may be filed on the waiting list as one of those to whom the occupancy of a roadtown house may be offered as soon as the cement of the first section has hardened and the civilizing currents have been turned into the arteries of “a new heaven and a new earth” here on this god plowed and human harrowed planet in this the early years of the twentieth century.
