It is a genuinely democratic power which maintains them unaltered, or imposes its own limits on any modification of them which may be made. ‡ The Italian socialist, Giovanni Rossi, who attempted in 1890 to found a socialistic colony in Brazil (an attempt which completely failed), attributes his failure largely to the tenacity with which his followers clung to family life. “If I had the power,” he writes, “to banish the greatest afflictions of this word, plagues, wars, famines, etc. etc., I would renounce it, if instead I could suppress the family.” The effects, however, of the natural similarities of men’s family lives are not to be found only in the domain of laws and government. They confront us even more openly in the material surroundings of our existence, especially in the structure of the dwellings of all classes except the lowest. The detached cottage as well as the large mansion, the row of cottages each with its separate door, and the tenement of three rooms, are in one respect all alike. They are constructed and arranged in accordance with those propensities which keep the members of the family group united, and each family group separate from all others. Nor do matters end here; {234} for if the propensities which result in family life affect the structure of the dwelling, other tastes or propensities equally spontaneous determine what commodities shall be put in it. It is true that these tastes are different in different social classes; it is true also that they have not, so far as their details are concerned, as deep a root in our nature as the propensities which give its character to the family. They are stimulated, sustained, and modified by constant suggestions from without, by circumstances, and by tastes which, within limits, vary greatly; but they are all alike in this, that when they become efficient, or, in other words, take definite shape as a want, the want has become a part of the man who feels it, and is for the time as spontaneous as are the family instincts themselves. The influence, however, of men’s spontaneous wants is not confined to the house and household appliances, but extends itself over the whole domain of economic products. And here we are brought back again to another portion of the ground which we have already traversed. We are brought back to the domain of economic production; but brought back with eyes opened to a new order of facts.