Certain practical difficulties have also been found. In all experiments in pure or partial co-operative housekeeping it has been found impossible to deliver cooked food hot and invariable in quality at the same hour to all the members of the association. In one city a company was organized as a business enterprise to furnish hot lunches to business men at their offices and also to supply family tables. The prices charged were double those of ordinary table-board, but the expenses were very heavy, no dividends were ever declared, and the object was ultimately changed to that of supplying clubs and private entertainments. That clock-like regularity in the serving of meals, demanded alike by health and business hours, is impossible, unless co-operation is universal, where families in the association reside from five to twenty blocks apart. But the most insuperable objection to co-operative housekeeping as a remedy for the troubles with servants is the fact that the majority of persons do not wish it. The proposition suggests to many the homely adage of curing the disease by killing the patient. When its friends say in its favor, “Every time an apartment house is built having one common dining-room and one kitchen a blow is aimed at the isolated home,” the great majority of Americans rise up in protest. The semi-co-operative system of living is apparently rendered necessary in New York City by reason of the enormous value of land, but wherever the detached house having light on four sides is possible, as it is everywhere else, the American home-lover will rally to its support. Unless the desire for co-operative housekeeping and co-operative living becomes more general than it is at present, some other means of relief must be sought. Much, however, of the so-called co-operative housekeeping is in reality co-operative boarding. This is true of “The Roby” experiment tried successfully for a time at Decatur, Illinois.[290] Fifty-four of the leading persons in the city formed a club, adopted a constitution and bylaws, elected officers, and found that through this organization they could “live off the fat of the land for $2.75 per week.” The plan in its essence is an old one; it has been followed for years by college students in institutions that do not provide dormitories. In many college towns it is rendered almost necessary by virtue of the residence there of many persons owning houses who wish to take lodgers but not boarders and of many women without capital who wish to act as housekeepers. But probably few college students consider it an ideal way of living, it is tolerable only at a time of life when new experiences are always welcome, and few have ever been known to continue it beyond college days.