“No; the whole house would have steam heat, thus making a valuable saving of space as well, by doing away with the stove and place for fuel. The halls of the model tenements now are heated by steam. I estimate that the trifle extra which would be added to the price of the room and the food would be no more than, probably not so much as, what would be spent for food and fuel in the old way; for the poor that I have known are the most extravagant people living. They buy a poor quality of food at high rates, and through bad cooking and irregularity of living waste and spoil much that they have. “Besides, I have had another thing in mind,—that is, the mothers who go out to work by the day and have to let their children come home from school to pick up any kind of cold dinner that they find, and who, so far as my experience goes, invariably spend every cent they get upon candy and innutritious cakes bought at the bakery.” “This is all a charming theory, Miss Brewster,” said a pale-faced lady with auburn hair, who had hitherto remained silent; “but I am afraid that until you have a more enlightened community to deal with it won’t work. The conservatism, perhaps one might call it the stupidity, of the lower classes is something we are fighting against all the time. Every innovation has to be introduced with great caution in order not to offend them. Strange as it may seem, these people who come from lands where they have been down-trodden, with no privileges of any sort, stickle more for their rights and independence, and are far less willing to yield to restrictions than we. They don’t want to be ‘bossed.’ They want to do as they please, even if they pay more for it and are not half so well served. The idea of saving fuel and getting rid of the nuisance of ash-barrels would not appeal to the low Italians. They cook their little messes of macaroni over a few sticks, and would not dream of using the fuel that an Irishman would require. “Let me tell you about a cheap lunch-room that was started as an experiment some time ago. We gave good, nutritious food at the lowest cost price, and what was the result? It remained on our hands, and we could not sell it, and discovered to our surprise that the people for whose advantage we had established it learned that if they waited until the food was cold and ready to spoil they could come to the back door and ask for it and get it for little or nothing. It would really have been wiser to throw the food away. Yet the very same people who would do this showed a decided pride when they suspected any supervision or interference in their domestic affairs. A coöperative kitchen was established in one of our tenement houses as an experiment, that is, a range to be used in common, in order to save the fuel and heat in summer of a fire in each separate room. But no one liked to use it. Each woman was afraid of interfering or being interfered with.”