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 the 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 coöperation, 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. 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. CHAPTER XII WHO WILL BUILD THE ROADTOWNS My many friends have advised me to sell the Roadtown patents or form a company and sell stock. But these people have failed to realize the comprehensiveness of the Roadtown project. Indeed, should I have promoted the Roadtown as a monopoly for private gain I would have unquestionably been the meanest man on earth, for in me and my backers would have been combined all the despotism of the landlord, the railroad magnate, the factory slave driver, the wasteful middle-man, the extortionate retailer and half of the commodity trusts. The private owners of the Roadtown would be absolute master of the inhabitants in every phase of life.