But before the whole mass of contemporary building will be ready to receive the imprint of the architect, and before the handicrafts re-enter the modern building to give the luster of permanence to its decorations and fixtures, there will have to be a pretty thoroughgoing reorientation in our economic life. Whilst buildings are erected to increase site values, whilst houses are produced in block to be sold to the first wretch who must put a roof over his family’s head, it is useless to dwell upon the ministrations of art; and, unfortunately, too much of our building today rests upon this basis and exhibits all the infirmities of our present economic structure. From the aspect of our well-to-do suburbs and our newly-planned industrial towns, from the beginnings of a sound functional architecture in some of our schools and factories, it is easy to see what the architecture of our various regions might be if it had the opportunity to work itself out in a coherent pattern. For the present, however, it is impossible to say with any certainty whether our architects are doomed to be extruded by mechanism, or whether they will have the opportunity to restore to our machine-system some of the freedom of an earlier regime; and I have no desire to burden this discussion with predictions and exhortations. But if the conclusions we have reached are sound, it is only the second possibility that holds out any promise to the good life. VI So far we have considered the regional and industrial bearing of architecture: it now remains to examine briefly its relation to the community itself. In the building of our cities and villages the main _mores_ we have carried over have been those of the pioneer. We have seen how the animus of the pioneer, “mine and move,” is antagonistic to the settled life out of which ordered industries and a great architecture grow. We have seen also how this animus was deepened in the nineteenth century by the extraordinary temptation to profit by the increase in land-increments which followed the growth of population, the result being, as Mr. Henry George saw when he came back to the cities of the East from a part of California that was still in the throes of settlement--progress _and_ poverty.