"We have entered upon the period of conscious evolution, have begun the adaptation of the environment to the organism."--Sir OLIVER LODGE. The hopeless pessimism of the past, that saw in the unmerciful progress of organic evolution no escape for the human animal from the grip of fate, is about to give way to the enthusiasm of conscious directing and controlling power. This is the beneficent result of the age of the machine. Man has discovered that he can not only change his environment, but that by this change he can modify himself. The hope of the future lies in the moulding of man's surroundings to his needs. In physiological terms, "the adaptation of structure to function." The day is long past when shelter implied chiefly a tight roof and a dry floor. The housing of the twentieth-century family means location, central and fashionable. It means in cost far more than what the roof covers and the floor supports. It means plumbing and interior finish; it also means a finish on the outside, smoothly shaven lawns and immaculate sidewalks. Sigh as we may for the colonial house, we confess that the standards of the time did not include the comfort of hot baths, polished floors, plate-glass windows, elevators, ice-closets, and lawn-mowers. These are necessary adjuncts to what is held as merely decent living; _how_ can the $2000 man have them, not why _will_ he not? What then is the house and the life in it to become for the great majority of families and individuals with an income of $3000 a year and necessarily nomadic habits. I say necessarily, because these families are at the mercy of business and social conditions quite beyond their control and impossible to foretell. So far as prophetic vision sees through the mists of time, the aim of the twentieth century is to live the _effective life_. The simple life has been preached, the strenuous life has been lauded, but, as William Barclay Parsons recently stated it:[1] "We need force, we need a vigorous force; we need that direction and avoidance of the unnecessary which is simplicity, but with either one alone there is something lacking. Instead of latent force and great energy without control, instead of quiet gentleness, of power of control without vigor to be controlled, what we need is force and energy applied where necessary and always under control, always working to a definite purpose, and at the same time avoiding complications and unnecessary friction. [Footnote 1: William Barclay Parsons, N.E.A., Asbury Park, 1905. _Eng. Record_, Aug. 12, 1905.] "That is to have a life whose great underlying motive is effectiveness. Instead of speaking of the strenuous life or the simple life, let us have as a doctrine 'the effective life.'