The Cost of ShelterRichards, Ellen H. (Ellen Henrietta)
General
The Cost of Shelter
Richards, Ellen H. (Ellen Henrietta)
Building; Home economics
We shall assume that the sane man will hold the little home in the country
with all outdoors to breathe in as worth the half-hour journey and the
early breakfast, and that the woman will have time set free by the
labor-saving devices sure to come as fast as she will use them wisely.
This free time she will give to the aesthetic side of life and will make
of her home a more attractive place than the club.
_But_ once a week let them both go into town either to the club or to some
other place for dinner and an entertainment afterward. This will be
sufficient to keep them out of an intellectual rut, will brighten the
appetite with needed variety, and make the next quiet evening more
delightful.
Once a week is sufficient to break the monotony of diet and routine, and
not often enough to create that insatiable appetite for the glare of
lights and the rush of people which makes all family life "deadly dull,"
as one café-haunting woman confessed.
While this country life is the only thing for a family of young children
and for those who really enjoy the country, there is a larger number
needing rational housing which will be left behind, let us hope with more
room because of the flitting of these others.
Much as I deprecate the evils of the present apartment system, I do
believe that an idealized modification will be needed for many years,
especially for the elderly, for the commercial traveler, for the bachelor
men and maids temporarily or permanently living single, for the newly
married as yet unsettled in business or profession, for the man who does
not know his own mind or whose employers do not know theirs. An instance
has come to the writer's knowledge of a young man who, after his wedding
cards were out, was ordered to take charge of an office in another city.
Marrying for shelter is and should be no longer necessary; and as for the
fear that this habit of bachelor quarters will be hard to break up and
tend to delay marriage, it will all depend upon whether it comes from the
merely animal layer of the brain or from the intellectual.
This housing of the individual instead of the family has introduced an
entirely new problem into house-building.
Formerly when a widow or widower, a maiden aunt, a homeless uncle or
cousin made his home with relatives, it was "as one of the family"; only
the minister was recognized as having need for a separate sitting-room.
The trials of this forced companionship have been told in many a witty
story; and pathetic instances that never came to print are matters of
common knowledge.
Will any one dare question the fact that the sum of human happiness has
been increased by the freedom given to these prisoned souls by the small
independent apartment?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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