Nothing could be simpler than to combine a central laundry with a central kitchen--as has already been done in all large cities by wealthy private residents or speculators--and to make the institution general. With the central kitchen, central heating, hot water supply, etc., might be connected, and much troublesome work entailing a great waste of time and effort would be abolished. Large hotels, many private houses, hospitals, schools, barracks and other public buildings have these and other modern improvements, as electric light, bathing establishments, etc. The mistake is that only public institutions and wealthy persons profit by these improvements. If made accessible to all, they would save a tremendous amount of time, effort, labor and expense, and would considerably heighten the general well being. In the summer of 1890 German newspapers published reports of progress being made in the United States in regard to central heating and ventilation. In these reports, among other things, the following was stated: “Experiments that have recently been made, especially in North America, to heat entire blocks or portions of a city from one centrally located place, have been successful in no small degree. The construction has been so carefully planned and so practically applied, that the favorable results and financial advantages will undoubtedly lead to an extension of this system. Recently further experiments have been made to provide not only the heating but also the ventilation of entire districts from centrally located places.” Many of these contemplated improvements have since been realized and further improved. Narrow-minded philistines shrug their shoulders when such and similar plans are discussed; and yet in Germany, too, we are in the midst of a new industrial revolution, whereby the individual kitchen and other housework will become as superfluous as labor by manual tools became superfluous by the introduction of modern machinery. As late as the beginning of the nineteenth century, even a Napoleon could deride as a crazy idea the project of moving a vessel by steam. People who were considered intelligent, regarded the plan of building a railroad as an absurdity; they claimed that no one could live in a vehicle travelling at such high speed. In the same manner many new ideas are dealt with to-day. If some one had told our women a century ago that they should get their water from a faucet in the kitchen instead of drawing it from the well, he would have been accused of seeking to encourage laziness in housewives and servants. But the great technical revolution along all lines is in full swing. Nothing can stay its progress. It is the historical mission of bourgeois society that has ushered in this revolution, to lead it to its climax, and everywhere to bring to light the germs of transformation, which a society organized on a new basis will merely need to generalize and to make the common property of all.