“My only solution for this, or for a part of it at least, seems to me coöperation, so that all shall get the greatest return for the least outlay. I don’t mean for a moment that I believe hotel life or boarding-house life to be the life of the family of the future. Heaven forbid! That the privacy and seclusion of the individual and family should be preserved is imperative. The home is the first consideration. But that one’s food should be cooked, or one’s clothes made or washed, inside the rooms occupied by the family, seems to me no essential feature of the home, and I am convinced that where prejudice can be removed, a great gain would be made by eliminating the first and last, at least from the home of the city poor. “In regard to the value of a common laundry with set tubs, I think most of you have found them successful. I have found only one person-an attendant in the beautiful Astral flats of Green Point—who told me that they were considered undesirable, as tending to encourage gossip and quarreling. Now the dwellings which I mean to build are intended for a lower class of people than any whom I have hitherto found occupying model tenement houses. In those on Seventy-second Street, I was told there were many mechanics earning three to four dollars a day. Such people are not what I call poor, and I design my houses for people who earn, at most, only half of that. I want to give them the greatest possible return for their money, and at the same time make a fair per cent. on the capital invested. The income thus derived I shall devote to the erection of more houses. “I propose to make the buildings fairly fireproof, with iron staircases and stone-paved halls. The interior walls will be of painted brick. Upon the top of the house I propose to have a well-fenced, well-paved playground, believing that the roof space which is so rarely utilized in our great cities may be made of great service in this way. In most of the tenement houses I find that the roof is not allowed to be used for anything but drying clothes, the owners not caring to go to the extra expense necessary to make it a perfectly safe place for children. But, if it is all planned in the beginning, the expense will be comparatively slight, and the open space thus provided will afford better air than any interior court, and be, both physically and morally, a far safer place than the street. By a simple arrangement of pulleys the drying clothes can be elevated between strong, high posts quite above the heads of the children, so that their play need not be interrupted. A stout wire netting can be arranged to keep the clothes from blowing away.