“On the upper floor of the house I shall have several store-rooms adjoining a freight elevator and a kitchen. This will be connected with every floor of the house by speaking-tubes and dumb-waiters, so that meals can be cooked here for the whole number of tenants and delivered hot when ordered. The charge will be simply for the cost of preparing the food itself and the fuel; and as everything will be bought by the quantity, the expense for each individual will be moderate. I believe that thus, with proper arrangements, and suiting the food to the tastes of the occupants, the whole question of the food supply may be solved, and three women do the work of a hundred. How does this feature of the house impress you?” As Mildred paused, three voices exclaimed in chorus,— “It would never work in the world!” “Perfectly impracticable!” “They would not like it at all!” “Why not?” asked Mildred. “Well, first of all,” said a man who proved to be an agent in one of the large model tenement houses, “what would all those women do if you take away their work from them? They would be idle and shiftless, and just spend their time in gossiping and quarreling. I know ’em.” “It seems to me,” said Mildred, rather tartly, “that if the average poor man’s wife has not enough to do in washing, ironing, scrubbing, sweeping, making and mending clothes for a household and attending to her children, we need not feel any necessity laid upon us to fill up any spare moment she may have for herself by an addition of needless work for work’s sake. I know poor mothers in Boston who don’t get down so far as the Common twice a year, who scarcely see a green tree from one year’s end to another, who never think they can spare a moment’s time to amuse their children, and who gladly turn the poor little ones into the street to get them away from the hot cooking-stove which occupies the best part of the only family living-room. It is to such mothers that I would give a little freedom, and in time they will find something better to do than quarreling and gossiping if they live in my tenements.” “But they will have to pay a little more for their food than if they cooked it themselves. The wages of the cook must be paid, and even a little more counts,” remonstrated another skeptic. “Not at all,” said Mildred, eagerly. “Think of the immense saving in fuel to begin with. Why, most of these people, as you know well, buy coal in small quantities, often by the hodful, paying for it at an enormous rate when reckoned by the ton, to say nothing of the evil of sending children out along the wharves to pick up dirty barrels and bits of wood for kindling.” “But in winter they would need the fire just the same for warmth,” said some one.