Sj^jigje?^^ 
 
DUKE UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 The Glenn Negley Collection 
 of Utopian Literature 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/roadtownOOcham 
 
ROADTOWN 
 
ROADTOWN 
 
 BY 
 
 EDGAR CHAMBLESS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 ROADTOWN PRESS 
 
 150 NASSAU STREET 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
Copyright, 1910 
 
 BY 
 
 EDGAR CHAMBLESS 
 
\no 
 
 DEDICATION 
 
 This book is dedicated to J. Pierpont Morgan, a 
 straight player of a crooked game, who, it is said, 
 played his usual role in the Wall Street manipulations 
 of the Central Railroad of Georgia securities, which 
 adroitly and legally absorbed the small savings and 
 happiness of many unsophisticated investors — an 
 action which, in my case at least, proved to be a bless- 
 ing in disguise, for it made me suffer first and then 
 made me think. Hence the gratitude and consequent 
 dedication to Mr. Morgan for starting the train of 
 thought, which finally resulted in the invention of 
 Roadtown, a plan for side-stepping the crooked game 
 as now played so that henceforth whosoever will may 
 become a straight player of a straight game. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Nineveh, Babylon, Rome, London, New 
 York, — all cities from the twilight of the 
 past to the high noon of the present have been 
 constructed on one plan, which is no plan at 
 all. Like Topsy, they jest growed, with no 
 further aims in view than to huddle together 
 for the sake of companionship and self-protec- 
 tion against enemies. A map of the haphaz- 
 ard streets straying crookedly through them 
 looked like cracks in an earthenware dish. 
 The siege-walls which until recently sur- 
 rounded them emphasized the prisoner-like ex- 
 istence of their inhabitants. Noise, dirt, dis- 
 ease, suffocation and confusion, crime — these 
 spirits of evil took up their abode in the midst 
 of them, never to be dislodged, and students of 
 political economy, hygiene, decency and mo- 
 rality wasted eloquence and logic in showing 
 how bad it all was, and in suggesting pica- 
 yune and transient remedies. The true 
 
 1 
 
2 FOREWORD 
 
 Moses, with the effectual remedy, which will 
 lead us out of our long Egyptian bondage, 
 arrives only to-day, and if we will but follow 
 the teachings of the gospel contained in the 
 ensuing pages, we may be free, healthy, 
 wealthy and happy forevermore. 
 
 This Moses of ours, contemporarily incar- 
 nated as Mr. Chambless, arrives at the psycho- 
 logical moment when we are all ready for 
 him. The Jeremiahs of rotten conditions and 
 the Cassandras of impending woe had pre- 
 pared us for the necessity of change, and the 
 Edisons, Teslas and Lodges of electrical and 
 other inventions had supplied the means for it. 
 The great riddle was ripe for the guessing: 
 and Mr. Chambless has guessed it. 
 
 Transportation, distribution, and the mid- 
 dle-man, — what a waste of time, energy, econ- 
 omy and common sense are involved in our 
 present handling of these elements? The do- 
 mestic servant problem, — how sorry and slip- 
 shod a solution of it are the hotel and board- 
 ing house of to-day? The elimination of the 
 open country from our children's training and 
 from our own opportunities for peace and san- 
 
FOREWORD 3 
 
 ity, — what a paltry and impotent substitute 
 for it is the hybrid suburb? Personal inde- 
 pendence, social harmony, full value for work 
 done, adequate leisure after toil, — does not 
 this sound like the Millennium? Read Mr. 
 Chambless, O ye captives of Civilization, and 
 burst your shackles ! 
 
 He takes a map and a ruler and draws you 
 a straight line from the Atlantic coast to the 
 Alleghanies, thence on to the Mississippi, so 
 across the prairies to the Rockies, and down 
 to the very sands of the Pacific. What does 
 this line stand for? It stands for the site of 
 the New City; and there may be as many 
 more of them as you can make straight lines 
 from any given point to any other, in any di- 
 rection along and athwart the continent. A 
 single line of houses, superimposed upon 
 three lines of railway, one on top of the other, 
 underground, two stories of living and work- 
 ing rooms above-ground, a continuous prom- 
 enade along the roofs, and gardens and coun- 
 try front and back all the way. Concrete 
 "poured" houses (Edison's patent) ; smoke- 
 less, noiseless, unintermittent, arrow-swift 
 
4. FOREWORD 
 
 trains, local and express, bearing you at all 
 times, in no time, to your precise destination 
 and back; telephones, telegraphs, teleposts, 
 parcel-carriers, freight service, compact, punc- 
 tual, prompt, accurate, enabling you to live 
 along the line from part to part and from end 
 to end, and be served with the best at the 
 cheapest at all times, while sitting in your easy 
 chair; house-work done mechanically, and 
 your private trade or profession followed in 
 your own workrooms at minimum expense of 
 time and effort and at greatest profit; rent 
 reduced, taxes minimized, slums exter- 
 minated, pure food, fresh air and exercise ad 
 libitum; politics purified, cut-throat competi- 
 tion supplanted by rational cooperation, — in 
 short, the means for erecting mankind to its 
 full stature and rendering everybody free, 
 useful, happy and wise can be secured by Mr. 
 Chambless's Roadtown, and the moment to be- 
 gin is Now ! Read his book and get together. 
 Have we not waited long enough? He has 
 spent half a lifetime perfecting his plans ; they 
 are as practical as they are attractive, and his 
 
FOREWORD 5 
 
 only opponents are shiftless habits, stupid in- 
 ertia, and blind prejudice. 
 
 But before the first Roadtown has been built 
 out ten miles into the wilderness, it will have 
 become an object-lesson before which all foes 
 will gladly transform themselves into friends, 
 and all critics become eulogists. Aviation has 
 a mighty future: but the grand step forward 
 in Twentieth Century civilization is Road- 
 town, for not only is it an incomparable benefit 
 in itself, but it affords all other useful inven- 
 tions their best medium toward perfection. 
 
 Julian Hawthoene. 
 
THE MAN CHAMBLESS 
 
 BY JOHN HAYNES HOLMES 
 
 It was about two years ago that a tall, 
 gaunt, pale young man entered my church 
 study and said, in quite confident terms — "I 
 want a long talk with you, sir, for I've got 
 something that I believe will interest you." 
 
 Being not wholly unused to the ways of 
 agents, promoters, inventors and various kinds 
 of visionaries, I felt somewhat impatient at 
 this unhesitating demand for a liberal share of 
 my time; but I told my visitor, as pleasantly 
 as possible, to be seated and to describe the 
 thing which he thought would "interest" me. 
 This was the beginning of my acquaintance 
 with Mr. Edgar Chambless, the author of this 
 book, and the opening words of my introduc 
 tion to Roadtown. 
 
 At that time, Roadtown was nothing but a 
 dream, — a crude and imperfect idea, as com- 
 
 7 
 
8 FOREWORD 
 
 pared with the careful and well-tested con- 
 ception which is here given to the public. To 
 its inventor it appeared even then, in its orig- 
 inal form, to contain the solution of most 
 every perplexing problem of modern social 
 life, — to me, to whom it came not as a slowly 
 dawning idea but as an immediate revelation, 
 it appeared to be only one more extravagant 
 and utterly impracticable vision, akin to that 
 invention, once laid before me by a dear old 
 man, whereby light and heat might be end- 
 lessly generated without the combustion of 
 any fuel, or to that other wonderful idea, com- 
 mended to me by a devoted enthusiast, where- 
 by the drama was to be made the oasis of 
 all ethical instruction and the theater the 
 school of morals. 
 
 Something in Mr. Chambless' personality, 
 however, held my attention and won my sym- 
 pathy. In our first talk together, I was 
 made to believe in him even while I could not 
 find it within reason to believe in the revolu- 
 tionary possibilities of his conception, and so 
 I asked him to call again. And from that 
 time to this, I have met him and talked with 
 
FOREWORD 9 
 
 him frequently. I have seen his dream be- 
 come transformed from an ill-conceived vision 
 into a well-conceived and thoroughly practical 
 idea. I have seen the man himself rise from 
 the position of a visionary dreamer, seeking 
 the ears of any who would listen, to that of a 
 recognized genius, welcomed in the offices of 
 editors and publishers, and received on equal 
 terms by the best known architects and in- 
 ventors of the nation. I have seen Roadtown 
 subjected by competent men to the most rigid 
 mechanical and economic criticisms, and be- 
 held it emerge triumphant. I have seen Mr. 
 Chambless convert architects, mechanics, char- 
 ity workers, philanthropists, and cost-of-liv- 
 ing experts from scoffing impatience to en- 
 thusiastic faith. I have had the privilege, in 
 a word, of watching the triumphant progress 
 of a great and original idea, and the heroic 
 personal victory of a true inventive genius. 
 
 During all of this time I have done nothing 
 but "lend my ears" to Mr. Chambless. Un- 
 able to help him to work out his ideas in any 
 practical way, I have tried to serve him as a 
 friend and confidant. To me he has unfolded 
 
10 FOREWORD 
 
 his joys and his sorrows — revealed his feelings 
 of alternating despair and hope — told the 
 tales now of success and now of failure. For 
 two years past, I have watched and listened, 
 and all the while my faith in Mr. Chambless 
 has grown ever stronger and my sympathy 
 with his endeavor ever deeper. Indeed, for 
 some months it has been my feeling that I had 
 no higher duty than that of helping as best 
 I could, by the word of good-will, the hand- 
 clasp of friendship, and the listening ear of 
 personal faith, one of the few men I have ever 
 met in my experience who was truly laying 
 down his life for the sake of a great and un- 
 selfish idea. 
 
 Mr. Hawthorne, in his Foreword, has tes- 
 tified to his belief in the idea of Roadtown; 
 I would here testify, in my Foreword, to my 
 belief in Mr. Chambless. He is made of the 
 stuff of heroes — those who have sacrificed 
 home, friends, social positions, money, per- 
 sonal comfort, yea life itself, in the service of 
 humanity. His is the spirit of perfect devo- 
 tion to an ideal. He represents in his person 
 the type of valiant martyrdom, which I have 
 
FOREWORD 11 
 
 read about a thousand times in books, but have 
 met not more than a half-dozen times in real 
 life. As to whether his scheme is practicable 
 or not, I cannot say. Experts, not accus- 
 tomed to being swept off their feet by bursts 
 of enthusiasm over chimerical ideas, have tes- 
 tified that it is. As to whether his concep- 
 tion will solve all the problems of social life 
 which he says it will solve, I again cannot say. 
 Experience teaches that every original idea 
 has revolutionary possibilities. 
 
 But as to Mr. Chambless himself, I can say, 
 and say with enthusiasm, that he is a man de- 
 serving of the confidence of men. Mr. Haw- 
 thorne commends Roadtown to the earnest 
 consideration of all thoughtful persons for it- 
 self. I commend Roadtown in a similar way 
 for its inventor. Prove him wrong if you 
 can, but first master his ideas. 
 
 Church of the Messiah, June 15th, 1910. 
 Park Ave. and 34th St., 
 New York City. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I PAGE 
 
 When I Began to Think 17 
 
 How I came to invent Roadtown 18 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 A New Conception of Transportation 21 
 
 Transportation in nature 23 
 
 Our disjointed civilization 27 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Line Distribution — The Logical Outcome 31 
 
 Transportation determines the form of cities .... 33 
 
 Building in one dimension 35 
 
 A line of city through the country 38 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Roadtown Plan of Construction 40 
 
 To be built of cement 41 
 
 The railroad will be noiseless 43 
 
 Speed possibilities 46 
 
 The street upon the roof 53 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Civilization Through Pipes and Wires 59 
 
 Water 63 
 
 Sewerage 64 
 
 Heating 65 
 
 13 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Refrigeration 65 
 
 Drinking water 66 
 
 Bath and toilet 67 
 
 Gas 68 
 
 Vacuum 68 
 
 Disinfecting gas 69 
 
 Electric light 69 
 
 Electric power 69 
 
 Telephones 70 
 
 Dictograph 71 
 
 Telegraphone 1-2 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Roadtown Housekeeping 74 
 
 Woman's work not specialized 74 
 
 No laundry work at home 76 
 
 Dusting and sweeping 78 
 
 Making beds by machinery 79 
 
 Cooperative cooking practical 81 
 
 The end of household drudgery 84 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Servant Problem in Roadtown 89 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Roadtown Agriculture 90 
 
 Sufficient land to support population 93 
 
 Elimination of the middle man 99 
 
 Cooperative ownership of farm tools 100 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Industry Returns to the Home 102 
 
 Wage slavery doomed 103 
 
 A work room in every home 105 
 
 14 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A new type of factory 110 
 
 A special message to women 112 
 
 The end of monotonous labor 114 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Roadtown Makes Co-operation Practical .... 116 
 
 Also a Mecca for the individualist 117 
 
 The Roadtown department store 119 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Roadtown Education and Social Life 123 
 
 Roadtown athletics 125 
 
 Education for old as well as young 126 
 
 Eyes to be used less and ears more 128 
 
 Mothers for public school teachers 131 
 
 Lowest death rate in history 133 
 
 A home in the truest sense 137 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 Who Will Build the Roadtowns 139 
 
 Home rule for Roadtowners 142 
 
 Detached villas practical but undesirable .... 145 
 Builders of Roadtown take minimum risk .... 148 
 
 The cost of the first mile of Roadtown 150 
 
 Economy increases with length 157 
 
 A real remedy for congestion 161 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 In Roadtown There Will be no Trusts 163 
 
 Shall we miss them 165 
 
 The Roadtown religion 168 
 
 15 
 
ROADTOWN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHEN I BEGAN TO THINK 
 
 IN the panic of 1893 I was in the city of 
 Los Angeles. I had received word from 
 the East that my small fortune had vanished 
 as a result of an ingenious Wall Street 
 railroad "reorganization." I had drawn my 
 last dollar from the bank and had spent it. 
 I was out of a job. I didn't know where 
 or how to get one, for I had been troubled with 
 eye strain all my life, and had little experience 
 in the work of the world. The city was 
 thronging with experienced and trained work- 
 men, out of work like myself. I did not know 
 where the price of my next week's board was 
 coming from — in short, I was stranded in a 
 stagnant world. It was Sunday afternoon. 
 
 17 
 
18 ROADTOWN 
 
 I was sitting on a rock on top of a hill in the 
 heart of the city. The ground about me was 
 vacant, yet I could have thrown a stone over 
 the precipice into the principal street of the 
 city. I began to think — I needed money — 
 there was no opportunity to get a living by 
 working with my hands. I grasped eagerly 
 at any idea that had within it the possibility 
 of creating value, wealth, money, bread, 
 perhaps butter and a new suit of clothes. The 
 ground where I was sitting was vacant and 
 comparatively worthless. I asked why? The 
 answer was, lack of transportation. There 
 was no convenient way for people to get on 
 top of the hill. 
 
 Time passed. I finally located in New 
 York City and became a patent investigator. 
 I continued to think of transportation and its 
 relation to land value. 
 
 How I Came to Invent Roadtown. 
 
 In my business as a dealer in patents I be- 
 came acquainted with all manner of inventions 
 and inventors. I found that most inventions 
 were worthless, that a very few were practical 
 
ROADTOWN 19 
 
 and were promoted and utilized in the usual 
 fashion. Another group I found to be prac- 
 tical and workable in themselves, but not 
 available for use because their adoption would 
 throw into the junk heap millions of dollars 
 worth of old machines, and hence they were 
 bought up and "shelved" by the vested inter- 
 ests. And still another group could not be 
 utilized because they would require new fran- 
 chises which men with little capital could not 
 purchase of the political franchise jobbers. 
 To these were added a last lot of inventions 
 that could not be utilized to anything like their 
 full capacity because they could not be fitted 
 into the crude mechanism of the present style 
 of city construction. 
 
 So I began to dream of new conditions in 
 which some of these shelved inventions might 
 be utilized to ease the burden of life for man- 
 kind. One plan after another was abandoned 
 until the idea occurred to me to lay the modern 
 skyscraper on its side and run the elevators 
 and the pipes and the wires horizontally in- 
 stead of vertically. Such a house would not 
 be limited by the stresses and strains of steel; 
 
20 ROADTOWN 
 
 it could be built not only a hundred stories, 
 but a thousand stories or a thousand miles — in 
 short, I had found a workable way of coupling 
 housing and transportation into one mechan- 
 ism, and a human way for land-moving man to 
 live — I would not cure the evils of congestion 
 by perfecting congestion as is the case with the 
 skyscraper — I would build my city out into the 
 country. I would take the apartment house 
 and all its conveniences and comforts out 
 among the farms by the aid of wires, pipes 
 and of rapid and noiseless transportation. I 
 would extend the blotch of human habitations 
 called cities out in radiating lines. I would 
 surround the city worker with the trees and 
 grass and woods and meadows and the farmer 
 with all the advantages of city life — I had 
 invented Roadtown. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 A NEW CONCEPTION OF TRANSPORTATION 
 
 WHEN I use the word transportation 
 in relation to Roadtown I do not 
 mean what the term usually implies. You 
 often hear the expression, "our transportation 
 systems," but your conception of its meaning 
 is limited to railroads, boats and street cars. 
 The other crude links in our transportation 
 system are invariably called by other names 
 such as trucks, carts, delivery wagons, dumb- 
 waiters, elevators, etc. It is true that these 
 last named links are sometimes referred to as 
 transportation devices, but not as a part of a 
 comprehensive system of transportation. 
 
 Roadtown transportation includes all the 
 links in the system of transportation auto- 
 matically coupled into one system. This is 
 what I mean by a new conception of transpor- 
 tation. 
 
 21 
 
22 ROADTOWN 
 
 The functions of housing and transporta- 
 tion are fully coordinated by Nature in the 
 individual animal — legs are her vehicle of 
 passenger transportation, talons and arms are 
 her freight system, the animal body is the 
 house. Housing and transportation exist to- 
 gether, being mutually interdependent. They 
 are inseparable, the building is worthless with- 
 out transportation and conversely there would 
 be no need for transportation without the 
 house. 
 
 There is no better illustration of the need 
 for a proper combination of transportation 
 and housing than that of the human body. 
 The baby's first task is to learn to use its trans- 
 portation devices, otherwise its house or body 
 is useless. Life is full of lessons of the neces- 
 sity of the harmonious combination of the 
 functions of transportation and consumption. 
 The monkey was provided with means for 
 transporting himself up the banana tree and 
 an efficient means of getting the banana from 
 the stalk to his mouth. Gold carried from 
 mines in Peru to a jewelry shop in Madrid; 
 
ROADTOWN 23 
 
 men carried from their homes in Brooklyn to 
 their offices in Wall Street; food carried from 
 a farm in Canada to a dining-room in a Boston 
 hotel; gas carried from retorts to the burner 
 in a parlor chandelier; electricity carried from 
 the generator in Niagara to the motors in 
 Rochester; a pound of steak carried by the 
 delivery boy to the basement of your house and 
 pulled up in a dumb-waiter; a letter carried 
 by a postman; the song of a Prima Donna 
 sent scintillating through the air by a wireless 
 phone — all these things and a million others 
 are but a civilized man's arms and legs — his 
 means of transportation. 
 
 Transportation in Nature. 
 
 The game of life in wild nature is but the 
 getting of food and water to the consuming 
 plant or animal, or getting the more adaptable 
 animal to the food or water or some warm spot, 
 or the society of his fellows. So the life of 
 man, whether it be the family with the single 
 house or the city with its many houses, shows 
 a similar relation — things needed by the in- 
 
24 ROADTOWN 
 
 habitants, things taken from the place where 
 they are and to a place where we want them — 
 that is transportation. 
 
 Start out in the morning, number your 
 every minute's occupation, watch what your 
 neighbors are doing. The man on the stairs, 
 the wagon on the street, the rumbling subway 
 train in a three million dollar a mile right of 
 way, the elevator in the skyscraper, the office 
 boy at beck and call — it is all transportation. 
 Run over in your mind the work of the office 
 and brain workers in a city business section, 
 how many of them are engaging in planning, 
 directing and accounting the various forms of 
 transportation. 
 
 In fact, every hour of existence we are per- 
 forming some act of transportation except 
 when asleep. If we allow eight hours for rest 
 we find that two-thirds of our lives are spent 
 in transporting ourselves to our wants or our 
 wants to ourselves. 
 
 The basic principle of Roadtown is a plan 
 to give the social body proper arms and legs, 
 to make them not as they are, separate and un- 
 coordinated functions, but as part, in fact the 
 
ROADTOWN 25 
 
 most important part, of the scheme of civiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 The members of society are all engaged in 
 transporting themselves and their belongings 
 a goodly portion of their time, and besides a 
 large group is exclusively engaged in the work 
 of transportation. Moreover, the so-called 
 productive labors are at every step interwoven 
 with operations of transportation. Analyze 
 for a moment the work of the factory, of the 
 farm — how much of it is production, how much 
 is transportation ? Could we, like Aladdin, rub 
 a mystic lamp and cause things to be created 
 from nothing, we would indeed be well served. 
 But could we command the genie of trans- 
 portation, the will to wish what is from where 
 it is to the place where we want it, our power 
 would be equally miraculous and quite as use- 
 ful. 
 
 Our methods of production, though still 
 extremely wasteful, are constantly growing in 
 efficiency. In this age a minority of mankind 
 produce for the entire population. A con- 
 stant stream of people from the farm pours 
 into the city. These people produce nothing 
 
26 ROADTOWN 
 
 and expect to live by distributing goods to each 
 other; but congestion of population in large 
 cities introduces insolvable mechanical diffi- 
 culties in distribution, until railroads, ware 
 houses, trucks, wholesale and retail stores, 
 delivery wagons, grocery boys and dumb- 
 waiters, become congested; the machine clogs 
 and thus the growing efficiency of modern pro- 
 duction is lost through a more rapidly growing 
 waste in distribution. 
 
 The increasing number of those who get 
 their living by taking a slice of profit and the 
 growing expense due to the ever increasing 
 mechanical difficulties in distribution are evils 
 that aggravate each other. 
 
 As the makers of law live principally by the 
 profits of distribution, they will not change the 
 scheme, nor can the wealthy, with their country 
 villas legislate the modern city tenant back to 
 the loneliness, long hours and lack of con- 
 veniences of farm life. A proposition that 
 would combine cheaper rents, greater con- 
 veniences and give all an opportunity to 
 engage in productive work would be a real 
 solution for the high cost of living. Roadtown 
 
ROADTOWN 27 
 
 eliminates all possible waste and relieves the 
 army of distributors of nine-tenths of their 
 present work, thus throwing these people into 
 productive labors. 
 
 Labor which results in the creation of a 
 concrete product — something that can be eaten 
 or worn is generally appreciated. Transpor- 
 tation, the far greater necessity, is not so 
 readily appreciated as a source of wealth, nor 
 is the waste in transportation so quickly seen 
 or remedied. 
 
 Our Disjointed Civilization. 
 
 Our factories and our farms — the places of 
 production — our houses and cities — places of 
 consumption, and our railroad trucks, delivery 
 wagons and dumb-waiters, means of transpor- 
 tation, have been developed by separate minds 
 — they work together — clumsily — wastefully. 
 Civilization is a black cabinet of plates and 
 doughnuts, arms and legs, and consuming 
 mouths dancing around in an uncoordinated 
 fashion, occasionally getting together and 
 serving each other, but more often missing the 
 mark — two hands going to one mouth, another 
 
28 ROADTOWN 
 
 hand missing the mouth altogether; there is 
 no plan, no unity, no harmony, no mind behind 
 it all. The farm and factory, the railroad and 
 the city grow separately, each to serve the 
 other it is true, but the machine as a whole is 
 woefully disjointed and inefficient. We may 
 liken our present system of living to old style 
 harvesting. A binder, wonderful enough in 
 itself, left the bundles of grain strewn about 
 the field. They were shocked by hand. 
 Later they are gathered into wagons and 
 hauled to the farm yard and built into stacks. 
 Then the thresher comes and with another com- 
 plex machine delivers the grain, loose, through 
 a running spout, where men weigh it and sack 
 it and load it into wagons, which are as crude 
 as the threshing machine itself. 
 
 Compare this system, wonderful though it 
 be, with the combined header-thresher, which 
 at one operation cuts, threshes and delivers the 
 grain weighed and sacked into the wagon. In 
 the combination of the previous operations 
 many of the steps, the binding and hauling and 
 stacking and weighing drop out. The machine 
 simplified the whole process, it eliminates 
 
ROADTOWN 29 
 
 waste, it represents a unity of plan, a harmony 
 of operation. 
 
 Our modern complex systems of production, 
 transportation and consumption, like the old- 
 fashioned method of harvesting, require many 
 separate machines. Take the one product of 
 butter for illustration: the farmer produces 
 milk, the milk hauler carts it to town, the 
 creamery man manufactures the butter, then 
 packs it into tubs and sells it to a dealer; the 
 dealer ships it to the city by rail and then an- 
 other truckman delivers it to a jobber which 
 means more trucking; the jobber molds the 
 butter into prints and boxes them. A wagon 
 takes it to a grocer where it is again stored, 
 sold, and goes the round of another wagon, a 
 dumb-waiter, a pantry, a waiter, a table, and 
 at last consumption. This is a sample story of 
 civilization, a heterogeneous mass of independ- 
 ently acting individuals and separate mechan- 
 isms, full of mechanical waste, full of human 
 waste, full of financial waste. The butter fat 
 as is now wastefully produced is worth twenty 
 cents in the farmer's milk pail, it cost two cents 
 to skim it and churn it, the rest is transporta- 
 
30 ROADTOWN 
 
 tion. It is worth forty cents at the grocery- 
 store and fifty cents to one dollar on your 
 table, according to how much of your house- 
 hold distribution is done by your wife who 
 gives services gratis and how much by servants 
 whose arms and legs move only in response to 
 the rattle of the shekels. And how much 
 would this service of transportation cost if pro- 
 duction, transportation and consumption, like 
 the modern header-thresher, were built upon a 
 plan of coordination, that is, if the farmer's 
 dairy was on a transportation line with the 
 creamery, and the creamery on a line with the 
 kitchen where machinery and specialized labor 
 are available, and the kitchen was on a line 
 with the consumer's dining-room, and the only 
 expense of transportation was the cost of 
 power to move the material object and the cost 
 of labor to perform the actual processes of 
 manufacture that intervene between produc- 
 tion and consumption. 
 
 The Roadtown is a single unified plan for 
 the arrangement of these three functions of 
 civilization — production, transportation, and 
 consumption. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 LINE DISTRIBUTION — THE LOGICAL OUTCOME 
 
 CIVILIZATION growing up in a sep- 
 arate and disjoined fashion has re- 
 sulted in a certain arrangement of the 
 population upon the face of the earth. At 
 first savage men roamed the plains and 
 forests seeking food. The advent of civ- 
 ilization, industrial and social cooperation, 
 taught men the advantage of gathering 
 themselves into cities. At first these cities 
 were provisioned from the country by means of 
 humans or animal beasts of burden, then water 
 transportation caused the development of 
 greater cities on rivers and harbors. With the 
 advent of the railroad, together with the trans- 
 portation agencies already mentioned, the pro- 
 visioning of cities became limited only by the 
 ability of the country district to support its 
 own population and that of the city. 
 
 31 
 
32 ROADTOWN 
 
 The occupation of the city people was chiefly 
 that of manufacturing, trading and grafting 
 on the farmer and on each other. The inven- 
 tion of steam power made it economical to 
 assemble workmen into large factories which 
 added another cause to the growth of cities. 
 The use of this steam power forced the city 
 worker out of his home and into the more econ- 
 omical factory, thus developing the factory 
 system. 
 
 The continual growth of cities soon filled the 
 land with large groups of houses, crowding 
 each other for room. As the houses were built 
 closer and closer together, the amount of light 
 and air was shut out, in order that the distance 
 the workers lived from their work might not 
 increase. At first workers went from their 
 work to their houses on foot, later by means 
 of the horse car, still later by steam car and 
 now the electric car is supreme. As these 
 transportation facilities first used to get pro- 
 visions into the city and the manufactured 
 product out of it were utilized to get the work- 
 ers to and from their work, the houses began 
 to follow the transportation lines. 
 
ROADTOWN 33 
 
 Transportation Determines the Form of 
 Cities. 
 
 As time and the expense of transportation 
 rather than distance were the elements that 
 governed the distance from the heart of the 
 city that could be used for workers' homes, the 
 utilization of fixed lines of traffic resulted in 
 the city building out along main streets, 
 trolleys and railroads. Along main lines of 
 traffic, as between two important cities, the 
 population began to group itself into lines. 
 
 This is the state of the distribution of popu- 
 lation to be found in the world to-day. But 
 the present distribution is imperfect. The 
 trolleys carry people to the street corner but 
 make no provision for getting them into their 
 homes or for getting the meals on the side- 
 board, the book from the library to the center 
 table, or the camphor from the drug store to 
 the sick room. 
 
 The means of conveying the necessities of 
 civilization is almost wholly that of rails, pipes 
 and wires. The former is the means of trans- 
 porting people and parcels, the second of 
 
34 ROADTOWN 
 
 liquids and gases, the third of electricity in its 
 various forms. 
 
 These mechanical servants have been placed 
 in the streets which were first built as roadways 
 for carriages. In the streets, the pipes and 
 wires must be buried beneath the pavement at 
 great expense. Through these streets, fre- 
 quently full of curves and angles which offer 
 little trouble to the free moving horse-drawn 
 vehicle, the rails must be bent and the cars 
 slow down for curves. From beneath the 
 pavement the pipes and wires must be sep- 
 arately led into the basements of each build- 
 ing and up through successive stories to the 
 apartments above. Within the building, sep- 
 arate vertical car lines called elevators, must 
 be built and city transportation becomes a 
 matter of three dimensions with train service 
 running in from principal outlying points, 
 cross-town trolley lines and vertical elevators, 
 all separate schemes of transportation requir- 
 ing changes and delays, endless duplication, 
 colossal expense and criminal waste. 
 
 Now rails, pipes and wires can be most 
 economically laid in continuous straight lines. 
 
ROADTOWN 85 
 
 In the case of railroads, the greater the speed 
 without stops the more the necessity for 
 straight lines. A car running at a speed of 
 forty miles per hour has sixteen times the force 
 for derailment as a car at ten miles, and there 
 is a like increase in the cost in power and time 
 to stop the car. Moreover, to be efficient the 
 railway should be where nothing will obstruct 
 the passage of trains. Pipes must be kept 
 from freezing, live wires from giving shocks 
 and yet all must be available for new installa- 
 tion and repairs. None of these needs are 
 filled by present city conditions ; all can be ful- 
 filled if the city is planned to fit the rail, pipe 
 and wire civilization of to-day instead of the 
 pedestrian and equestrian civilization of the 
 past. 
 
 Building in One Dimension. 
 
 The Roadtown is a scheme to organize pro- 
 duction, transportation and consumption into 
 one systematic plan. In an age of pipes and 
 wires, and high speed railways such a plan 
 necessitates the building in one dimension in- 
 stead of three — the line distribution of popula- 
 
36 ROADTOWN 
 
 tion instead of the pyramid style of construc- 
 tion. The rail-pipe-and-wire civilization and 
 the increase in the speed of transportation is 
 certain to result in the line distribution of pop- 
 ulation because of the almost unbelievable 
 economy in construction, in operation and in 
 time. The people will return to Mother Earth 
 because it is in every way desirable for them 
 to do so and not because some merchant prince, 
 railroad king or social worker says they ought 
 to go. 
 
 In modern life an office building, store or 
 apartment house is considered especially for- 
 tunate if it has a rapid transit station near or 
 better still within the building. All the 
 inhabitants of the Roadtown will live upon the 
 main line and be near the station. They will 
 live there because the utilities of civilization can 
 be provided there more economically than else- 
 where. But the line distribution has yet an- 
 other significance of as great importance as the 
 more safe and economical distribution of peo- 
 ple, parcels, fluids and electricity. 
 
 The development of cities was originally 
 brought about by the desire of men to get close 
 
ROADTOWN 37 
 
 together for industrial needs and social fellow- 
 ship. This same want for ready communica- 
 tion and distribution of men and things I have 
 shown can now be most completely fulfilled by 
 the city which will be strung out in a line. In 
 other words, the very laws which built the con- 
 gested cities will, with the construction of the 
 first section of the first Roadtown, surely mark 
 the beginning of their gradual dissemination. 
 Such a tendenc5 T can already be seen at work, 
 but its development has not progressed far be- 
 cause of the isolation of the functions of house 
 construction and horizontal transportation 
 devices. 
 
 As soon as horizontal transportation is put 
 in the house, the skyscraper on its side, and is 
 pointed towards the endless country instead of 
 up against the force of gravity, and the won- 
 derful transportation devices now available 
 are installed, you will see the cities spread out 
 in lines amidst the fields and farms, as if by 
 magic. Indeed it will be the magic of econ- 
 omy, the natural force to which all of humanity 
 always promptly responds. 
 
 The height of the skyscraper is limited by 
 
38 ROADTOWN 
 
 the stresses and strains on the steel, by the 
 instability of the foundation, by congestion of 
 the elevators. The length of the skyscraper 
 on its side has no limit for it is built on solid 
 ground, it has no lighting and ventilating prob- 
 lems. Its transportation system by the aid of 
 local and express service, by the fact that it can 
 run trains, not single cars, and can run many 
 trains following each other on one track and 
 not require a whole shaft for a single car as in 
 the case of the elevator, removes the mechanical 
 limitation of length of the horizontal sky- 
 scraper. We can build not only a thousand 
 feet, but a thousand miles and have every story 
 connected with every other story by rails, pipes 
 and wires. 
 
 A Line of City Through the Country. 
 
 The Roadtown will start at the end of the 
 present subways or other rapid transportation 
 systems of present cities or tap these lines far 
 enough out to get comparatively cheap land 
 and build out in the direction of other cities, 
 passing near enough to the smaller cities, 
 towns and villages to summarily attract much 
 
ROADTOWN 39 
 
 of their renting population. This movement 
 will surely mark the "beginning of the end" of 
 such wasteful loafing centers for the few, and 
 the stagnant pools of wasted energy for the 
 many. It will be a line of city through the 
 country. It will take the apartment house to 
 the farmer and incidentally free the farmer 
 from the necessity of feeding the well-meaning 
 townsfolk who give him in return scant cloth- 
 ing, the use of a hitching post for his team — 
 sometimes ; a place to get his weekly paper and 
 a little social fellowship on the sidewalk Sat- 
 urday afternoons. It will give the subur- 
 banite all that he seeks in the country and all 
 that he regrets to leave in town. It will enable 
 him to play at farming, do real farming or 
 retain his city job. The people will go to the 
 land and take the best things of the city with 
 them, take in fact all that is good in the city 
 to-day and in addition much that is now 
 pigeon-holed as unused patents, because the 
 conglomeration of isolated homes and the crude 
 horse paths called streets, owned by "hold-up 
 men" called politicians, do not permit of the 
 general adoption of these great inventions. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE ROADTOWN PLAN OF CONSTRUCTION 
 
 THE first problem in making a village 
 or a city house is the excavation for 
 foundation and cellar. In the case of iso- 
 lated houses the cellar is dug by hand labor 
 and dirt carried away by horse-drawn carts. 
 Witness the difference in method between 
 such excavation and that of a canal, the 
 grading of a railroad or any other proj- 
 ect that is to be made in line. In the 
 latter case the steam shovel replaces the spade, 
 and the work train, the dump cart. 
 
 Those familiar with city subway construc- 
 tion will at first think the idea of a railway in 
 the basement is an expensive luxury. But 
 the excavation of the Roadtown basement 
 should be compared with the New York State 
 canal, not the New York Subway. 
 
 40 
 
ROADTOWN 41 
 
 To be Built of Cement. 
 
 The Roadtown will be built of cement, fire 
 proof and vermin proof. Modern so-called 
 fire proof buildings are frequently destroyed 
 by fire. This is because they contain combus- 
 tible material. If material in a large building 
 gets on fire and through stairways and air 
 shafts sets fire to other combustibles, the whole 
 building is heated to the ignition point. 
 
 The horizontal Roadtown house, only two 
 stories high, cannot be destroyed in this 
 fashion. Even if a Roadtown were built of 
 Carolina pine, it would still be a safer fire risk 
 than modern fire proof buildings in cities. A 
 fire raging in a continuous house could as a last 
 resort be stopped by two sticks of dynamite. 
 In the city the fire line must be fought on all 
 sides of an ever enlarging circle. Dropping 
 this theoretical point we can say that the really 
 fire proof Roadtown can be made at a fraction 
 of the cost of making a building of similar en- 
 closing space semi-fire proof, which experience 
 has shown is the best that can be done with city 
 buildings of the box or tower type. The 
 
42 ROADTOWN 
 
 Roadtown very likely will not carry fire in- 
 surance nor maintain a fire department, as 
 every house will have a fire hose which can be 
 instantly applied. The frightful expense and 
 loss of life (and recently the source of graft) 
 that our present civilization suffers because of 
 fire, will be told to the Roadtown children as 
 we now tell about Indian massacres. 
 
 Roadtown will be proof against the "cy- 
 clones" that are the evil genius of country life 
 in the South and West. As for earthquakes, 
 San Francisco's experience proves that rein- 
 forced concrete is the best earthquake resister 
 known. 
 
 Any building material may be used, but we 
 will here consider cement, poured into moulds, 
 as a standard. 
 
 Thomas A. Edison, whose efforts at perfect- 
 ing a method of molding complete houses by 
 pouring cement into molds, has attracted 
 world-wide attention, has donated to the Road- 
 town the use of his cement house patents. 
 
 The Roadtown, like the railroad, will get 
 much of its building material, such as sand and 
 stone, along the right of way, and haul it to its 
 
ROADTOWN 43 
 
 place in the structure on the railroad which 
 will be the first part of a Roadtown to be con- 
 structed. Thus the expense will be greatly 
 reduced. 
 
 Wagon hauling and hand mixing, the heavi- 
 est items of expense in cement construction, 
 are entirely eliminated in Roadtown where the 
 concrete is mixed and poured from a machine 
 located on a work train. 
 
 The Railroad will be Noiseless. 
 
 The essential of the Roadtown being the 
 combination of transportation and house con- 
 struction, the Roadtown if invented in any age 
 before the present one would have been worth- 
 less. The horse-pulled vehicle or the steam 
 or gasoline engine would be a nuisance in any 
 part of a building used for a dwelling. Elec- 
 trical transportation, on the other hand, is a 
 perfectly refined method of locomotion and 
 well suited for indoor uses. 
 
 Of the various systems of transportation 
 devised and now available, I believe the Boyes 
 Monorail to be the most applicable to the 
 needs of a continuous house, and I have pre- 
 
44 ROADTOWN 
 
 vailed upon Mr. Boyes to donate the use of his 
 patents to Roadtown. 
 
 This wonderful invention was perfected 
 after many years of intense application by a 
 thorough mechanic and electrician. It has 
 been demonstrated and found to be thoroughly 
 practical and is far in advance of either the 
 present two-railed electric railroads, or the 
 Gyroscopic types of Monorail cars which have 
 lately attracted considerable attention because 
 of their seeming disregard of the law of 
 gravity. 
 
 The Gyroscopic Monorail, at a great ex- 
 pense and complication, eliminates one rail, but 
 there is no particular gain in so doing, in fact 
 there is a distinct loss for the thing that limits 
 the speed of the ordinary electric car, is the 
 loss of grip on the rail, and in the Gyroscopic 
 Monorail the bearing surface of the steel 
 wheels is reduced to just one-half that of the 
 ordinary car. 
 
 The Boyes Monorail uses the principle of 
 the gyroscope used in the Brennan Mono- 
 rail with a difference that where the Bren- 
 
ROADTOWN 45 
 
 nan gyroscope acts as a top the Boyes Mono- 
 rail is kept true by the heavy drive wheel which 
 acts on the principle of a hoop or rolling 
 wheel. The Boyes train is made in short cars 
 or sections rigidly coupled together with rub- 
 ber padded couplings. Each car or section 
 rides on a single concave leather faced wheel 
 that runs on a broad convex steel rail. This 
 wheel is set up within the body of the car, thus 
 permitting the car to straddle the track. 
 
 There is a door on either side of each eight- 
 foot car or section, which is opened and closed 
 electrically. Only six people enter at a door- 
 way, thus eliminating all delays and jams at 
 crowded stations. 
 
 The leather faced wheel grips the track to 
 such a great degree that it is practicable to 
 build the cars as light per passenger as is the 
 bicycle, thus giving great efficiency and power. 
 A train of the Boyes type to carry the same 
 passengers as the subway cars of New York, 
 weighs one-thirtieth as much. The power is 
 electrically fed to the train from a small 
 "third" rail. 
 
46 ROADTOWN 
 
 Speed Possibilities. 
 
 I hesitate to make any predictions as to the 
 speed attainable in the Boyes Monorail. As 
 is generally known, the world's speed records 
 are now held by automobiles, not railway 
 trains. The record to date is about one hun- 
 dred and thirty-two miles an hour made by 
 Oldfield, at Ormond Beach, Florida. It is the 
 traction grip in the rubber tired wheel that 
 makes this speed possible. The Boyes car 
 will have this grip and instead of sand to run 
 on will have a rail from which it will have to 
 jump thirty inches to be derailed. The car 
 cannot skid, jump the track nor upset. It 
 does not carry the weight of its power creating 
 apparatus. It has no heavy parts but the 
 single wheel and its casings. The inventor 
 states that with the power now used on the 
 New York Subway trains a Boyes train carry- 
 ing the same number of passengers will attain 
 the speed of two hundred and fifty miles an 
 hour. I recently asked an automobile manu- 
 facturer what, at present, set the limit on the 
 speed autos. He replied, "The nerve of the 
 
ROADTOWN 47 
 
 driver." The bearing parts of the monorail 
 can be made many times the strength required 
 for the speeds intended and thus reduce acci- 
 dents from broken parts to a minimum. I 
 have asked a number of engineers to give me 
 a reason why the speed predictions of Boyes 
 could not be attained. One replied, "It 's 
 never been done." Another said, "Municipal 
 politics." 
 
 Because I have spoken in favor of the Boyes 
 Monorail I do not wish the reader to infer that 
 the development of the Roadtown depends 
 upon the progress made by this invention. 
 We have noiseless electric automobiles to-day 
 and noiseless bicycles that serve well to demon- 
 strate the feasibility of building a noiseless 
 service for the purpose of Roadtown and such 
 a later system will indeed probably be installed 
 in the first demonstration section. No man of 
 a mechanical turn of mind will doubt for a 
 minute that noise in transportation can be 
 eliminated where it is desirable to do so. 
 
 The Roadtown transportation system will 
 be in the cellar. This idea will at first seem 
 strange, and many people will suggest that it 
 
48 ROADTOWN 
 
 be put above ground thinking thus to save 
 expense and have the "view." I think a little 
 explanation will show that the basement is the 
 only logical location for the Roadtown trans- 
 portation line. 
 
 If it is above ground it will have to be fenced 
 off or elevated to prevent loss of life. If it is 
 fenced it will keep people from the land. If 
 it is elevated the stations will be expensive and 
 an eyesore. As for the idea of a view, we can 
 say that the Roadtown railroad is not for sight- 
 seeing any more than an elevator in a hotel. 
 If placed beside the house line it would destroy 
 the natural "view" and privacy of the home, 
 and the roof is reserved for a better use. 
 
 The basement is clearly the only logical 
 place to have the monorail where it will be 
 absolutely convenient and yet free the house 
 from the nuisance of living beside an elevated 
 railroad track. The expense of the basement, 
 where steam shovel and work train are utilized, 
 as already explained, will be comparatively 
 small, and the house above will provide a con- 
 tinuous covered passageway from the door of 
 one's apartment to the station. As for venti- 
 
ROADTOWN 49 
 
 lation, which is a puzzling problem in city sub- 
 ways, it will be solved by a continuous opening 
 made by building the house three or four feet 
 above the ground; the Roadtown trains will 
 therefore run in a covered trench rather than 
 in a subway. 
 
 Because of the rail straddling plan the 
 Boyes car must be entered from both sides. 
 Three tracks will be required and these will be 
 arranged one beneath the other. The reason 
 for this is obvious: if arranged side by side, 
 passengers would have to climb up the height 
 of the car and down again. Arranged 
 vertically, they need climb only up or down. 
 Because the distance from rail level to car 
 floor level is practically eliminated in the 
 Boyes car, this climb will be but seven or eight 
 feet instead of twelve as with present train 
 service. The upper track will be for local 
 service. Passengers will walk from their 
 house along a continuous platform or hallway 
 to the local stations, which will be located about 
 100 yards apart. The object of having 
 definite stations or stopping places is simply 
 one of gaining speed by having the people in 
 
50 ROADTOWN 
 
 groups. The platform will be continuous and 
 the trains can be stopped at any house desired 
 if there be a good reason for so doing. 
 
 About every five miles there will be an 
 express station. Here the people will climb 
 down eight feet, or sixteen if going the oppo- 
 site direction, and board a train that is not 
 bothered with frequent stops and can hence 
 make very high speed. 
 
 The following is a sample specification 
 of Roadtown train service as submitted by 
 William H. Boyes, using the Boyes Monorail 
 System at a speed of only ninety miles per 
 hour. Line from New York to Philadelphia, 
 ninety miles. Daily traveling population, one 
 to a family, 250 per mile, 11,250 to go each 
 way. 8,916 per hour for three rush hours. 
 Speed, ninety miles per hour; time of round 
 trip, two hours; trains five minutes apart; 
 stations, five miles apart. Trains, twenty- 
 four ; seating capacity per train, 336 ; capacity 
 of express service, 4,032 hourly. Local trains 
 oscillating between express stations each to 
 carry 224 passengers per hour, eighteen re- 
 quired. 
 
ROADTOWN 51 
 
 This specification submitted by Mr. Boyes 
 gives a remarkably small equipment for the 
 traffic handled compared with present figures. 
 The chief difference is due to the high speed. 
 There are many who will not believe that a 
 ninety-mile schedule will be maintained, not 
 so many perhaps as would two years ago have 
 refused to believe that man could fly from 
 New York to Philadelphia, an account of the 
 accomplisment of which lies on my desk as I 
 write. For those to whom seeing is necessary 
 to believing, the speed above may be cut in 
 half, which will then be about that in the New 
 York Subway. The express trains will then 
 run on a two-and-a-half -minute schedule and 
 twice as many will be required, but the cost 
 will still be much lower than present day com- 
 muting service and efficient enough to make 
 the entire Roadtown from New York to Phila- 
 delphia as accessible for commuters as is now 
 a suburban home fifteen miles from New York 
 and a half mile from the railroad station. 
 
 The single train on the local track will make 
 a round trip between express stations about 
 every fifteen minutes. Those near the middle 
 
52 ROADTOWN 
 
 of the section will catch the train going in 
 either direction, as the time for the express to 
 travel the distance of one express station is 
 negligible. In each Roadtown home there 
 will be an electric buzzer which, when the 
 switch is so turned, will announce the approach 
 of a train in sufficient time to allow one to get 
 to the station. The buzzer will have two dis- 
 tinct sounds, one for trains in either direction. 
 
 Roadtown parcels, such as are not cared for 
 in a small mechanical carrier described in 
 Chapter VI, will be hauled on the local trains. 
 Roadtown freight service will be at night on 
 the express tracks, the trains stopping at 
 stations located at suitable distances and 
 distinct from the passenger stations. At 
 these freight stations there will be elevators 
 or inclines delivering freight to or receiv- 
 ing it from the land outside, while furni- 
 ture, etc., for the houses will be elevated to the 
 platform above and carried on the very early 
 trips of the local trains to one's door. 
 
 Wrecks on such a railroad system can only 
 occur from actual breaking of some working 
 part, a comparatively rare cause of present 
 
ROADTOWN 53 
 
 wrecks. The local track collision cannot occur 
 as there is only one train in a section. On the 
 two express tracks, "tail-end" collisions will be 
 prevented by a block system that turns off the 
 power automatically when trains approach 
 within a certain distance of each other. This 
 system is in operation in the New York Sub- 
 ways. 
 
 The Street Upon the Roof. 
 
 Private stairs from each home will lead 
 down to the monorail platform and up to the 
 roof. In the center of the roof will be a 
 promenade which will be covered, and in the 
 winter enclosed with glass panels and steam 
 heated. On the outer edges of the roof will 
 be a path for bicyclists and skaters, who will 
 use rubber tired roller skates. The monorail, 
 which is the business transportation system of 
 Roadtown, will be placed out of sight and run 
 at high speed, but the roof promenade will be 
 the "street" for recreation and pleasure. In 
 winter the promenade will be a continu- 
 ous sun parlor; in summer a shaded walk. 
 There will be benches in alcoves along the 
 
54 ROADTOWN 
 
 way and occasional towers over the prom- 
 enade and tower effects along the edges of the 
 roof beyond the cycle paths or some other 
 architectural effects to break the monotony. 
 These towers will be used as cooperative 
 centers, such as stores, cooking and power, 
 recreation, schools, nurseries, etc. The tower 
 effects are matters of architectural ingenuity, 
 and many architects are already interested in 
 finding ways to lend variety and beauty to the 
 Roadtown as they have to our existing public 
 ways. 
 
 Certainly no street or boulevard in the 
 history of the world was ever more uniquely 
 located. The splendid view to be obtained 
 from such a promenade in a dust-free and 
 smoke-free country can hardly be pictured to 
 a city bred man or a countryman jogging 
 along the hedge and weed throttled country 
 road. The view across the near gardens and 
 more distant grain fields, and back over woods 
 and hills to the dim line where land meets sky, 
 will cure forever a score of Latin-named 
 diseases which the eye specialist tells us come 
 from gazing through the dust-laden street or 
 
ROADTOWN 55 
 
 across the dingy court into our neighbor's 
 kitchen window. 
 
 It is upon the roof that the Roadtown will 
 be upon dress parade. Here maids with their 
 lovers will stroll of evenings and matrons with 
 their baby carriages on Sunday afternoons. 
 It is here that children will have never ending 
 sport. Skating and cycling can have an 
 unprecedented opportunity to develop for 
 health and pleasure. It is here that Easter 
 hats will be shown and neighbors' crops dis- 
 cussed and new acquaintances made and local 
 pride developed. 
 
 The question naturally arises as to the sound 
 of conversation from the roof reaching the liv- 
 ing-rooms or the sound from the rooms reach- 
 ing the roof. The cement walls are practically 
 sound proof and for sounds to be heard from 
 roof to house or house to house requires that it 
 pass into the open air and bend through a 180 
 degree angle. Sound does not travel in that 
 way as one may readily prove by trying to 
 shout around the corner of a ledge of rock or 
 over a stone building. With all windows and 
 doors wide open in the Roadtown home, the 
 
56 ROADTOWN 
 
 only sound of ordinary magnitude to be heard 
 will be from the singing of birds and the play 
 of children in front of the window. The un- 
 canny noise of city streets and of quarrelsome 
 neighbors across the air shaft will be missing. 
 People who cannot content themselves with 
 the quiet of a Roadtown home will have to use 
 the telephone, electric music, roof promenade 
 or go to the social center. Promenaders can- 
 not stare into nor listen at their neighbors' 
 windows. The Roadtowner's home is his 
 castle in the truest sense of the word, and more 
 private, notwithstanding the close proximity to 
 neighbors, and hence more consecrated to 
 family life than any previous style of dwelling 
 known. 
 
 The Roadtown will have no streets because 
 it will need none. As it is built through the 
 country, there will, of course, be roads as well 
 as streets to cross. Here the monorail will run 
 under, and the roof bridge over the roads. At 
 such road crossings and such other places 
 where roads are built back into the country, 
 stables and garages will be provided. 
 
 The natural desire to drive one's own 
 
ROADTOWN 57 
 
 vehicles up to the door of his own house will 
 cause an occasional remonstrance against the 
 plan at first, but as people find that there is no 
 need of such roadways they will come to con- 
 sider the Roadtown road crossings as their 
 front door, when viewed from the auto or 
 equestrian's standpoint, and no more think of 
 the necessity of a private roadway to their own 
 house than that of having their auto sent up the 
 tenth story of an apartment house. 
 
 Those who wish to pay a visit to a Road- 
 town home will come to the nearest point 
 where the railroad crosses the Roadtown or if 
 traveling by horse or auto where the public 
 road crosses the Roadtown and will leave their 
 vehicle in charge of a caretaker and have their 
 name 'phoned in as one does at an up-to-date 
 apartment house or hotel. If the Roadtowner 
 is at home, the caller will then take the mono- 
 rail or the roof promenade as the distance or 
 his inclination dictates, and thus reach the door 
 of his friend's home. 
 
 Such a system will give the humblest Road- 
 towner the opportunity of the high class apart- 
 ment house dweller to say that he is not at 
 
58 ROADTOWN 
 
 home to unwelcome visitors, and yet the Road- 
 town home built on the ground floor with its 
 windows looking out into a private garden will 
 have all the home-like simplicity of a cottage, 
 and at the same time modern conveniences and 
 luxuries which cannot be found in any King's 
 palace. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 CIVILIZATION THROUGH PIPES AND WIRES 
 
 THE economies of a continuous house 
 under one roof and of railroad and 
 steam shovel, rather than hand and dump cart 
 methods, are sufficient to make the line con- 
 struction far more economical than any method 
 now in vogue, but even they are greatly ex- 
 ceeded by the additional saving involved in the 
 installation and operation of the pipes and 
 wires of the Roadtown. 
 
 Witness the present situation. The farm- 
 er's house is alone in the middle of his 
 farm. For every pipe, wire or rail utility with 
 which he is supplied, he must have a plant of 
 his own. If he wishes steam heat, he must put 
 in a boiler; if he wishes electric lights, an 
 engine and dynamo. 
 
 In practice the farmer, with the occasional 
 59 
 
60 ROADTOWN 
 
 exception of the rural telephone, is limited to 
 the products of civilization that can be hauled 
 home in a wagon. 
 
 The city man is a little better off. City 
 dwellers are close together, close enough that 
 one electric, gas or steam producing plant will 
 do for many hundreds or thousands of families, 
 but by the present plan which enables them to 
 have these improvements, they pay not only 
 the expense of periodic tearing up of the pave- 
 ments and the house foundation, but a far 
 greater price in the loss of air, sunlight and 
 privacy. 
 
 The Roadtown has these God-given utili- 
 ties of country air and light on two sides of the 
 house. Upon the other two sides it has blank 
 walls, but the examination of the average 
 isolated residence will show that there is little 
 to be gained in light or air by the two extra 
 sides and much to be lost in privacy. Upon 
 the two remaining sides, i. e., the top and 
 bottom, the Roadtown house has its sidewalk 
 on the roof and its transportation by rails, 
 pipes and wires that are now in the city streets, 
 it has on a far better and economical plan in 
 
ROADTOWN 61 
 
 the basement, now used principally to store 
 old trunks, rubbish and coal. 
 
 Picture the installation of a new pipe line 
 through a paved street. The expense and the 
 unsightliness, the danger to human life — and 
 this has nothing to do with getting the pipes 
 into a private house. 
 
 Now suppose you are a resident on that line 
 and conclude a couple of months later to install 
 the utility in your home. Again the pavement 
 is torn up, a gang of laborers spend several 
 days on the job, and you as consumer will pay 
 the bill either in a lump or as stiff rates on the 
 utility sold. The result of this clumsy system 
 has been that pipe and wire utilities in the city 
 are limited to those people who use them to a 
 sufficient extent to stand this criminal waste 
 and expense. 
 
 Moreover, in all large cities the matter of 
 installing pipe or wire conveyed utilities is also 
 a question of reckoning with franchise-selling 
 politicians and private monopolists who gen- 
 erally work "hand in hand." 
 
 Compare these conditions, mechanical and 
 political, with the Roadtown where all pipes 
 
62 ROADTOWN 
 
 and wires will be bracketed in a runway be- 
 neath the floor of a machine-made house on 
 land at farm prices. To put in a new pipe 
 conveyed utility will cost the price of the 
 twenty-one feet of main and a branch pipe 
 leading to the apartment above through suit- 
 able openings made when the building is con- 
 structed. The expense will be about equal to 
 that of maintaining the red lanterns which are 
 now placed about the torn up city streets. 
 
 As a result of these differences there will be 
 added to the Roadtown home — and I mean to 
 the home of the man of average means — a 
 number of utilities now available only to the 
 rich, or not available at all. 
 
 Beginning with the following paragraph I 
 will enumerate some of the inventions that will 
 be available in the Roadtown home. I may 
 include in this list some inventions which, 
 while demonstrated on a small scale, may for 
 some reason not now discernible, develop an 
 objection or difficulty in its use. But for 
 every such a one that I may here include, 
 there will be several others that science has 
 already or will yet devise and which can be 
 
ROADTOWN 63 
 
 installed in Roadtown as soon as perfected and 
 demonstrated with no more expense than there 
 would be if it were put in when the houses 
 were built. This feature alone is a tremen- 
 dous argument in favor of the Roadtown, for 
 every previous form of house construction once 
 finished is set in its equipment and soon gets 
 behind the age and must be torn down to make 
 room for the new. At this time considerable 
 humorous comment is being made in the news- 
 papers over the tearing down of a twenty-two 
 story building in Wall Street to make room 
 for a forty story one. The old one is only 
 thirteen years old. The Roadtown will always 
 be "modern," and increase in efficiency as it 
 increases in length while the separate building 
 is a complete unit with its height and utilities 
 stationary. 
 
 Water. 
 
 The water systems of great cities are enor- 
 mously expensive, as it is usually necessary to 
 build great conduits dozens and even as much 
 as one hundred and fifty miles long. The 
 trouble with such cities is that a very large 
 
64 ROADTOWN 
 
 population must be supplied with water from 
 a very limited area. The Roadtown with a 
 population of about 1,000 to the mile will be 
 able to get its water supply from suitable 
 sources all along the way. The length of line 
 to be supplied from one public station will 
 not be great, but the entire main may be 
 opened so that one station can relieve another 
 in case of excessive use of water at any given 
 point. 
 
 Sewerage. 
 
 The sewage system of the Roadtown will, 
 like the water system, be built in comparatively 
 small units, and will require none of the large 
 and expensive sewers seen in city systems. 
 Wherever the Roadtown crosses a natural 
 valley in the land the sewage can be led off to a 
 reasonable distance from the house line in pipes 
 and used in irrigating non-food crops. The 
 income to be derived from the use of this 
 sewage for fertilization and irrigation will be 
 a considerable source of profit and wholly 
 without the expense attached to city sewage 
 disposal works because of distance from the 
 
ROADTOWN 65 
 
 land and the fact that the point of the city 
 sewer outlet is almost always below the level 
 of land available for such uses. 
 
 Heating. 
 
 The Roadtown heating system will be of hot 
 water circulated by pumps. The heating 
 plants will be located every two or three miles, 
 which, according to the engineers' figures will 
 be more economical than to have them either 
 at greater or less distance. The temperature 
 will be regulated to suit each and every tenant 
 by the use of the thermostat with a push button 
 regulator in each room of every apartment. 
 This simple, but marvelously useful device, is 
 now in general use in thousands of first class 
 hotels. 
 
 Refrigeration. 
 
 The refrigerating system of Roadtown 
 which will be required for food and drinking 
 water purposes could be turned into the radi- 
 ators and a circulation of cooled water or brine 
 pumped through the houses. I do not say that 
 such house cooling will be established, for the 
 
66 ROADTOWN 
 
 Roadtown house, through which the breeze will 
 have a full sweep, and in which the electrical 
 fans will be plentiful, will have little need for 
 a system of house cooling, but if the people in 
 hot countries wish it and care to pay for it, 
 eventually they can have it. 
 
 Drinking Water. 
 
 The next utility for the Roadtown house 
 will be that of pure, cool distilled water for 
 drinking purposes, cooled only to a healthful 
 temperature. Because of the small expense 
 for piping, this separation of the system of 
 drinking water from that used for bathing and 
 for spraying the lawn will mean that no 
 method known to science for purifying the 
 former need be spared. 
 
 In present city life the peddling of so-called 
 "spring water" in bottles, is a farcical affair, 
 which would have about as much chance to 
 survive in Roadtown as an independent oil 
 producer shipping oil in barrels would have 
 in competing with the trust's tank cars and 
 pipe lines. If the Roadtown is piped for re- 
 frigeration, cooling will be very simple. If 
 
ROADTOWN 67 
 
 this is not done the coolers may be placed in 
 the basement and filled with ice manufactured 
 at the central refrigeration plant and dis- 
 tributed by train. In either case, the efficiency 
 will be great as compared with any present 
 system. 
 
 Bath and Toilet. 
 
 It goes without saying that every home in 
 Roadtown will be provided with good bath and 
 toilet facilities. Because of the fact that the 
 house is of cement and has no lath and plaster 
 ceiling to get soaked, shower baths will prob- 
 ably be much in vogue in Roadtown. If at 
 any time it proves desirable to give up the 
 space for the purpose there can be shower 
 baths installed in every sleeping-room at a cost 
 of only a few dollars for each. The soap for 
 bath and wash basin will probably be liquid, 
 and while there will not be enough used to 
 make it worth while to pipe it, it can be sup- 
 plied ten gallons at a time by a man who will 
 make the rounds and fill the reservoirs at each 
 home. This is comparatively a small matter 
 and I merely mention it to show the extent to 
 
68 ROADTOWN 
 
 which the natural cooperation of line house 
 building will gradually lead. 
 
 Gas. 
 
 For light cooking and local heating in the 
 Roadtown home, to such extent as is desirable, 
 gas will be used. 
 
 Vacuum. 
 
 During the last few years a great vacuum 
 sweeper craze has swept the country. We are 
 literally deluged with every type of apparatus, 
 from systems for installation in hotels and 
 office buildings, or wagon outfits that chase 
 about the street and run a hose into the parlor 
 window, to the little pop gun arrangement 
 that is worked by hand. The ease of adap- 
 tability of the best features of vacuum clean- 
 ing systems to Roadtown is too apparent to 
 need comment further than to say that a small 
 pipe, with an opening at each home, and a 
 suction fan every half mile, will be sufficient to 
 give the best possible results. 
 
 A further use of this vacuum may be made 
 in connection with automatic movement of 
 
ROADTOWN 69 
 
 windows, doors, etc. Compressed air is now 
 frequently used for this purpose as in elevator 
 doors in office buildings. Vacuum will, of 
 course, work equally well. 
 
 Disinfecting Gas. 
 
 A pipe dream of Roadtown that is abso- 
 lutely practical, cheap and a crying need, will 
 be gas for disinfection. 
 
 Electric Light. 
 
 Electricity for lighting will, of course, be 
 available in Roadtown at a fraction of the 
 present cost. 
 
 Electric Power. 
 
 Electricity will be used for fans, vibrators 
 for massage, shoeshining, and other household 
 devices that may demand it as time rolls on. 
 Besides this there will be an industrial use for 
 power which I will discuss in a later chapter.* 
 
 * Until some cheaper source of power is developed electric 
 heating will remain an expensive luxury. 
 
70 ROADTOWN 
 
 Telephones. 
 
 Electric buttons and signals and bells can 
 be used for the "top" and "bottom" doors of 
 the house, signaling to central stations when 
 preferable to the telephone. The telephone, 
 the cheapest of the pipe and wire group of civ- 
 ilizing agents, common though it is, has not yet 
 come into universal use. In New York City- 
 alone there are over three million people who 
 have no telephones and in the United States 
 there are 60,000,000 deprived of that great 
 necessity. In Roadtown the cost of installing 
 telephones will be practically the cost of the 
 instruments, switch-boards and twenty-one feet 
 of wire. If the automatic system is used, 
 which is likely, in local service between a public 
 service center and the houses they wait upon, 
 the cost will be but those of interest on installa- 
 tion and cost of repairs. A telephone expert 
 has estimated that the system complete would 
 be less than ten dollars per family, and that the 
 expense of operation or telephone rent less 
 than one dollar a year, net, per family, or eight 
 cents per month. 
 
ROADTOWN 71 
 
 Dictograph. 
 
 At the present date there is in practical 
 operation a loud speaking telephone called the 
 dictograph. If this modern invention is in- 
 stalled in the Roadtown home, it will be pos- 
 sible by simply pressing a button to talk over 
 the telephone while sitting in a chair or lying 
 in bed. This instrument has been most suc- 
 cessfully utilized in conveying music, which, if 
 received through a horn can scarcely be told 
 from the first-hand product. This wonderful 
 invention, as many other similar ones that now 
 exist, cannot be put into practical use on a 
 large and systematic scale, because of the 
 present city construction, the conduit and other 
 trusts. 
 
 Since the preceding paragraph was written, 
 M. K. Turner, the inventor and proprietor of 
 the dictograph, has donated the use of all of 
 his wonderful patents to the Roadtown, and 
 in addition has offered to design an entire 
 system of loud speaking telephones especially 
 adapted to Roadtown use, because of the great 
 
72 ROADTOWN 
 
 uplifting influence he recognizes in its prin- 
 ciples when put into practice. 
 
 This donation, together with the house pour- 
 ing scheme of Mr. Edison and the Boyes 
 Monorail, gives to Roadtown fundamental 
 patents on house building, transportation and 
 intelligence transmission — the three great es- 
 sentials of a new civilization. 
 
 Telegraphone. 
 
 The telegraphone, or recording telephone, 
 is also a most wonderful invention. The teleg- 
 raphone records any sound sent over a tele- 
 phone by means of magnetic changes in a 
 disc or wire. These steel disc records or wire 
 records can then be reproduced any number of 
 times with no loss of distinctness. As the 
 dictograph may be used to give a sermon, lec- 
 ture or piece of music to any number of peo- 
 ple at one time, so the telegraphone may be 
 used to record and repeat it any number of 
 times. 
 
 I could add other inventions to the list, but 
 will not, for these already given, though all 
 practical existing devices, will Le so wonderful 
 
ROADTOWN 73 
 
 in application that I will not extend the list to 
 any less thoroughly proven inventions, lest the 
 reader who can but judge from the viewpoint 
 of the present imperfect city civilization, con- 
 fuse the Roadtown which is the plan grouping 
 of proven inventions with the dreams of novel- 
 ists who revel in inventions yet to be. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 R0ADT0WN HOUSEKEEPING 
 
 THOUGH it is true that some work, 
 which in the past rested heavily upon the 
 shoulders of women, has been taken into the 
 factory, notably the spinning, weaving and 
 clothes making trades, and on the farm the 
 making of butter, still the bulk of labor of the 
 women of the average household comes in that 
 group of washing, ironing, dusting, sweeping, 
 scrubbing, making beds, cooking and dish- 
 washing. This is woman's work in the most 
 of our homes, and a servant's work in the 
 homes of the rich. 
 
 Woman's Work not Specialized, 
 
 Industrial progress has not yet applied to 
 this work of women the specialization and 
 labor saving machinery that has sent forward 
 the general work of the world at such a rapid 
 
 74 
 
ROADTOWN 75 
 
 pace. Another way of expressing the same 
 idea is to say that in at least nine-tenths of the 
 households, the woman is the household, 
 servant. If the work be assigned to outsiders, 
 then the privacy of the family circle is broken 
 up and the dearest ties of earth are disturbed 
 by intruders. At present there are two ways 
 out of the difficulty. The way of the rich is 
 the employment of household servants. To 
 counteract the disturbance of family life an 
 elaborate system of servant etiquette has been 
 established by means of which the servant is 
 made to resemble, as much as possible, the 
 cookstove or the family horse. This satisfies 
 the family, but is disagreeable to the servant, 
 and incidently keeps a worker out of produc- 
 tive effort, raises the cost of living to every- 
 body, and deprives her of the most normal 
 expression of womanhood — that of marrying 
 and coddling her own children. 
 
 The second solution is for those too poor to 
 employ servants. It consists in eulogizing the 
 "homely virtues" and writing poems about the 
 duties of women in the home and artfully asso- 
 ciating the scouring of a brass kettle with the 
 
76 ROADTOWN 
 
 instinct of motherhood. This effort to satisfy 
 the women in the home in playing the personal 
 servant to the rest of the family by enshrining 
 the dish-rag and broom is nothing new in the 
 history of the world. Those who have bene- 
 fited from the work of others have always been 
 quick to quote scripture to keep the worker on 
 the j ob, and as long as there is no other way to 
 get the work done, this plastering over of dirty 
 work with beautiful thoughts is indeed a make- 
 shift virtue, but one of which we shall some 
 day be thoroughly ashamed. 
 
 In the Roadtown, this problem, old as civil- 
 ization, will be solved, not by bringing in out- 
 side workers to break up family life, but by 
 sending most of the present work out of the 
 home and simplifying that which must remain 
 until the task becomes so light that each mem- 
 ber of the family will perform his share of the 
 housekeeping just as he now dresses himself, 
 or walks to catch the trolley car. 
 
 No Laundry Work at Home. 
 
 The first function, washing and ironing, has 
 long since been made an industrial function by 
 
ROADTOWN 77 
 
 the rich everywhere, and also by the middle 
 class in our cities. Farmers' wives and the 
 wives of the city laborers still do home laundry- 
 ing. In the Roadtown, with its perfect system 
 of transportation, the trouble of sending soiled 
 clothes to the cooperative laundry will be very 
 simple as compared with the present wasteful 
 method of city collection of laundry. The 
 service will indeed be so cheap that I fancy 
 Roadtowners will vote to add the expense of 
 the laundry to the charge for rent, thus doing 
 away with the cost of accounts and collections. 
 This would put a premium upon cleanliness, 
 to be sure, and might result in a slight increase 
 of the total expense since our clothes would 
 be washed more often. 
 
 In connection with the laundry will be a 
 pressing and cleaning establishment which will 
 likewise be run cooperatively. The pressing 
 machine now used by clothing manufacturers 
 will keep people looking spick and span for a 
 mere trifle. 
 
 How far the Roadtowners will carry the 
 idea of a blanket rate to cover the cost for all 
 these 'hinq-s denends on traits in human nature 
 
78 ROADTOWN 
 
 that are pretty hard to anticipate. We force 
 people to cooperate, to build parks and statues 
 to beautify our cities. Do we want to tax 
 them for a chance to be well groomed, or do 
 we prefer to see the other fellow slouchy so 
 that we will look better by comparison ? I for 
 one, believe in allowing civic pride to include 
 live citizens as well as marble statues of the 
 dead. 
 
 Dusting and Sweeping. 
 
 Dusting and sweeping must be done at 
 home, we cannot send the house out, but we 
 can pipe the house for suction sweeping and 
 discard forever the broom, clothes brush and 
 that arch nuisance, the feather duster, which 
 is used to chase the dust from room to room 
 without getting rid of it. Scrubbing and 
 mojjping will be greatly simplified by the 
 cement construction and the convenience of 
 water and sewage. These periodic tasks will 
 be grouped into trades, so that they can, when 
 desirable, be given over to professional cleaners 
 as is window washing in city buildings. 
 
ROADTOWN 79 
 
 Making Beds by Machinery. 
 
 The care of the beds is the next item on our 
 list. The Roadtown sleeping-room will in the 
 daytime have the appearance of a sitting-room 
 or library. One essential piece of furniture 
 will be a couch or divan with good springs 
 upholstered with fire proof material. Plush, 
 leather and linen divan and chair covers will 
 be used alternately to suit the seasons and 
 varying requirements. The divan forms the 
 foundation of the bed. The bedding including 
 a light pad or mattress will be made about a 
 foot longer than is customary. At the foot 
 this bedding and pad will be fastened together 
 by a metal clasp, or "bedding hanger" on the 
 order of a trousers-hanger. In the morning 
 instead of making up the bed — that is, care- 
 fully folding up all the germs and foul odors, 
 the bed will be suspended by the hanger in an 
 adjoining fresh air closet. By reversing the 
 action of the rod supporting the bedding, which 
 describes an arc over the unfolded divan, the 
 bedding is spread neatly in place — the bed is 
 
80 ROADTOWN 
 
 made. This closet in which the bedding hangs 
 freely exposed to the air has one side, or rather 
 edge, against the outside wall of the building. 
 This wall space will be formed of shutters 
 which admit of free circulation of air, thus the 
 bed is aired every day and all day. But there 
 are certain species of "germs," as every house- 
 keeper can testify, that will survive this fresh 
 air device, for them another provision will be 
 made. This closet will be piped for a certain 
 kind of gas which will be selected by the Road- 
 town biologist. At stated intervals the out- 
 shutters will be tightly closed as well as 
 door of the closet and the bedding fumi- 
 ed instead of aired. This method can also 
 be used to disinfect clothing. 
 
 There will be few rats or mice in the Road- 
 town home, for there will be little food left 
 around to attract them, and no places for them 
 to gnaw through or build their nests. In the 
 average city building used for factory pur- 
 poses, the damage from rats and vermin, I am 
 told, is often over 10 per cent of the gross 
 sales. 
 
ROADTOWN 81 
 
 Cooperative Cooking Practical. 
 
 Cooperative cooking, in spite of the first 
 natural antipathy, has gained considerable 
 ground in city life. We find it in two forms, 
 the dining-out habit and the delicatessen habit. 
 The first is expensive of time and money, and 
 destroys the most delightful hours of home 
 life. The second is likewise expensive and re- 
 sults in a diet consisting chiefly of bread, 
 cheese, cold meat and pickles. The weakness 
 in both systems is in the matter of imperfect 
 transportation. In the first case the people 
 must be taken to the food, and hence out of the 
 home. In the second, the food must be 
 brought into the home by a system of delivery 
 that greatly increases expense and limits the 
 quality, quantity, and variety of the available 
 meal. The Roadtown, built in the one straight 
 horizontal line, will make possible the use of a 
 mechanical delivery system which is not now 
 available even for hotel service. 
 
 The mechanical carrier will be on the order 
 of that used in the Library of Congress as a 
 
82 ROADTOWN 
 
 "book railroad." It is inexpensive, noiseless, 
 and can by means of a "key" be set to switch 
 automatically at the house for which the "car" 
 or "carrier" is intended. 
 
 The Roadtown cooking will not be done in a 
 single kitchen, but in a number of large estab- 
 lishments, such as bakeries, creameries, boiling, 
 roasting establishments, etc. The prepared 
 foods will then be sent in suitable quantities 
 to serving stations located about half a mile 
 apart, and there kept hot in the warming 
 closets. Here the frying, broiling, and other 
 such types of cooking will be performed to 
 order. 
 
 The bill-of-fare will be sent out by Road- 
 town mail. The people will order by 'phone 
 and the foods will be on the sideboard in the 
 Roadtown dining-room in less time than it 
 takes to bring it by the two-legged route from 
 Delmonico's kitchen to his dining-room. But 
 in the dining-room a difference arises. The 
 carriers must be opened and the dishes and 
 food arranged upon the table by the women 
 folks — a homely virtue left that the household 
 poet may not be entirely without material. 
 
ROADTOWN 83 
 
 The usual meal will require two carriers, one 
 of which will be heated, and the other contain- 
 ing butter, milk, ices, etc., will be chilled. 
 Many changes of fashion will be required in 
 the form and material of dishes for containing 
 and serving food — changes that will doubtless 
 "upset" the good dames who have found virtue 
 in soup tureens that can slop over but it is 
 needless to add that their Roadtown daughters 
 will be more "upset" at the thought of a return 
 to present customs. 
 
 At the close of the Roadtown meal, the 
 dishes, food remnants and soiled linen, will be 
 put into the carrier, and dropped down a little 
 chute where they will travel merrily to the 
 public dish-washery. Here a few men with 
 the aid of machinery will do the work which 
 now occupies half a hundred mothers while 
 their families adjourn to the library, music- 
 room or to indulge in a nap. 
 
 In the Roadtown household there will be no 
 furnaces to tend, no ashes to haul out, and no 
 marketing to do. The garbage waste will be 
 only the table refuse which will be placed in a 
 paraffined paper receptacle and sent back with 
 
84 ROADTOWN 
 
 the dishes. A bag for waste cloth and paper 
 will complete the waste disposal system. 
 
 The End of Household Drudgery. 
 
 In such an environment with the baby cared 
 for by experts in the nursery or kindergarten 
 only a thousand feet away, the mother will 
 have time to operate an electric sewing, 
 knitting, or one of many other automatic and 
 noiseless machines, work in the garden, read, 
 visit, or attend the theater, lecture hall or 
 church. Indeed the Roadtown woman will be 
 free to do anything and everything she chooses 
 except home drudgery. 
 
 The Roadtown idea will at first produce a 
 long low wail from the thousands of men 
 readers which will begin and end with a plea 
 for "mother's cooking." The Roadtown cook- 
 shop is cooperative, but the dining-room is not. 
 And the cookshop will be there to fill the need 
 of the cooperators, not to make money. If 
 there is demand it will have uncooked food to 
 send out as well as cooked food. Nor will 
 there be any law against the bringing into one's 
 home the fruits of one's own garden, berry 
 
ROADTOWN 85 
 
 patch, and poultry yard. Roadtown folks that 
 keep a cow can take their choice between set- 
 ting the milk in the spring and letting the 
 cream rise or sending the milk to the creamery 
 where it is aerated, chilled, pasteurized, and 
 bottled, and the fat contents standardized, and 
 thus sent back as 4 per cent milk to drink 
 and 20 per cent cream for the strawberries. 
 Personally having tasted both kinds I prefer 
 the scientific product. 
 
 Every Roadtown home will have a boiler for 
 hot water, a chafing dish and as much more 
 cooking apparatus as may be desired. The 
 wealthy matron of to-day keeps alive the senti- 
 ment of mother's cooking by making the tea, 
 frosting the cake or making the salad dressing. 
 The Roadtown mother can do the same, and 
 as much more cooking as she likes, but once the 
 opportunity is given for people to find the 
 actual economy of cooperation and to see the 
 folly of heating up a whole house to do one 
 family's cooking, the amount of cooking 
 mothers will do will be decidedly limited. 
 
 Sentiments can bar out progress for a while, 
 but where there is a great economical saving 
 
86 ROADTOWN 
 
 with nothing to lose but sentiment, economy 
 generally wins. How would you, Mr. Home- 
 is-sacred-man, like to thresh or flail the wheat 
 by hand in order that the family might eat pies 
 made of hand threshed wheat as well as to eat 
 mother's pies made of machine prepared 
 flour? 
 
 This game of jollying mothers into playing 
 household flunkies by complimenting their 
 products is getting thin, and a lot of mothers 
 are beginning to see through it. 
 
 The cooperative preparation of food will 
 have many indirect effects. A Roadtown ten 
 miles in length could well afford to have its own 
 canning factory, cold storage, and, if the 
 trusts become too dictatorial, also its own pack- 
 ing house. The Pure Food Law in Roadtown 
 will be a dead-letter, for the buyers will be food 
 experts and will have nothing to gain by de- 
 frauding the people, or helping to keep them in 
 ignorance. With a double cause for watchful- 
 ness, economy and health, it is hardly likely that 
 such a buyer would find it worth while attempt- 
 ing to go in partnership with food adulterators. 
 Certainly the inducement to adulterate is much 
 
ROADTOWN 87 
 
 greater in the world to-day, for every man 
 involved in it, profits by the practice, the 
 consumer alone, woefuly ignorant of the whole 
 subject, is the only dupe. 
 
 Not only will the Roadtown buyer get pure 
 food, but he will get all food at wholesale 
 rates. The frightful waste, due to the putting 
 up of food in small cans, bottles and cartons, 
 is little appreciated. I recently tested this 
 principle by buying olive oil. The oil was 
 priced me at $1.80 a gallon, but the oil I 
 secured in fifty cent bottles I found cost me 
 $7.00 a gallon. Cotton seed oil was priced at 
 sixty cents a gallon. I purchased a five-cent 
 bottle and found that I had paid at the rate of 
 $2.25 a gallon. These are indisputable facts 
 and they could be multiplied indefinitely. In 
 barrel or car lots the above gallon prices would 
 be greatly reduced. 
 
 All Roadtown foods can be bought in bulk 
 direct from the makers at makers' rates. The 
 vegetables will be crisp and fresh from the 
 Roadtown gardens. The profits of the mid- 
 dlemen, of retailers, of adulterators and adver- 
 tisers, the cost of bottles and cans, of delivery 
 
88 ROADTOWN 
 
 boys and bad grocery bills will certainly be 
 eliminated with . ne fell swoop. It will reduce 
 the cost of living, mark you, at such a rate that 
 the unsophisticated will confuse a Roadtown 
 meal with a charitable soup kitchen. But if 
 you don't believe this, write to your country 
 cousins and find out just what is the producer's 
 price on the material out of which a meal is 
 made. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE SERVANT PROBLEM IN ROADTOWN 
 
 THERE will be no servant problem in 
 Roadtown, as there will be no need for 
 servants. 
 
 89 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ROADTOWN AGRICULTURE, 
 
 MARKET gardens near our cities are 
 worth several hundreds of dollars per 
 acre. But there are millions of acres of land 
 more fertile than a Brooklyn market garden 
 that cannot be used because there is no way to 
 get fertilizer to it or products away. Trans- 
 portation is more important to land values 
 than fertility. 
 
 A modern city of a hundred thousand in- 
 habitants is about six miles in diameter, within 
 "an air line" mile of the edge of that city will 
 be about twenty square miles of land, but this 
 land will average three and one half miles from 
 the markets which are usually clustered in the 
 center of the city, but if the street system is 
 of the checker-board type, the edge of the city 
 between the compass points will be five miles 
 by street from the markets. 
 
 90 
 
ROADTOWN 91 
 
 A Roadtown with a hundred thousand in- 
 habitants will have within a mile of its house 
 line "edge," or "center," two hundred square 
 miles of land area, ten times as much as in the 
 above case, and this land will average but half 
 a mile from the market to which the gardener 
 must needs transport his produce, which is only 
 one-tenth the distance under the present day 
 conditions. 
 
 Another advantage of Roadtown for inten- 
 sive agricultural development is that, because 
 of the numerous other functions that transpor- 
 tation is to serve, Roadtown agriculture has a 
 perfected system of transportation immedi- 
 ately at its service to say nothing of an im- 
 mense consuming population on the line. 
 
 The first impression of a casual reader when 
 Roadtown agriculture is mentioned, will be 
 that reference is made to the play-farming, 
 chrysanthemum and chicken breeding indulged 
 in by suburbanites. On the contrary, though 
 suburbanites living in Roadtown will un- 
 doubtedly play at farming much to their phys- 
 ical and mental betterment, we are here 
 speaking of the agriculture that will be the 
 
92 ROADTOWN 
 
 leading industry of the fully developed Road- 
 town. 
 
 The trouble in grasping the possibilities of 
 Roadtown agriculture comes from the diffi- 
 culty of renouncing our old viewpoint. The 
 typical farmer with his house in the middle of a 
 quarter section of land, half of which is fallow, 
 and on the other half of which he carelessly 
 grows food for live stock of which only 6 per 
 cent of the nutriment is recovered in the form 
 of meat, will be inclined to make light of the 
 idea of farm houses being built touching each 
 other. On the other hand the city dweller, es- 
 pecially of the older Eastern cities, which were 
 located chiefly in reference to navigation and 
 are more likely to be surrounded with water, 
 6wamp, rock and sand than by soil, find that 
 when the little remaining land has paid toll to 
 railroad and coal yards, millionaire villas, and 
 dear parks and land held by speculators, who 
 discourage its agricultural improvements, there 
 is little remaining to give one the picture of the 
 close proximity of the consumer and the food 
 supply. 
 
 In spite of the previous bias of these two 
 
ROADTOWN 93 
 
 viewpoints, those familiar with the possibilities 
 of intelligent agriculture will see nothing 
 strange in the prediction that the farmer of the 
 future will live next door to the "city" con- 
 sumer of his wares. 
 
 Sufficient Land to Support Population. 
 
 In the first place, the locations of Roadtown 
 will be through districts where there is little 
 loss through uncultivatable soil. With twen- 
 ty-one foot houses, there would be almost two 
 and one-half acres per family for each mile one 
 goes back from the Roadtown line. Thus 
 within a mile (counting both sides) of the 
 house line will be five acres per family. But 
 in no section of the Roadtown will all the 
 families be engaged in agriculture. In typic- 
 ally agricultural sections of the country to-day 
 about one-third of the population live in vil- 
 lages and towns. This population is composed 
 of retired farmers, traders and professional 
 men who serve the farm population. In Road- 
 town civilization this population would live in 
 Roadtown lines. Near cities the commuting 
 population and everywhere the manufacturing 
 
04 ROADTOWN 
 
 population who are only engaged in agricul- 
 ture on a small scale, or not at all, will release 
 more land for the Roadtown farmer. If the 
 proportion of agriculture to other enterprises 
 is the same as in the country at large, the 
 area available to the support of an agricultural 
 family within a mile of Roadtown will be about 
 twelve acres. 
 
 But we have limited our calculation to land 
 within a mile of the house line — why? Evi- 
 dently for argument's sake only, for there is no 
 other reason. In the country districts children 
 frequently walk two or two and a half miles to 
 school. The average distance from the post 
 office is three or four miles. The average haul 
 to the railroad, five to seven. The average dis- 
 tance to the other good things of civilization 
 is so great that the farmer doesn't go at all, 
 he is often referred to as a "Hayseed," un- 
 sophisticated, civilized to the extent of the civ- 
 ilization that can be shipped by rail and be 
 hauled home in a wagon. The Roadtown will 
 pour into the farm home all the luxuries and 
 refreshments of civilization at its best. In 
 return it brings him a new problem in the 
 
ROADTOWN 95 
 
 relative location of his home to the land he 
 cultivates. The result will be a wonderful re- 
 arrangement of the whole scheme of agricul- 
 ture. The land, whether owned by private 
 individuals, the Roadtown corporation or the 
 Federal government, will be cut up into plots, 
 larger and larger in size as the distance from 
 the Roadtown increases. 
 
 Next to the house on both sides will be plots 
 or gardens about the width of the house, and 
 probably partitioned from the neighbor's by 
 trellises of vines or hedges of shrubbery. 
 These plots will be of sufficient depth to give 
 ample privacy to one's doors and windows. 
 These front yards — there are no back yards or 
 back alleys in Roadtown — are but the outdoor 
 part of private homes, and will perhaps be 
 devoted to shade trees and lawn on one side, 
 and to garden stuff on the other. Though 
 these yards in Roadtown etiquette will be 
 strictly private as far as an outsider's presence 
 is concerned, they will still be within easy view 
 of promenaders on the roof, and for the same 
 reason one is not allowed to dump rubbish on 
 the front stoop in the city, the Roadtown yard 
 
96 ROADTOWN 
 
 will be under the general oversight and super- 
 vision of the Roadtown landscape gardener. 
 
 Beyond the private gardens will be vege- 
 table gardens, then chicken yards, greenhouses 
 or pigeon flies. Beyond these in larger plots 
 will be berry patches and coarser vegetables, 
 and then orchards and dairy barns and pas- 
 tures, and farther still, grain fields, and beyond 
 that, forests. 
 
 The distance back which land will eventually 
 be tilled by farmers living in the Roadtown, is 
 a matter on which I hesitate to express my 
 opinion for fear it will discredit the worth of 
 my judgment in the minds of those who have 
 given the matter no thought, but I think I 
 can carry the points by examples: Imagine 
 yourself to be a farmer of the future, and 
 accustomed to the luxury of civilization; sup- 
 pose you wish to raise flax as a main crop, and 
 breed pigeons and grow dew berries as side 
 issues. The pigeons and berries you could 
 have at a few minutes' walk from your Road- 
 town home. The flax would require your at- 
 tention, plowing and seeding a couple of weeks 
 in the spring, and harvesting again a week or 
 
ROADTOWN 97 
 
 so in the summer. Would you prefer to go 
 five miles to that field every day for fifteen 
 or twenty days, or even take a tent with you 
 and go twenty miles and camp there, and for 
 the rest of the year enjoy the cooperative and 
 waste eliminating features of the Roadtown 
 home life, or would you live in a frame house on 
 the land and wash your face in cold water and 
 get up winter mornings to start a fire and 
 drink impure water from a polluted well and 
 make your wife a kitchen scullion, isolated and 
 lonely, and send your children two miles 
 through the storm to an inefficient country 
 school ? 
 
 Two of the most immediate advantages of 
 the Roadtown for agriculture are heat and 
 water for lawns, greenhouses and gardens. 
 How far this water service can be extended 
 from the Roadtown main will of course depend 
 upon the nature of the supply. But it has 
 been abundantly proven that water for irriga- 
 tion, even in the most moist sections of the 
 United States, was a wonderfully profitable 
 investment. Sewage will find a special use as 
 fertilizer as before mentioned, and the Road- 
 
98 ROADTOWN 
 
 town garbage disposal works will doubtlessly 
 have a residue for the land. 
 
 Horse manure as a fertilizer is gradually 
 vanishing from industrial life, and the Road- 
 town will eventually depend upon the chemical 
 fertilizers, "green manure" crops, and from the 
 animals upon the land for fertilizer. 
 
 The distribution of fertilizer as well as the 
 receipt of heavy freight, will require a freight 
 station located about every quarter or half 
 mile. The opening of the ground for access 
 to the tracks will disturb a yard or two which 
 will lessen the rental value of the house above, 
 just as the rental value of thousands of city 
 houses have been diminished by the presence 
 of elevated roads. In practice such locations 
 in the house line will doubtless be used for 
 some of the numerous non-residential purposes 
 for which room will be occasionally planned to 
 suit the local conditions. 
 
 Transportation will enable the better devel- 
 opment of cooperative features, such as cream- 
 eries, hatcheries and nurseries that now thrive 
 under adverse conditions and will doubtlessly 
 
ROADTOWN 99 
 
 encourage the development of others not now 
 anticipated. 
 
 Elimination of the Middleman. 
 
 The markets of Roadtown can hardly be 
 compared to present conditions at all. Where 
 the farmers of to-day go to the railroad station 
 with their produce, Roadtown farmers will 
 leave theirs in the warehouse of the food de- 
 partment. The 25 to 75 per cent of the price 
 that now melts away between the producer 
 and consumer will of necessity be divided be- 
 tween the producer and the consumer. 
 
 The Roadtown, either through its central 
 cooperation or in the form of individual 
 citizens will be a great consuming market for 
 the Roadtown farmer. Certain products, 
 however, for which the locality is especially 
 adapted must necessarily be sold outside the 
 Roadtown. For such, salesmanship coopera- 
 tion as is now carried on in the Ontario and 
 California fruit belts and in the creameries of 
 the Middle West and trucking districts of the 
 South will be brought into play, and with the 
 
100 ROADTOWN 
 
 Roadtown transportation system and storage 
 warehouses its farmers will surely not fail 
 where the former have succeeded. 
 
 Cooperative Ownership of Farm Tools. 
 
 Well managed cooperation will also find 
 another field in Roadtown agriculture in the 
 form of cooperatively owned tools. I fully 
 believe in the electric plow, for instance; an 
 invention which the writer worked out some 
 years ago in the form of a flexible cable which 
 would unwind from a cylinder on the plow as 
 the plow moves out from the electric plug, and 
 will rewind as it returns. Such a device as I 
 propose is entirely practicable and has simply 
 failed to be developed because of lack of cheap 
 electric power near the land to be cultivated; 
 however, the old reliable horse will be used 
 back from the Roadtown line and as near to it 
 as he proves economical and desirable. 
 
 The use of electricity for agricultural power, 
 is a part of the future programme of the world 
 as the land becomes more thickly settled and as 
 land to raise horse food gradually diminishes. 
 How fast the change will come will depend 
 
ROADTOWN 101 
 
 upon how rapidly the storage battery and the 
 means of conducting electric power are cheap- 
 ened through invention. At present the elec- 
 trical truck competes successfully with the 
 gasoline truck, and Edison storage batteries 
 are now replacing the horse cars in New York 
 streets where the traffic does not warrant the 
 regular electric car. I believe the most 
 economical agricultural conveyances in Road- 
 town will in a short time, if not from the out- 
 set, be light electrical storage wagons and that 
 the use of such vehicles as well as electrical 
 cultivating instruments will gradually extend 
 back from the Roadtown as intensive agricul- 
 ture develops and electric power is cheapened. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 INDUSTRY RETURNS TO THE HOME 
 
 AN influential factor in the development 
 of manufacturing was the invention of 
 steam power. The industries that use ma- 
 chines were forced out of the homes and into 
 the factories. There was no alternative. The 
 steam driven machines produced goods so 
 cheaply that the hand power, or home machine 
 could not earn its owner a livelihood. Thus 
 the factory system developed, partly because 
 of the mechanical necessity of concentration 
 where the power from one engine could by the 
 use of shafts and belts be made to run a great 
 number of machines, and partly because of the 
 natural tendency of the man with the most 
 money to acquire possession of the factory and 
 have others work for him. 
 
 Later the invention and perfection of the 
 electric generator and motor made possible 
 
 102 
 
ROADTOWN 103 
 
 the distribution of power and the machine, 
 with its motor attached, again became feasible 
 for individual ownership. Difficulties, how- 
 ever, exist. These difficulties are the present 
 capitalistic ownership of the material and 
 machines, a lack of properly organized co- 
 operatively conducted sources of power, 
 present land ownership, house arrangement, 
 and of getting this power to the worker; and 
 what is of much more moment, the complete 
 possession by capitalistic interests of the entire 
 system of trade or distribution from the great 
 railway combination to the retail shop, through 
 which the individual worker must market his 
 products. 
 
 Wage-slavery Doomed. 
 
 The ideal — and as I believe — an attainable 
 ideal in a large number of Roadtown manu- 
 facturing industries is cooperation in the use 
 of land, machines, power supply and transpor- 
 tation of products, and individualism in the 
 actual operation of the machines and working 
 the land. This will forever solve the labor 
 question by abolishing the wage-system. Let 
 
104 ROADTOWN 
 
 us look at the details as they will be worked 
 out in the Roadtown. 
 
 The first essential in such a system of co- 
 operative individual producers is power. For 
 this the Roadtown will have to compete in the 
 markets of the world. 
 
 Roadtown will possess great advantages in 
 this respect where it passes water power and 
 coal fields and can buy them. Roadtown 
 power plants, cooperative stores and cooking 
 plants, will be located where railroads, canals 
 or rivers cross the Roadtown, when practicable, 
 to save the double handling and freight on coal. 
 Otherwise the coal will be loaded into Road- 
 town cars by steam shovel and hauled at 
 night to the power houses where the monorail 
 coal cars will be dumped directly into the 
 stoker reservoirs. The same heat will be used 
 for generating power, heating the building, 
 cooking the food and for whatever other pur- 
 pose heat is required and the chimneys of 
 Roadtown will be miles apart. There will be 
 no wagon haulage of fuel in Roadtown life. 
 Other sources of power, such as water, wind 
 
ROADTOWN 105 
 
 or waves, when developed will become avail- 
 able for the Roadtown. 
 
 The transmission of Roadtown power will 
 involve none of the losses from which exposed 
 transmission systems suffer because of the 
 weather. The actual cost per horse power 
 used will be far less than in present city dis- 
 tribution. 
 
 A Work Room in Every Home. 
 
 Every room in Roadtown will be wired for 
 light and power, but the general building plan 
 will presume that all regular industrial opera- 
 tions are to be conducted in a room on the 
 lower floor of the house which will be equipped 
 with power sockets and bolt plates in the floor 
 and a non-vibrating foundation installed for 
 machines. This room will be located where it 
 will have ready access to the transportation 
 lines, probably by a trap through the floor 
 through which a case of goods can be dropped 
 to a position where it can be automatically 
 swung aboard a slowly moving "pick-up" car 
 at night, something after the manner a mail- 
 
106 ROADTOWN 
 
 bag is now snatched from a post beside the 
 railway track. 
 
 This work room will be separated from the 
 rest of the house by sound-proof walls. Of 
 course no room can be made absolutely sound 
 proof, for where fresh air goes sound goes also. 
 Very noisy industries as well as those that deal 
 in bulky or malodorous substances must of 
 necessity be out of and at a safe distance from 
 the resident portion of Roadtown. The 
 Roadtown work room, like the cooperative 
 cook shop, though it is there to be used and will 
 be equipped for a work room, yet its use as 
 such is not obligatory. The power socket may 
 be plugged, a rug thrown over the bolt plates 
 and the work room used for a children's play- 
 room, a sun parlor, a palm garden, or a living- 
 room. It is rented with the house, equipped 
 to receive suitable machines, but if the tenants 
 have other uses for their time, it is their affair. 
 
 The following industries will come early to 
 the Roadtown: clothing manufactures, knit- 
 ting, lace and needle work, millinery, artificial 
 flowers and other decorative work, including 
 
ROADTOWN 107 
 
 all art and the so-called art crafts, jewelry, 
 toilet articles and small household notions of 
 all sorts; wood and cold metal workings, toys, 
 hats, gloves, shoes, book-binding, and many 
 similar types of light manufacturing. 
 
 The Roadtown corporation will have ma- 
 chines for suitable Roadtown industries made 
 of certain standard sizes to fit the workroom 
 described. These machines will be for sale 
 or to rent to the tenant. Under the old system 
 of industry, men, constantly fraught with the 
 fear of losing their jobs, are always anxious to 
 buy and own the tools of production. In 
 Roadtown practice there will be nothing to 
 gain by private ownership over publicly owned 
 machines. The corporation will charge just 
 enough rental to maintain and repair the ma- 
 chinery and replace with new ones when the 
 old are out of commission. The operator of 
 the machine will find it more profitable to 
 invest his savings in the bonds of the corpora- 
 tion than to make his own repairs or to replace 
 his own machines. Another advantage of 
 
108 ROADTOWN 
 
 renting your machine is the option you have at 
 all times, that of exchanging it for some other 
 kind of machine. 
 
 Whether the factory is brought into the 
 home, or the man induced to go to the factory 
 will, of course, depend upon the nature of his 
 work. Sometimes it will be cheaper to move 
 the product, sometimes cheaper to move the 
 man. In either case the perfected system of 
 transportation is of equal importance. 
 
 The selling of farm products cooperatively 
 is practical, as is being abundantly proven in 
 the United States and to a greater extent 
 abroad. There is no valid argument that can 
 be put up against cooperative buying of the 
 raw material and selling of the finished 
 product of the Roadtown workers. Such co- 
 operative buying and selling should not for a 
 moment be classed with the graft tempting 
 work of the municipal or government buyer. 
 In the case of the government the money which 
 is used to buy cavalry horses, for instance, is 
 raised by revenues upon diamonds or cigars. 
 There is here no relation whatsoever between 
 the man who pays the taxes and the buyer of 
 
ROADTOWN 109 
 
 the goods. In cooperative buying the con- 
 nection between the man who pays and the 
 price that is paid will be close indeed. 
 The buyer of leather for Roadtown glove 
 makers would be held even more closely 
 responsible for honest buying by the consumers 
 of the leather than by the stockholders of a 
 present corporate glove factory, for in the cor- 
 poration factory there is a chance to hide poor 
 buying behind good selling in the final report 
 to the stockholders. Every move of the buyer 
 and seller of Roadtown workers is then and 
 there made known to the Roadtown workman 
 or group of workmen who has the immediate 
 right to recall the blundering representative. 
 The trouble with government officials is that 
 they are too far removed from the people who 
 supply the money which they spend. In 
 Roadtown that connection will be close and 
 quick in action. It will be corporate industry 
 with interest to small or large investors, but 
 control and profits for and by the workers. 
 
 The bondholders will have an ever vigilant 
 and directly interested army of workers who 
 must of necessity safeguard their mutual wel- 
 
110 ROADTOWN 
 
 fare. The worker cannot avoid this service to 
 the bondholder, hence he is the best protected 
 bondholder in all the world. I do not here 
 refer to values; that is covered elsewhere. 
 
 A New Type of Factory. 
 
 I believe there will develop in Roadtown a 
 form of factory that is intermediate between 
 the large privately owned factory as it exists 
 to-day and the individual work room of Road- 
 town. I refer to the small cooperative 
 factory, organized by a band of workers whose 
 separate operations are needed to complete a 
 single article. For illustration, suppose a 
 group of employes of a shoe factory are dis- 
 satisfied. Instead of going on a strike they 
 would organize a cooperative Roadtown Asso- 
 ciation and move into Roadtown. They could 
 arrange for houses adjoining and throw their 
 individual work room into a continuous work 
 room large enough to accommodate them. 
 They could elect their own foreman and decide 
 the proportion of profits to go to different 
 grades of work and embody these conditions in 
 their charter. These inner cooperators would 
 
ROADTOWN ill 
 
 buy and sell through the central organization 
 of the Roadtown, as will the individual 
 workers. Here we will have the mechanical 
 saving of the combination of the several opera- 
 tions — the commercial saving of centralized 
 buying and selling, and the profits going to 
 the workers, not the least of which would be the 
 satisfaction of independence. 
 
 Once Roadtown becomes an established fact, 
 single workers, little groups of workers, and 
 whole armies of workers will be seen leaving 
 the old system for the new. It will be a strike 
 for all time, a strike from which the hiring of 
 strike breakers will be an empty retaliation, for 
 the Roadtown worker will not only work better 
 but his products will be less destroyed in the 
 mill of competitive selling — he can undersell 
 the strike breaker, being employer, and because 
 the food and house and things he buys of the 
 other workers will cost him less and serve him 
 better; the workman who joins this final gen- 
 eral strike can work and live better, yet 
 cheaper, than his successor in the old factories. 
 It is the beginning of the end of the barbarous 
 so-called "factory system" — and the end is that 
 
112 ROADTOWN 
 
 each work will be performed in a way that is 
 most economical to society as a whole. 
 
 A Special Message to Women. 
 
 The Roadtown has a message not only for 
 men, but for women, and most especially for 
 young unmarried women who are looking for- 
 ward to the time when they can fulfill their 
 highest mission on earth, that of establishing a 
 home and raising a family. You need not put 
 off the wedding any longer than the time when 
 you can pay a couple of months' rent on a 
 Roadtown home, a deposit on a machine, 
 enough to buy raw material to keep you and 
 the machine busy for a couple of weeks and 
 enough seed to plant the garden. If "John" 
 has a position he can retain it and commute 
 without leaving you to stare out the window of 
 a city apartment with nothing to do all day or 
 frightened and lonely in an isolated farm 
 house. If he hasn't a job he may run a ma- 
 chine and work the garden also. If he is good 
 to you, you will be happy, and he is apt to be, 
 for he knows you are not dependent upon him 
 for a living now that you are freed from house- 
 
ROADTOWN 113 
 
 hold drudgery and can earn as much as he. 
 The Roadtown will enable you to marry the 
 man of your choice regardless of his ability to 
 thrive in the present unfair struggle for a mar- 
 riage portion and enable you at all times to 
 free yourself from him on account of your 
 economic independence, if he proves to be the 
 wrong man. 
 
 The saving in cooperative buying and selling 
 is going to be the means of throwing many 
 men out of employment, just as has been the 
 case with the inventions of all labor saving 
 machinery and methods. When a man in 
 middle life has to fill a new occupation it is 
 indeed a serious matter, but one against which 
 it is useless to fight. If a man had been sent 
 down the track swinging a lantern to warn an 
 approaching train of a broken rail, we would 
 hardly countenance the holding up of traffic 
 after the rail was repaired, because the man 
 wished to continue swinging the lantern. The 
 Roadtown makes no apologies to the workers 
 whose services it will render useless. When 
 we get well, we dismiss the doctor. It is said 
 that some doctors keep us sick to keep their 
 
114 ROADTOWN 
 
 jobs. Be that as it may, certainly there is no 
 denying that he who opposes cooperation, in 
 an attempt to preserve wasteful or unnecessary 
 operations is a malpracticing economic physi- 
 cian. To the man Roadtown throws out of a 
 job, it offers a chance to engage in productive 
 labor where one cannot get out of a job, 
 because so long as men receive the full fruits 
 of their toil, with free and untaxed exchange, 
 over-production as an economic calamity is 
 an absolute impossibility. 
 
 The End of Monotonous Labor. 
 
 Thus far we have discussed agriculture and 
 manufacturing as industries to be engaged in 
 by different sets of workers. In practice, I 
 believe they will be bountifully intermingled. 
 A man may work at a shoe stitcher for three 
 hours, turn off the power and go out and hoe 
 potatoes. Likewise his wife may run the same 
 machine, or a lace machine for a while, and for 
 a change of occupation operate the electric 
 hoe (something on the order of a dentist's 
 drill, only much larger) in the vegetable 
 or flower garden. Not only will Roadtown 
 
ROADTOWN 115 
 
 free the factory worker from wage slavery, 
 but it will free both farmer and machine 
 worker from long hours of toil at monoto- 
 nous work. It will free our civilization 
 from the curse of making machines out of 
 men; it will sift out the indolent and place 
 them at the bottom of the scale of life's 
 good things. It will reward the industrious 
 as much as man can be rewarded without being 
 given power to enslave his fellows. It will 
 make men free; it will abolish machine men, 
 factory and sweat shops, and child labor and 
 woman's economic dependence on man that 
 makes her a sexual slave. And such work, 
 such making of children into men and women 
 instead of automatons, may lessen the speed at 
 which some machines are fed, and may even 
 make tissue paper flowers on hats dearer, but it 
 will certainly make cow butter and big red 
 apples cheaper and real flowers more abundant 
 and raise the per capita valuation of human 
 life. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 R0ADT0WN MAKES CO-OPERATION PRACTICAL 
 
 IN the modern world there is no such thing 
 as an absolute individualist, or an absolute 
 cooperationist. The most rabid enemy of so- 
 cialistic and cooperative movements sends his 
 children to a cooperative school, puts his mail 
 in a cooperative post office, and pays the co- 
 operative preachers; he drinks cooperative 
 water and uses the cooperative sewage system 
 and drives his automobile on a cooperative 
 road. On the other hand, the most enthusi- 
 astic socialist wants to write his own books and 
 paint his own pictures and sign his name to 
 them and get the glory. Why, then, should 
 the poultry breeder, or the skilled bookbinder 
 cast the individuality of his labor into the melt- 
 ing pot of cooperative production? 
 
 In Roadtown the lamb of socialism shall lie 
 116 
 
ROADTOWN 117 
 
 down with the leopard of individuality and a 
 child of the common good shall lead them. 
 
 A Mecca for the Individualist. 
 
 The Roadtown corporation will stand ready 
 to sell the product of the individuals or that of 
 the cooperative producers, but it will not pro- 
 hibit them from selling individually if they so 
 desire. If, for illustration, a man should wish 
 to complete the making of a glove, though he 
 accomplished but one-fifth of the combined 
 work of four men, yet if this man prefers to 
 take less pay or work longer hours in order to 
 have the satisfaction of working for himself 
 and seeing one piece of work completely 
 through to the finish, the community would 
 have no complaint — he would pay his own way 
 and would get his pleasure from the independ- 
 ence in his work. In so doing he may develop 
 in himself or in his child the latent qualities of 
 art that machine-like application would blot 
 out forever. In like manner, men with strong 
 social temperaments, to carry out their ideal 
 would sometimes attempt to conduct agricul- 
 ture, or artistic work together that could be run 
 
118 ROADTOWN 
 
 at greater total productiveness individually. 
 If the difference were greater than the lessen- 
 ing of consumption, the venture would fail. 
 But if the difference were slight both types of 
 workmen would produce better when doing the 
 tiling they wish to do and the community 
 would get better w T ork, and what is more im- 
 portant, better men. 
 
 The Roadtown by opening up the highways 
 of exchange to all, and preventing the develop- 
 ment of huge privately owned corporations, 
 gives opportunity for the free play in both in- 
 dividual and cooperative production. The 
 trust system of industry we have to-day allows 
 only such forms of privately owned industries 
 to exist as cater to its own need. Cooperative 
 retail stores are commonly boycotted by the 
 wholesalers, a notable example of which was 
 the cooperative store organized by the federal 
 employes at Washington. On the other 
 hand, wholesalers commonly dictate the retail 
 prices at which their goods may be sold by so- 
 called competitive retailers. The retailer who 
 cuts his price is boycotted. There is no in- 
 
ROADTOWN 119 
 
 dividualism, all are tools and puppets of the 
 trusts. 
 
 The Roadtown Department Store. 
 
 The Roadtown will supply the wants of the 
 people through cooperative stores. This does 
 not mean that Roadtowners will be prohibited 
 from buying outside of Roadtown or from 
 selling his own product inside or outside of 
 Roadtown, but it does mean that the general 
 game of private merchandising will in Road- 
 town be a cooperative function and that the 
 wasteful multiplication of the small shops will 
 be eliminated. The various departments of 
 the Roadtown department stores will not all be 
 in one place, but will be strung along the line 
 at intervals of great enough length to give the 
 greatest economy in delivery. At every food 
 serving station will be a store supplying the 
 common daily needs, especially those that are 
 almost always ordered by telephone. These 
 will likely be located about every half mile. 
 Other classes of merchandise less frequently 
 called for will be located at greater distances ; 
 
120 ROADTOWN 
 
 thus men's haberdasher shops might be every 
 three miles and millinery stores every two 
 miles, while one artist's material shop would 
 suffice for an entire hundred miles of Road- 
 town. 
 
 The same system of varying lengths of units 
 will apply to all Roadtown utilities. The 
 units will be made of such length as is found to 
 be most economical. The population which 
 patronizes three serving stations may all get 
 their heat from a single heating plant, while 
 the length of two heating systems might be 
 found a profitable unit to be put under the 
 charge of one landscape gardener. 
 
 This feature of Roadtown offers great 
 economies over the single large building. For 
 instance, in an apartment house accommodat- 
 ing one hundred families, lights heat, telephone, 
 sweeping systems, etc., must all be one hundred 
 family systems, regardless of whether that is 
 the most economical unit for the system or not. 
 Roadtown utilizes every utility in length which 
 gives the maximum efficiency for that partic- 
 ular device. The foregoing sentence consists 
 of eighteen words, but the truth expressed 
 
ROADTOWN 121 
 
 therein is of tremendous economic significance. 
 Think it over. 
 
 Cooperative features of Roadtown which 
 require special centers will be located where 
 special towers or f acades can be built to break 
 the monotony of the house line. 
 
 The advantage of the universal transmission 
 of intelligence will be seen in all the industries 
 of the Roadtown. The entire industrial and 
 living system will be equipped with telephones 
 just as are the various departments of a large 
 factory. For illustration: The Roadtown 
 will employ an agricultural expert. At his 
 office will be kept soil maps of the entire Road- 
 town area, and he will be in a position to advise 
 freely with the farmers along the line what to 
 plant, where to plant, and when to plant. Or 
 if a farmer finds a new kind of bug eating up 
 the cabbage leaves, he will simply pick a few 
 bugs, put them in a bottle and send the bottle 
 by mechanical carriers to the agricultural office. 
 The agriculturist will then advise him by 
 'phone as to what course to pursue. 
 
 The same close touch with the producers on 
 the line will apply in the case of the supply of 
 
122 ROADTOWN 
 
 food growing in the gardens along the line. 
 The gardeners from day to day can 'phone the 
 chef what they will have to offer, and he can 
 arrange the bill of fare accordingly, while the 
 manager of the store can keep the Roadtowner 
 posted on the probable demand for various 
 goods made in his work room. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 R0ADT0WN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL LIFE 
 
 AN ideal social life is one in which people 
 can be together when they wish to be 
 together, and alone when they wish to be alone. 
 The better the transportation facilites, the 
 more nearly of attainment is such a condition. 
 The Roadtowners in all thickly-populated sec- 
 tions will be within commuting distance of 
 nearby cities and the attractions of these cen- 
 ters will be open to them. But such social 
 life, even for those who live in the city, is sadly 
 deficient. City people have theaters, libraries, 
 churches and crowds, but they do not have 
 neighbors with common interests. The Road- 
 towners who get the food at the same kitchen, 
 and hear the same band play, and sell their 
 products cooperatively, and promenade on the 
 same endless roof garden, and send their chil- 
 dren to the same instructors, are going to get 
 
 123 
 
124 ROADTOWN 
 
 acquainted if they so desire. The entire 
 Roadtown will be in connection by the loud 
 speaking telephone, and folks can call on each 
 other on a stormy night without so much as 
 getting out of their comfortable rockers, but, 
 for that matter, while there will be more to 
 keep a Roadtowner at home, there will be less 
 to keep him from going away from home when 
 he wants to. If anyone is lonesome in Road- 
 town, it is simply because he has no friends, 
 and if he has no friends, it can scarcely be any- 
 one's fault but his own. 
 
 But the social life of Roadtown will not be 
 limited to city trips and neighborly calls. The 
 Roadtown will have cooperative amusement 
 centers, just as it will have cooperative kitch- 
 ens and stores. At spots where the Roadtown 
 crosses streams or passes the mountains or the 
 sea shore and at certain distances apart, 
 amusement parks will be located. Here will 
 be the athletic grounds, swimming pools, gym- 
 nasiums and the means of entertainment com- 
 mon and uncommon to like resorts. At more 
 frequent intervals in the Roadtown, and so dis- 
 tributed as to give picturesque variety to the 
 
ROADTOWN 125 
 
 house line will be museums, art galleries, the- 
 aters, lecture halls and dance halls. All such 
 features that are supported by the corporation 
 must, of course, be open to all residents. Or- 
 ganizations that are not for the benefit of the 
 majority of the inhabitants will be supported 
 by their adherents. The halls of the associa- 
 tion will be open to all meetings, religious or 
 otherwise, where nonconflicting dates can be 
 arranged. 
 
 The Roadtown will offer opportunity for 
 the revival of athletics upon a scale unheard 
 of since the Olympian games of ancient 
 Greece. 
 
 Roadtown Athletics. 
 
 The Roadtown community, because of the 
 spirit of cooperation and mutuality which will 
 pervade all phases of life, will extend into 
 mature years the institutional patriotism 
 which forms such a large part of modern school 
 and college life. Under such conditions we 
 may expect to see developed a grand series of 
 meets in all manner of competitive arts and 
 sports. The winners of the local meets or ex- 
 
126 ROADTOWN 
 
 hibitions will again compete at the grand ath- 
 letic and art centers. 
 
 The Roadtown will bring the opportunity to 
 indulge in the sports and recreations much 
 nearer the life of the whole people than in the 
 present civilization. 
 
 There is no reason why every boy, big and 
 little, should not attend the ball games and ath- 
 letic meets on the home field as well as the 
 grand finale in which his team participates. 
 
 Transportation will cost him nothing, the 
 ball ground will be owned by the community 
 and the hours of Roadtown labor will be set by 
 the will of the worker and not by the greed of 
 the capitalist's purse. 
 
 Education for Old as Well as Young. 
 
 Roadtown education will apply to all ages 
 of both sexes. The whole living scheme of 
 Roadtown will be a vast school. The modern 
 school, a place where we send our children to 
 be herded in immense droves under the care of 
 girls who use the teaching profession as a 
 makeshift until an opportunity of marriage 
 arrives, is far from perfection as a means of 
 
ROADTOWN 127 
 
 child development. The disciplinarian system 
 of education which crushes out individuality 
 and molds all children in the industrial-po- 
 litical virtue of being bossed, is likely to vanish 
 as a population is freed from economic slavery. 
 
 Roadtown will provide instruction for those 
 who wish to learn and citizenship prizes and 
 privileges will go to the educated, and compul- 
 sory education and graded schools in time will 
 have no excuse for existence. These are strik- 
 ing statements and I am simply calling atten- 
 tion to the change that I believe will come 
 about naturally and unresisted. 
 
 The Roadtown will have to pay county 
 taxes, but on account of its 1,000 population 
 to the mile will influence the location of these 
 schools in Roadtown. At first the use of the 
 present public school methods must necessarily 
 be employed ; gradually as the Roadtown gains 
 influence and better teachers are secured the 
 educational system can be adapted more 
 closely to Roadtown life. 
 
 In the first place, the Roadtown home will 
 be an enlightened one. The Roadtown library 
 will be a book store house, not a reading-room. 
 
128 RQADTOWN 
 
 If the citizen wants a book or magazine he 
 telephones the library and in a few minutes the 
 book is delivered to him by mechanical carrier. 
 The kind of free library we have to-day re- 
 quires ten cents car fare and much time to get 
 a book. 
 
 There will be a library of telegraphone 
 records, which do not have to be duplicated for 
 every household, but one set at a central office 
 will suffice, where one girl can run a compli- 
 cated programme of music and lectures for 
 many homes. 
 
 Eyes to be Used Less and Ears More. 
 
 Excessive reading is hard on the eyes and it 
 lacks much of the efficiency that auditory meth- 
 ods have of conveying ideas. Our education 
 has been entirely too much from the printed 
 page and too little from the use of the ear. 
 The Roadtown dictograph and telegra- 
 phone will change all this. The child who has 
 not yet learned the letters can be taught to 
 speak German and told stories of nature and 
 history. And in all this education the parent 
 will learn along with the child and become 
 
ROADTOWN 129 
 
 fascinated by such a wonderful process. The 
 significance of this telegraphone and dicto- 
 graph will never be appreciated until we have 
 it in operation. The telegraphone is not a 
 cheap instrument to build, but when operated 
 on a large scale will be extremely economical 
 for each family. From a programme an- 
 nounced in advance a choice may be had 
 from a hundred pieces kept playing at once. 
 More than one wire can lead to each house if 
 desired. The family may be in the drawing- 
 room, listening to grand opera or a lecture on 
 philosophy, and Jimmy may be upstairs, 
 tucked in bed with ear muffs clapped over his 
 curls, being put to sleep by Sinbad the Sailor 
 or the Twenty-third Psalm, according to his 
 mother's idea of child psychology. 
 
 Outside of the visual and auditory library in 
 the home, the second great new feature in 
 Roadtown education will be the home work of 
 the child's parents. In work room and garden 
 the child will learn what the world is for. 
 About the most pitiable thing imaginable is a 
 child whose parents do not believe in child la- 
 bor. I do not mean the killing of children in 
 
130 ROADTOWN 
 
 mines and mills, but the child labor such as you 
 see on the wholesome farm, where the child 
 does his part along with the rest of the family. 
 
 The present system of keeping a child from 
 all work until his body and mind are formed 
 and then plunging him into industrial life is 
 only exceeded in folly and cruelty by the child 
 slavery system commonly known as "child la- 
 bor." "All work and no play makes Jack a 
 dull boy," but all school and play and no work 
 makes Jack a jackass. 
 
 The Roadtown child will learn his parent's 
 occupation, and his uncle's and aunt's occupa- 
 tion, and his neighbor's occupation, and will 
 have more ability to take care of himself when 
 he is ten years old than the present city-bred 
 college man of twenty. 
 
 But the community as a whole has some 
 claim on the child's life and the child's future 
 as well as the parents — a fact that all intelli- 
 gent parents will recognize. For this reason 
 instruction outside the family is desirable and 
 will be arranged by the Roadtown public 
 school system. 
 
 The occupation of housekeeping having 
 
ROADTOWN 131 
 
 been eliminated, the kindergarten teaching 
 force of Roadtown will be composed of women 
 of mature minds, many of whom will have 
 borne children and are therefore equipped with 
 actual experience in caring for them. 
 
 With the entire population to select from 
 more real or natural-born teachers will be 
 found than under the present regime, where 
 most married women are limited in occupation 
 to family food manufacturer and household 
 drudge. 
 
 Mothers for Public School Teachers. 
 
 To these instructors the children will go at 
 hours as arranged for. One woman will take 
 little tots into her home to amuse and care for 
 them while their mothers are away or at work. 
 Another will instruct the children in mathe- 
 matics. The man skilled in botany will in- 
 struct groups of children in his garden, and the 
 chemist and mineralogist in their laboratories. 
 Instead of grade schools we will have child uni- 
 versities; instead of college degrees there will 
 be citizenship examinations, with rewards of 
 positions of trust in Roadtown management. 
 
132 ROADTOWN 
 
 Instead of college young folks and old fogy 
 old folks there will be an industrial university 
 and universal athletics and sports. The Road- 
 town school system will be the most versatile 
 imaginable. It will develop the greatest gen- 
 iuses the world has ever known and save the 
 most money. Pounding literature into the 
 head of a natural born mechanic is both eco- 
 nomic and mental waste. The universal query 
 in Roadtown will not be what does he know, 
 but what can he do. 
 
 Physical education will be fully as much a 
 matter of public concern in Roadtown as men- 
 tal education. It ought to be, for disease is 
 contagious, ignorance is not. The Roadtown 
 child will play in the open country like farm 
 boys. He will be brown and sturdy and fall 
 out of trees and go swimming in the creek, but 
 he will not be a wild animal, or a pet to be 
 taken out and aired by the nurse — distinguish- 
 able from the poodle only by the absence of the 
 chain. 
 
ROADTOWN 133 
 
 Lowest Death Rate in History. 
 
 The Roadtown death rate will be the low- 
 est in the history of the world. Roadtown will 
 give the freedom to choose from the work and 
 play of city and country, the exercise and rest, 
 which is necessary to the development of a 
 good physique. The Roadtowner will eat 
 pure food, drink pure water, breathe pure air. 
 His bedding and clothes will be aired and 
 when necessary fumigated. His laundry will 
 be disinfected. His house will be made germ 
 proof. The result will be that consumption 
 and typhoid and pneumonia will disappear 
 with the first generation. A few diseases 
 which are transmitted by contact and the occa- 
 sional cripples that are born so will persist, but 
 sickness and premature death in Roadtown 
 will be so rare as to cause wonder. Dissipa- 
 tion and the use of patent medicines and nar- 
 cotic drugs cannot be prevented, but with co- 
 operative industrial organization and no one 
 profiting by the trade, these and other health- 
 destroying fakes will have far less chance to 
 grow or even survive. 
 
134 ROADTOWN 
 
 The public utilities of Roadtown will include 
 hospitals and nurseries. Public sanitary offi- 
 cers will supervise and consult with residents. 
 Private physicians will be available if there be 
 any demand for them, and when a doctor is 
 wanted he will be able to come quickly. For 
 the liniment and bandage for a cut thumb, a 
 speedier service than the monorail will be avail- 
 able, for the telephone and the mechanical car- 
 rier will be brought into play. No one in 
 Roadtown can live more than two or three min- 
 utes from the drug store. 
 
 With all the cooperative utilities and me- 
 chanical perfections that Roadtown offers 
 there is a very natural tendency to associate 
 the essentials of home life with certain forms 
 and locations of houses that our experience 
 connects with the best home life we have known 
 rather than to get down to the real causes and 
 principles involved. 
 
 Much of our present sense of house archi- 
 tecture is indeed destined to be quite lost, for 
 the Roadtowner enters his home from above 
 or below, and the pleasurable emotions aroused 
 by the view of one's cottage as he comes 
 
ROADTOWN 135 
 
 up the walk must be attached to other sen- 
 sations. But home is a place for companion- 
 ship as distinct from the swirl of business and 
 the jostle of the crowds; nor is all compan- 
 ionship necessarily human. A lawn to keep 
 and some chickens and garden to care for are 
 far closer to the essence of home than the gable 
 on one's cottage. 
 
 In the first place the Roadtown will be freer 
 from noise than either city or village. There 
 will be no lumbering vehicles and no tramp of 
 either horse or man upon unshielded pavement. 
 All stairs, roof promenade, hallway and mono- 
 rail platform will be matted; while the noise- 
 lessness of the transportation service is one of 
 the fundamental conceptions of Roadtown. 
 There is no clanking furnace in the Roadtown 
 dwelling. There is no common dumb-waiter 
 through which one receives unwelcome knowl- 
 edge of his neighbor's business. That the 
 sound will not enter from the roof above or the 
 open windows of one's neighbor's was ex- 
 plained in a previous chapter. To be spied 
 upon by one's neighbors is even more objec- 
 tionable than to be overheard. In this respect 
 
136 ROADTOWN 
 
 Roadtown is superior to any type of dwelling 
 yet devised, for in all other forms of residence 
 the windows of the house look out upon the 
 street. The Roadtown passersby are above 
 and below and no one may look into the win- 
 dows unless he is in a private garden. This 
 unique arrangement gives the Roadtown home 
 a sense of privacy and a freedom in the use 
 of light and air now known only upon isolated 
 farms. 
 
 The actual nearness of strangers to the 
 Roadtown homes is of no concern, since one has 
 no knowledge of their presence. That we 
 meet them upon the roof promenade or at the 
 monorail station is certainly not an objec- 
 tion. 
 
 The Roadtown inhabitants rent of the com- 
 munity, not of a private individual. Such a 
 lease will be permanent as long as the lessee 
 pays the rent and does not offend the rules of 
 the commonwealth. Sales for taxes and arrest 
 for the breaking of the civil law are present 
 limitations to individual liberty, from which 
 the principles of Roadtown departs not one 
 iota, but simply extends it in keeping with the 
 
ROADTOWN 137 
 
 greater number of common projects in which 
 the community is interested. 
 
 A Home in the Truest Sense. 
 
 The only further sense that attaches to the 
 idea of home is as a protection from the pov- 
 erty of old age. A plan whereby the Road- 
 town corporation will give permanent rent to 
 a person who has paid a sufficient sum into the 
 corporation treasury may be developed co- 
 operatively by the tenants. But a place to 
 live in is only half insurance against poverty of 
 old age, and we can hardly doubt that a com- 
 munity trained in cooperation, as the Road- 
 town community will be trained, will not only 
 ultimately insure its aged inhabitants' rent but 
 a sufficient sum to keep them in decent com- 
 fort. The first generation will never quite for- 
 get the egoistic pleasure that is derived from 
 our present forms of deeds for houses and 
 lands, but the sentiment of home ownership as 
 we now know it will die with the generation. 
 
 The individual pleasure of house construc- 
 tion will be lost in Roadtown, just as we have 
 already lost the pleasure of vehicle construe- 
 
138 ROADTOWN 
 
 tion. The man who argues that people will 
 not live in Roadtown because they cannot build 
 and own their own homes is a lineal descend- 
 ant of the man who said they would not ride 
 on railroads for similar reasons. The Road- 
 town inhabitant will simply transfer his senti- 
 ments and put his individuality into other arts. 
 The builder of a modern private railroad car 
 furnishes trucks and couplings which will en- 
 able him to be carried by engines and over rails 
 used in common. 
 
 Carriages, railroads, automobiles, in their 
 time, were at first opposed by the artists of the 
 day. 
 
 The Roadtown now looks like a Chinese wall 
 — when it is realized it will look like a Road- 
 town, and Roadtown will mean comfort, con- 
 tentment and prosperity, and new sentiment 
 and new art will replace the old. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 WHO WILL BUILD THE ROADTOWNS 
 
 MY many friends have advised me to sell 
 the Roadtown patents or form a com- 
 pany and sell stock. But these people have 
 failed to realize the comprehensiveness of the 
 Roadtown project. Indeed, should I have 
 promoted the Roadtown as a monopoly for pri- 
 vate gain I would have unquestionably been 
 the meanest man on earth, for in me and my 
 backers would have been combined all the des- 
 potism of the landlord, the railroad magnate, 
 the factory slave driver, the wasteful middle- 
 man, the extortionate retailer and half of the 
 commodity trusts. The private owners of the 
 Roadtown would be absolute master of the in- 
 habitants in every phase of life. 
 
 I know no better way to explain to my well- 
 meaning friends who wear dollars instead of 
 lenses in their spectacle frames why I do not 
 
 139 
 
140 ROADTOWN 
 
 care to make a private monopoly of Roadtown, 
 than to say that I was raised in a country town 
 and know the sad limitations of human aspira- 
 tions due to the loneliness and narrowed hori- 
 zon of isolated existence, and that I have also 
 lived in the congested districts of New York 
 and of other large cities and know the pain 
 and misery of the life of the city, and that for 
 me to think of promoting Roadtown as a 
 private graft would be exactly comparable to 
 the idea of the discoverer of diphtheria anti- 
 toxin keeping the secret for selfish gains. 
 
 The Roadtowns will be built by the people 
 who believe in its principles and who have 
 money to invest at 5 per cent, or the market 
 price of a security better than municipal bonds. 
 The Roadtown corporations will each be 
 chartered with a nominal capital stock which 
 will bear no dividends. I will at first hold this 
 stock in trust. This stock will be the voting 
 stock of the corporation, hence, I or trustees 
 I might name will have control of the policy 
 of the company within the limitations of the 
 charter. I wish this stock to be non-dividend 
 paying so the Roadtown can never be made to 
 
ROADTOWN 141 
 
 pay profits to me or anyone else and to pay 
 interest on bonds only to those who are cash 
 investors. My object in holding or trusteeing 
 this stock is to keep the control of the Road- 
 town out of the hands of those who may use 
 such control as a means to the numerous forms 
 of graft commonly present in corporations. 
 I wish to stand between the bond holders and 
 the residents of Roadtown and the grafters, 
 and this privilege is the reward I ask for the 
 invention of Roadtown — I want no promoters 
 or monopoly profits, no inventors' stock, and 
 no fancy salary, but I do want the opportunity 
 to see that no one else gets any such advantage 
 over the Roadtowners. 
 
 My reason for wishing to control the voting 
 stock of Roadtown is that I do not believe a 
 democratic organization can be created at once 
 in its entirety but that it will have to evolve 
 naturally. If an oligarchic form of control 
 was established now it would doubtless be per- 
 petuated for generations and become corrupt 
 as are present corporations and governments. 
 I believe that during my life time, I, with 
 the aid of good advisers, can evolve a purely 
 
142 ROADTOWN 
 
 democratic form of control and thus per- 
 manently prevent it from falling into corrupt 
 hands. I confidently expect the cooperation 
 of men of the highest national reputation in 
 matters of trusteeships. 
 
 Home Rule for Roadtowners, 
 
 The Roadtown management will have to 
 grow and develop starting perhaps with one- 
 half mile section and adopt such rules as are 
 necessary to the protection and comfort of the 
 tenants. They will be consulted about what- 
 ever concerns them directly and thus gradually 
 evolve into a plan of self-government. When 
 I say self-government I mean as regards the 
 things that under our present system they 
 haven't a word to say. They go to the polls 
 occasionally and vote for somebody but can 
 seldom trace any benefit from the vote. In 
 Roadtown direct legislation, initiative, referen- 
 dum and recall will enable a man to really have 
 a say. 
 
 The control of the local affairs in Road- 
 town will be wholly a matter of local option 
 
ROADTOWN 143 
 
 and the suffrage will be exercised by both 
 sexes. 
 
 There will be no definitely set districts as 
 townships or municipal wards, but each ques- 
 tion to be voted upon will be submitted to the 
 parties concerned, for illustration : the steward 
 will be elected or recalled by the people whose 
 food the preparation of which he superintends. 
 They will also determine his salary. If they 
 vote him a high salary and he hires an expen- 
 sive set of helpers and sets a luxurious table 
 the people who elected him can eject him if 
 they do not approve of his extravagance, but 
 if they desire to live wastefully they can do so 
 and the people of more moderate tastes can 
 move into a section which is known to be mod- 
 erate. By such opportunity for local option, 
 people will be given the chance of finding sec- 
 tions to suit their tastes and purses. 
 
 Roadtown will be a great equalizer of 
 present life by the removal of special privi- 
 leges of the rich and those who are "in" to reap 
 where they have not sown, but there will be no 
 tendency to dictate to the people how they 
 
144 ROADTOWN 
 
 should spend the money they have equitably 
 earned. You now have to ask the gas trust, 
 the ice trust, the milk and meat trust, the 
 middlemen's trust and many others even if it 
 is permissible for you to marry and live a 
 normal life. 
 
 The original price of Roadtown rents will be 
 made to vary with the desirability of the loca- 
 tion. Favored localities will be settled by peo- 
 ple with the money to pay for it, and these 
 people will naturally vote for high class service 
 and this in turn will be added to the original 
 price of rent. In this manner certain sections 
 of Roadtown may become more expensive and 
 so the various grades of society will find their 
 wants readily supplied. 
 
 Roadtown will possess a leveling influence, 
 it will hasten the equality and brotherhood of 
 man and the Kingdom of God upon the Earth, 
 but it will not reduce man to a single level at 
 one operation, and if these natural laws of 
 human nature should be outraged by an en- 
 forced leveling programme, the full Roadtown 
 development would be seriously retarded for a 
 generation. 
 
ROADTOWN 145 
 
 Detached Villas Practical but Undesirable. 
 
 In my earlier work of planning on Road- 
 town I thought it would be necessary to cater 
 to the wishes of the well-to-do by discontinuing 
 the house line in some sections and breaking it 
 up into detached villas. By carrying the 
 monorails and all pipes and wires in a trench 
 from villa to villa the full benefit of the co- 
 operative functions could be attained, but of 
 course with the additional expense of the extra 
 land, extra length of the trench and its con- 
 tents, the extra wall and the loss of the roof 
 promenades. I know of nothing that will give 
 a better conception of the wonders of Road- 
 town than to consider for a moment this villa 
 construction. By the continuation of the 
 Roadtown trench between villas it would be 
 possible to give to a modest ten or twenty thou- 
 sand dollar villa facilities that would cost half 
 a million if installed in a single country or 
 suburban home. 
 
 But when we had such a villa completed 
 what advantage would we have over the con- 
 tinuous house? A few added windows on two 
 
146 ROADTOWN 
 
 sides of the house that would look out into the 
 other fellow's windows across the lawn and in- 
 stead of passersby on a grand promenade above 
 our heads entirely removed from our sight, or 
 we from theirs, we would have a sidewalk by 
 the door where our neighbors who became 
 curious as to our domestic affairs could stroll 
 and stare into our windows and doors. In 
 practice more light and air could enter the two 
 freely open sides of the Roadtown house than 
 through the carefully shuttered windows on 
 four sides of a "private" villa. I am satisfied 
 that very few if any sections of Roadtown will 
 be built in villas because they will offer no ad- 
 vantages that I am aware of to offset the dis- 
 advantages. People will accept the uniform- 
 ity of the exterior of the roofs and walls as 
 they now accept the uniformity of the street. 
 Their personal tastes will be put on interior 
 decorations or in beautiful gardens that may 
 be seen from the roof promenade and enjoyed 
 by all. 
 
 Before the bonds are offered for the develop- 
 ment of any section of Roadtown the matter 
 of municipal franchise, and options from 
 
ROADTOWN 147 
 
 suburban land owners and farmers for the right 
 of way and for garden sites will progress as 
 much as is practicable and a statement will be 
 issued showing the appraisal value of this land, 
 the status of the franchise matter, together 
 with architects' drawings and engineers' plans, 
 and specifications setting forth the estimated 
 cost of a certain finished structure with equip- 
 ments in a certain locality. This will give the 
 prospective bond buyer an exact knowledge of 
 the property upon which he may secure the 
 mortgage in exchange for his money which will 
 be held by trustees until the required amount is 
 raised and then disbursed by them according 
 to the specifications. That this will be an 
 excellent security will be assured by the fact 
 thac the options will be secured at a very low 
 rate because of the competition raised between 
 rival land owners all of whom desire transpor- 
 tation and the other Roadtown facilities. 
 
 This principle has been made use of thou- 
 sands of times in railroad and trolley promo- 
 tion and has poured millions of dollars worth 
 of watered stock into the hands of crafty pro- 
 moters. As there is no promoter's graft in 
 
148 ROADTOWN 
 
 Roadtown the bidding of land owners for this 
 line of city through their neighborhood or 
 property will turn to the benefit of the bond 
 holder in enhancing the solidity of his security 
 and to the land owner in bringing a strip of 
 city to his farm. 
 
 Builders of Roadtown Take Minimum Risk. 
 
 The wonderful economies of the Roadtown 
 construction, such as cheap building material, 
 principally rock and sand from the farm, steam 
 shovel excavation instead of hand shovel, work 
 train instead of cart hauling and poured 
 cement construction instead of hand labor, the 
 economies of open piping and wiring, and the 
 valuable patents that are being donated be- 
 cause of the humanitarian bases of promotion, 
 will give a better building for the money than 
 can possibly be made under present conditions 
 anywhere and make the first mortgage on 
 Roadtown, including as it does transportation, 
 telephone, water, gas, electric, sewage and 
 other franchises, real estate mortgage and a 
 mortgage on a permanent fireproof house, will 
 make it the best possible form of security 
 
ROADTOWN 149 
 
 known, and no inflated land values. Don't 
 forget that feature. Such a bond will be vir- 
 tually a municipal bond as the people living in 
 Roadtown can be taxed in the form of rent to 
 meet the interest. No one who has fully 
 grasped the principle of Roadtown will doubt 
 for a minute that it can be built, for it is not a 
 complicated mechanism which must fail if one 
 part proves faulty, but simply the grouping to- 
 gether of inventions already in use. And even 
 if some of these should prove to be unfeasible 
 they would hardly be missed in the total. 
 
 The whole question of the value of the Road- 
 town bonds depends upon the question as to 
 whether or not people will live in the Roadtown 
 after it has been built. I have spent a hun- 
 dred pages telling of the comforts, conven- 
 iences, social and industrial advantages of 
 Roadtown life. Heretofore I might have 
 fallen into minor errors, but no sane and fair 
 mind can reason away the fact that Roadtown 
 life will be wonderfully attractive to the vast 
 majority of mankind. As proof of this, over 
 a hundred high class families have spoken for 
 apartments in the first section, if it happens to 
 
150 ROADTOWN 
 
 be built near New York. But suppose we 
 admit for the sake of argument that the Road- 
 town house was no better and no worse to live 
 in than a typical suburban house of to-day. 
 Clearly then the worth of the Roadtown bonds 
 will depend wholly upon the price of Road- 
 town rent which in turn will depend upon the 
 original cost and the cost of operation. 
 
 The Cost of the First Mile of Roadtown. 
 
 With a view of answering this question I 
 submit the following letters and figures from 
 Frank L. Sutton, a consulting engineer of 80 
 Broadway, New York City. These figures 
 are based upon the cost of the first mile of 
 Roadtown. These figures show that it will 
 not be necessary to build a long section of the 
 Roadtown before it can underbid the rental of 
 the isolated house or city apartment and thus 
 secure population and begin business. 
 
 It goes without saying that as the length of 
 the Roadtown increases the cost per mile and 
 the cost per house both in construction and 
 operation will decrease. 
 
ROADTOWN 151 
 
 FRANK SUTTON, 
 
 CONSULTING ENGINEER, 
 
 80 Broadway, 
 New York, November 12, 1909. 
 Mr. Edgar Chambless, 
 
 150 Nassau Street, New York City. 
 Dear Sir : Referring to the report hereto attached 
 giving a general description and the estimated cost of 
 the mechanical and electrical equipments for the Road- 
 town, as well as the cost of construction of the build- 
 ing and equipment, and further the cost of operation, 
 would say that these results have been carefully com- 
 puted and there is no doubt but that the Roadtowns 
 can be built and operated for the figures given in the 
 report. 
 
 On account of the arrangement of the building and 
 the convenience by which raw material can be trans- 
 ported, the proposition is without doubt the most 
 economical and efficient form of good construction 
 that can be devised. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Feank L. Sutton. 
 
152 ROADTOWN 
 
 REPORT 
 ON 
 CONSTRUCTION WORK AND POWER EQUIP- 
 MENT FOR PROPOSED 
 ROADTOWN 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANK SUTTON, CONSULTING ENGINEER, 
 
 80 BROADWAY, NEW YORK CITY. 
 
 The following calculations are based on the con- 
 struction of two hundred and fifty (250) two-story 
 houses in a continuous row. This also includes a 
 continuous glass enclosed roof promenade 10 ft. wide 
 and 8 ft. high. The estimate gives the complete con- 
 struction of these buildings, including the tunnel for 
 the proposed monorail road, also a central power 
 plant, including kitchen, laundry and such other 
 equipments as may be necessary for the proper main- 
 tenance of such an establishment. It further includes 
 all mains, pipes, wires, so that when the plant is com- 
 pleted it would be ready to turn over to the occupant 
 in a completely finished condition. 
 
 Each house will be equipped with hot water heat 
 furnished from a central station ; electric lights, elec- 
 tric power, telephone connected with central station, 
 vacuum sweeping system, complete plumbing and 
 water supply. 
 
ROADTOWN 153 
 
 The calculations which are given herewith are fairly 
 close and without doubt under proper management 
 and accessible facilities for getting material the work 
 can be done for the estimate given. 
 
 250 houses, 21' wide X 20' deep, with seven 
 rooms well furnished as per illustration 
 
 @ $1,800 each $450,000 
 
 Five cooperative centers, tower-like in effect 50,000 
 
 Wiring houses based on $ 50 per house 12,500 
 
 Heating, « " " $150 " " 37,500 
 
 Plumbing, " " " $125 " " 21,250 
 
 Laundry machinery 8,000 
 
 Cooking apparatus 12,000 
 
 Boiler plant and heating apparatus 40,000 
 
 Refrigerating plant 10,000 
 
 Electric plant and switchboard, telephone 40,000 
 
 Wiring, feeder mains, etc . 12,000 
 
 Brick Chimney 4,000 
 
 Sewerage system 20,000 
 
 Water supply and mains for irrigation and 
 
 domestic use 40,000 
 
 Gas and vacuum producers and holders . . . 10,000 
 
 One mile of house — equipped $777,250 
 
 Cost per house — equipped $3,109 
 
154 ROADTOWN 
 
 The principal fixed charges for labor, coal, interest 
 on the investment would be as follows: 
 
 Chief engineer $ 2,400 
 
 Two (2) assistant engineers, $80 per month, 
 
 $960 each 1,920 
 
 Four (4) firemen, $60 per month, $240 each 2,880 
 
 Two (2) extra men, $50 per month 1,200 
 
 Chef, $75 per month 900 
 
 Three (3) cooks, $40 per month 1,440 
 
 Four (4) helpers, $20 per month 720 
 
 One (1) laundryman, $100 per month 1,200 
 
 Ten (10) women, $20 per month . 2,400 
 
 Total labor cost $15,060 
 
 Coal 4,000 
 
 Oil and waste 500 
 
 6% interest on $581,250* $34,375... 
 
 7% " " 196,000* 14,550... 48,852 
 
 Total expense for one year's operation, 
 
 interest and depreciation $68,385 
 
 Or each tenant's rent for year to be $22.76 per 
 
 * The lower rate of interest is charged upon the house and 
 fixtures, the higher rate upon the plants and machinery. 
 
ROADTOWN 155 
 
 month or $3.25 per room, exclusive of charge for food 
 but inclusive of furniture, power, cooking, heat, light, 
 water, vacuum sweeping, laundry and the delivery of 
 all food, parcels, produce, etc. 
 
 The population could without doubt be increased 
 by 500 to 1,000 houses more without any material in- 
 crease in the principal items for labor, such as engin- 
 eers, firemen and heads of departments. The only 
 extra increase would be for help in these departments 
 which would be governed by the amount of work re- 
 quired. 
 
 TRANSPORTATION CALCULATIONS. 
 
 Using Autos 
 
 Four (4) electric autos for passengers and 
 
 food $12,000 
 
 10% interest, depreciation and re- 
 pairs $1,200 
 
 Six (6) men @ $75 per month . . . 5,400 
 
 $6,600 
 
 For 250 families $1.70 per month. 
 
 Mr. Sutton has not included the Boyes 
 Monorail in his report because he was asked 
 to make an estimate for a single mile of Road- 
 
156 ROADTOWN 
 
 town. For this length the auto service is the 
 more economical. Mr. Sutton, however, finds 
 no fault with the Monorail, as is seen from the 
 following letter: 
 
 Mr. Edgar Chambless, 
 
 New York City. 
 
 Dear Sir: In reference to the adoption of the 
 Boyes Monorail system for Roadtown would say that 
 I have carefully examined the drawings and general 
 outline of the scheme designed by Mr. Boyes and be- 
 lieve it to be well adapted as a means of rapid and 
 noiseless transportation, and further believe that the 
 operating expenses of this system and the cost of 
 construction will be extremely reasonable. The de- 
 sign of the system from a mechanical and electrical 
 standpoint is entirely practical. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Frank L. Sutton. 
 
 The total cost for building and operating 
 the Boyes monorail system between New 
 York and Philadelphia or for ninety miles is 
 estimated by Mr. Boyes as follows : 
 
ROADTOWN 157 
 
 ESTIMATED COST OF BUILDING AND OPER- 
 ATING ROADTOWN TRANSPORTATION. 
 
 As submitted by Wm. H. Boyes using the 
 Boyes Monorail system. 
 
 Line from New York to Philadelphia — 90 
 miles. Cost of the double express and 
 single local track, not including ex- 
 cavation, cement work, nor power 
 plants which are figured in general 
 cost of Roadtown, 270 miles at $15,000 
 
 per mile $4,050,000 
 
 24 express trains at $28,000 672,000 
 
 18 local trains at $5,000 90,000 
 
 Total cost of equipment $4,812,000 
 
 Interest and upkeep at 7y 2 % $ 360,900 
 
 126 motor men at $1,000 126,000 
 
 75 guards, ticket men, etc 60,000 
 
 Total $ 546,900 
 
 Monthly cost per family $2. 
 
 Economy Increases with Length. 
 
 The Roadtown becomes more efficient as it 
 grows in length, but the argument that it can- 
 
158 ROADTOWN 
 
 not be started because it will be too tremen- 
 dous an investment to build a house a hundred 
 miles long is wholly without meaning, for a 
 Roadtown of a hundred apartments would 
 show an advantage over a box style apartment 
 house of the same room capacity and this effi- 
 ciency would increase with every added apart- 
 ment. The first Roadtown bonds will be 
 floated for a mile or half mile unit and will 
 require funds well within the cost of one apart- 
 ment house. To this beginning house units 
 will be added as fast as needed and more utili- 
 ties put in as the increasing length warrants it. 
 Suburban land owners will donate rights of 
 way and garden strips, farmers will donate 
 larger gardens, and ranchmen immense farms. 
 Each will be governed somewhat by the bid- 
 ding on proposed competing routes, but 
 it is safe to predict that they will all recognize 
 the enormous increase in land values that a 
 strip of city will bring with it and bid accord- 
 ingly. It is interesting to speculate on the 
 size of their bids for such a wonderful advan- 
 tage in view of their very liberal gifts to steam 
 
ROADTOWN 159 
 
 and trolley roads which have given them so lit- 
 tle in comparison. 
 
 The location of the first Roadtown will be 
 determined by the people who give the new 
 form of civilization the warmest welcome. If 
 you have any inducements or practical sug- 
 gestions to offer, write, I'll be glad to welcome 
 and consider them. It may be in Long Island 
 or in California or in Japan, but the locations 
 of the subsequent Roadtowns will be more 
 easily predicted : they will be wherever there is 
 enough population to make cooperative house 
 construction worth while and sufficient wealth 
 and enterprise to execute such an undertaking. 
 
 The logical location for early lines of Road- 
 town will be at the end of present rapid transit 
 or commuting facilities of our cities or will tap 
 these lines far enough out to avoid high land 
 values. Thus there will be ample vacant 
 ground to start a Roadtown at the uptown end 
 of the New York Subway that could build 
 right through to Boston. Real estate within 
 or near the city will, of course, be higher in 
 price, but as such Roadtown dwellings will be 
 
160 ROADTOWN 
 
 able to compete in every sense with the present 
 prevailing forms of two story houses seen in 
 such districts, and have in addition all the 
 Roadtown advantages including indoor rapid, 
 noiseless and dustless transportation, they 
 could afford to pay for the extra value of such 
 land and still be the object of envy by the out- 
 side residents. As soon as it has passed be- 
 yond the present suburban or speculative belt, 
 the Roadtown will at once take on the life of 
 the city in the country as pictured in this book, 
 yet all the inhabitants will have quick and cheap 
 transportation services into the old cities. 
 
 The demand for such Roadtowns for com- 
 muting purposes will be so great at first as to 
 prevent the earlier structures from coming into 
 their full use as homes for a population that 
 shall support itself by work within the Road- 
 town proper. How quickly this demand will 
 be filled is a matter of speculation. The eco- 
 nomic incentive will readjust wisely. It never 
 fails. At present, with all the suburban devel- 
 opment, the heart of the city is becoming more 
 and more densely populated. We have not 
 been able to get people out of the city as 
 
ROADTOWN 161 
 
 rapidly as the population increases. The 
 Roadtown will materially aid in this fight to 
 get the people out of the city to live. 
 
 A Real Remedy for Congestion. 
 
 " But with the development of the Roadtown 
 a new factor enters this fight against conges- 
 tion. The suburbanite must depend upon the 
 city for his livelihood, the Roadtowner need 
 not. The result will be that the Roadtown as 
 soon as built will begin to take people away 
 from the city to work as well as away to sleep, 
 and this means a real relief of city congestion, 
 not simply the frantic piling up of humanity 
 twice each day at the gates of the city. 
 
 You might ask, what will be the ultimate 
 place of the Roadtown in the civilization of the 
 world? The answer is as impossible as would 
 have been an answer to the ultimate place of 
 the railroad in the civilization of the world had 
 that question been proposed seventy years ago. 
 The railroad is a great civilizer. It carries 
 with it all the material aids to civilization that 
 can be hauled in a freight car. The Roadtown 
 carries into the home what the railroad takes 
 
162 ROADTOWN 
 
 only to the freight and express office, and it 
 carries in addition the civilization of pipes and 
 wires which the railroad cannot transport. It 
 would have been a wonderful vision for a man 
 of the first quarter of the last century to have 
 attempted to picture the ultimate effect of the 
 railroad — but his vision would have fallen short 
 of the reality. Try for a moment now to take 
 the railroad out of civilization and substitute 
 the methods of 1825. I believe the Roadtown 
 will be to the twentieth century what the rail- 
 road was to the nineteenth and that my present 
 efforts to predict its future would fall just as 
 far short of the reality as would Stevenson's 
 dream of the railroad civilization of to-day. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 IN R0ADT0WN THERE WILL BE NO TRUSTS 
 
 THE only effective way to fight the trusts 
 is to cease to patronize them and the only 
 way to cease to patronize them is to move into 
 an environment which is more economically effi- 
 cient. 
 
 Every labor saving invention in the history 
 of man has thrown someone out of work. The 
 grain binders were broken and burned by the 
 old fashioned harvest hands. The hand type- 
 setters opposed the introduction of the lino- 
 type. But the economic invention came in 
 spite of this opposition. The Roadtown is a 
 new arrangement of civilization, a new plan 
 for all commerce and all city building; it will 
 do for the entire programme of transportation 
 what the linotype did for the type setting in- 
 dustry. The entire industrial life of the world 
 will desert the present economic system just as 
 
 163 
 
164 ROADTOWN 
 
 the farmers deserted the old scythes and flails. 
 As a result a large proportion of the people 
 who now work with the crude systems will be 
 thrown out of employment. Who are these 
 people? They are teamsters and expressmen, 
 and clerks, messengers, and bookkeepers, and 
 others too numerous to mention, but these peo- 
 ple are merely the servants of private corpora- 
 tions. And the corporations own the ware- 
 houses, wholesale and retail stores, and the little 
 shops, and street cars, and cabs, and conduits, 
 and the gas and electricity, and hundreds of 
 other things. These, corporation or trust 
 owners, and their political henchmen who live 
 on the fat of the land and who by employing 
 a lot of servants distribute our goods and in- 
 telligence to us by a crude, wasteful, dishonest, 
 and disorganized system, will also eventually 
 lose their jobs. The men who drive the 
 wagons will learn to raise vegetables, and the 
 girls behind the hat counters will learn to make 
 hats. But their bosses with appetites whetted 
 to luxury will be out of a job "for fair" for 
 with the exception of the mines and foreign 
 commerce, the Roadtown will leave them no 
 
ROADTOWN 165 
 
 chance to graft off the producer and consumer 
 by the aid of a privately owned and barbar- 
 ously inefficient mechanism of distribution and 
 house construction. 
 
 Verily, there will be weeping and wailing, 
 and soft hands blistered, and fair names of the 
 privileged families without prestige in the 
 world, for the trusts will have lost their jobs, 
 and there will be but one trust, and that will be 
 owned by the people. 
 
 Shall we Miss Them? 
 
 The Roadtown is remarkable for the new 
 things that it will add to civilization, but it is 
 even more remarkable for the things that will 
 be conspicuous for their absence. In the 
 Roadtown there will be no streets, no street 
 cars and no "subway air"; no kitchens, no coal 
 bins, no back yards or back alleys full of crime 
 and tin cans ; no brooms, no feather dusters, no 
 wash day ; no clothes line, no beating the carpet 
 or shaking the rug out the window ; there will 
 be no clothes brushes, no pressing clothes by 
 hand, no lugging the beds out to air them ; the 
 Roadtown home will have no dish washing, no 
 
166 ROADTOWN 
 
 cooks, no maids, no janitors, no furnace, no 
 ashes, no dust, no noise, no kindling to split 
 nor buy for five cents a bundle ; there will be no 
 moving vans, no coal wagons, no ice wagons, no 
 garbage carts, no ash carts, no milk wagons, 
 and no delivery wagons; no horses except for 
 pleasure drives and no need for a society for 
 the prevention of cruelty to animals ; in Road- 
 town there will be no fire engines, no cabs nor 
 taxi-cabs, no mixing of pedestrians and ve- 
 hicles, no street car blockades, no grade cross- 
 ings and no "death avenues"; there will be no 
 bargain rushes, no small shops, no middleman's 
 profits, no bill boards, no advertising of useless 
 and harmful articles, no waste of money for 
 little bottles and cans and bags, no adulterated 
 food, no wilted vegetables, no unsanitary 
 "loose" milk, no systems of cesspools and 
 wells to spread typhoid and other disease 
 germs; for the Roadtown farmer there will 
 be no hitching the horse to go to church nor 
 driving to town to get the mail, no kerosene 
 lamps, no slipshod ungraded country school, no 
 lightning rod peddlers and no book agents ; in 
 Roadtown there will be no need for umbrellas, 
 
ROADTOWN 167 
 
 rubbers nor overcoats in the daily routine of 
 business — such protection from the weather 
 being only required by the keepers of live stock 
 and upon occasional visits to the old style city ; 
 there will be no snow to shovel, no slipping of 
 horses or humans on icy streets, no street 
 cleaners, no water wagons, no swill tubs, no 
 rain barrels, no manure carts, no dumb-waiters 
 to pull up, no popping and sizzling steam radi- 
 ators (hot water heating instead) ; no beds to 
 make, no expensive strings of funeral carriages, 
 no fire escapes, no waiting in rain or snow to 
 catch a car, no canned goods, no delicatessen 
 diet ; in the Roadtown there will be no unem- 
 ployed problem and no men out of a job except 
 those who are too lazy to work, and yet there 
 will be many changes in occupation, for the 
 Roadtown will have no news boys, no mes- 
 senger boys, no mail carriers, no traffic police- 
 men, no teamsters, no cabbies, no street car 
 conductors, no expressmen, no delivery boys, 
 no peddlers, no push cart men, no waiters to 
 tip, no insurance agents ; no organ grinders, no 
 rag pickers nor old clothes men, no street fakirs 
 nor sandwich men; no beggars, no liveried 
 
168 ROADTOWN 
 
 flunkies; no sweat shops, no child labor, no 
 wage slavery, no rent on fictitious land values, 
 and no trusts to gobble up the fruits of labor. 
 
 The history of civilization shows that me- 
 chanics control economics, that economics con- 
 trol morality, and that the morality of the time 
 is expressed through the law; and conversely 
 law does not control morality nor morality 
 economics nor economics mechanics. Me- 
 chanics is the foundation of all that is good 
 and bad in civilization, law the paint on the fin- 
 ished structure. The painters who are con- 
 stantly retouching the exterior get credit for a 
 good deal of change but their work is of little 
 real moment compared with the changing of 
 the fundamental structure. 
 
 The Boadtown Religion. 
 
 A tremendous step toward the perfection of 
 civilization will be made when the world recog- 
 nizes the two following principles: 
 
 (1) That cities should be built in long con- 
 tinuous lines. 
 
 (2) That housing, as a framework, and 
 scientific transportation, as a compact mechan- 
 
ROADTOWN 169 
 
 ism to fit therein, should be developed as a 
 single enterprise. 
 
 The Roadtown will tend to perfect transpor- 
 tation as applied to people, commodities and 
 intelligence. Highly perfected transportation 
 means opportunity to get together or to get 
 apart. It means socialism for the socialist, to- 
 gether with all the advantages of individualism, 
 and individualism for the individualist, to- 
 gether with all the advantages of coopera- 
 tion. 
 
 The mission of the Roadtown is to assist in 
 the development of the physical, mental and 
 moral qualities of mankind through the gradual 
 elimination of all physical, mental and moral 
 waste, thus creating an environment where 
 selfishness and inequality of opportunity will 
 gradually disappear and where man will finally 
 en j oy all the fruits of his labor. 
 
 The above expresses the principles of the 
 Roadtown religion — a faith which holds that 
 the Kingdom of God can be realized on this 
 earth and points a practical way by which such 
 realization may be attained. 
 
 If you accept these principles and can add 
 
170 ROADTOWN 
 
 them to the faith of your present religion you 
 are indeed a Roadtowner. 
 
 The Roadtown is as humanitarian and revo- 
 lutionary in its principles as is Single Tax or 
 Socialism and like these is destined to become 
 a great social movement enlisting the minds 
 and hearts of those who have developed the so- 
 cial conscience — who believe in it and are will- 
 ing to work for a civilization wherein the equi- 
 table distribution of wealth may be realized. 
 But these other movements depend for their re- 
 sults largely upon the conversion of the major- 
 ity of the population to their creeds. Road- 
 town will be a great social "movement" but it 
 will be more than a movement — it will be a 
 realization and that speedily. In fact the ob- 
 ject of the author in painfully preparing this 
 little volume ( for I am a round peg in a square 
 hole at book writing) is to lay the Roadtown 
 plan before the public to a degree that will 
 stimulate the active interest of enough people 
 to accomplish through their cooperation the 
 financing, and building the first section of 
 Roadtown. The first section built, no human 
 power can stop the Roadtown revolution. 
 
ROADTOWN 171 
 
 So if you find in the spirit of Roadtown a 
 response to the feeling within your own soul 
 write to the author that you may be counted 
 upon as a Roadtowner to believe and to 
 perform. 
 
 If you do not understand the mechanics of 
 Roadtown, write. There are engineers who do 
 and who can explain this to you. If you are 
 an architect or an engineer, an inventor or an 
 agriculturist with a criticism or practical idea 
 that will make Roadtown better, write. If you 
 live in a locality suitable for the construction of 
 a Roadtown line, write. If you know of any 
 one else who can help the cause write to them 
 to write. 
 
 Whether you be preacher, carpenter or pub- 
 licist ; bookkeeper, broker or blacksmith, if you 
 wish to play a part in founding the new civil- 
 ization, talk, preach, speak, write or publish 
 the Roadtown gospel. Send the book to one 
 friend and advise the rest to buy it. Write an 
 article on the subject and get your editor 
 friend to publish it. 
 
 If you fear that the crookedness of finance 
 that has blackened many a fair gift to human- 
 
172 ROADTOWN 
 
 ity may smirch this latest boon — make it your 
 business to investigate fully ; consult with men 
 of wide experience and unquestionable honor 
 who are well posted on this particular subject 
 who may help you to establish in your mind 
 the true nature and phenomenal significance of 
 this movement. And above all if you are but a 
 man among men toiling at your allotted task 
 and taking the stinted portion which the 
 "system" allows you, write, that your name 
 may be filed on the waiting list as one of those 
 to whom the occupancy of a Roadtown house 
 may be offered as soon as the cement of the first 
 section has hardened and the civilizing currents 
 have been turned into the arteries of "A New 
 Heaven and A New Earth" here on this God 
 plowed and human harrowed planet in this 
 the early years of the Twentieth Century. 
 
 THE END