Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/762

734 the fields, and to double the production of the soil, is to substitute suitable buildings at the centre of an agricultural township for unsuitable, straggling farm-houses and barns, and to replace solitary labor on farms by the modern method of organized industry, applied to the cultivation of a domain large enough to permit selection of soils and the use of adequate machinery. This question, "How can we keep the boys on the farm?" has just received a thoughtful answer from Colonel George E. Waring, in an "Ogden Farm-Paper," in the April number of the American Agriculturist.

What we need, in order to harmonize our household system with other branches of modern industry, is a Federative Homestead, owned by those inhabiting it, in which the great entries or halls may be considered as streets under cover, and the individual or family domiciles, houses under a common roof. For such buildings a new architecture and new machinery are needed. The Peabody tenement-houses in London, the family club-houses in England and on the Continent, the family hotels in this country, and the Familistère at Guise, though furnishing valuable architectural suggestions, have solved as yet but few of the problems of construction of the "People's Palace," as it has been called. Invention also has done comparatively little to furnish labor-saving machinery for agriculture and the household on account of the segregated and slovenly character of these industries.

The most obvious form of the People's Palace in the town is a hollow square, surrounded with streets, with inclosed and surrounding gardens—the space in the centre being large enough to give air and a pleasant outlook to the inner domiciles. To further this object, one side of the square might be left open, or devoted to work-rooms, only a single story in height. In the country the building might take the form of a cross, giving an open view on all sides with public rooms and halls, or a conservatory under glass (a winter garden) in the middle, and gardens surrounding.

The economies would increase, and also the independence of the occupants, with the increase of numbers within certain limits. While the edifice might be of equal size for rich or poor, the separate domiciles would naturally be smaller and more numerous where the means of the proprietors were less. In the same building the various domiciles would differ in value according to situation and size, and thus would suit persons of different means. Not less than one hundred nor more than four hundred families may be assumed for illustration as probable limits of number.

A building of architectural beauty, favorably situated in country or town, to contain one hundred domiciles, would cost, including land, not more than two-thirds as much as one hundred separate houses of the same class, giving to each family the same amount and quality of habitable room. The edifice should be fire-proof, safer from intrusion, better drained, better ventilated, freer from offenses of all kinds, than