Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/766

738 everywhere for inverted methods natural organization, or, in other words, scientific coöperation.

The claim that the Federative Home, or "People's Palace," is the natural, inevitable form of the organized Household—coextensive with the future society—brings the subject within the domain of legitimate social science. The consideration of improved expedients for housing the people, without regard to the essential form and tendencies of civilization, is no part of social science, but only a discussion of the arts of life.



IVILIZATION has not reached that state of perfection where hospitals can be dispensed with. 1. As long as armies exist, hospitals will be necessary. Soldiers when sick must be provided with special accommodations; and, after a battle, the wounded cannot be properly cared for except in hospitals constructed especially for the purpose. 2. During epidemics of contagious and infectious diseases, it becomes a necessity to separate those infected from the well, and for their accommodation hospitals must be erected. 3. In every community, especially in large cities, there are always a certain number of paupers without any homes, who must be cared for when sick, and the only practical way of providing for them is to establish hospitals. 4. In large cities provision must be made for street casualties, and hospital accommodations are necessary. 5. On account of difficulty in making suitable provision for the insane in private houses, hospitals or asylums for the insane are necessary.

In this country, in all large cities, any one representing himself as poor and sick can apply either to the public hospitals supported by the State or to hospitals supported by voluntary contributions, and is admitted in many cases without any special inquiry or investigation as to his circumstances. In some places—as New York City—hospitals are so numerous, and admission to them so freely granted, that there is little or no restraint on impostors. If refused admission to one institution, they go to another and receive treatment and care without cost, when they are fully able to provide for themselves. And so numerous are the dispensaries where medicines and medical advice can be obtained free of cost, merely for the asking, and so easy and readily can care and attention be had in free hospitals, that the poor have no necessity to make provision for sickness.

It is estimated that about $10,000,000 are expended in public and 