they like best, and work — freely, more than they have to.”
I pondered on this. “Ah, but they have to — labor is compulsory.”
Owen grinned. “Yes, labor is compulsory — always was. It is compulsory on everyone now. We used to have two sets who wouldn’t work — paupers and the idle rich; no such classes left — all busy.”
“But, the freedom of the individual ”
I persisted.
“Come, come, brother; society always played hob with the freedom of the individuals whenever it saw fit. It killed, imprisoned, fined; it had compulsory laws and regulations; it required people to wear clothes and furnished no clothes for them to wear. If society has a right to take human life, why has it not a right to improve it? No, my dear man,” continued Owen (he was evidently launched on his specialty now) “society is not somebody else domineering over us! Society is us — taking care of ourselves.”
I took no exception to this, and he began again. “Society, in our young days, was in a state of auto-intoxication. It generated its own poisons, and absorbed them in peaceful, slow suicide. To think! — it seems im possible now — to think of allowing anybody to sell bad food!”
“That wasn’t the only bad thing they sold” I suggested.
“No; unfortunately. Why, look here — ” Owen slid a glass panel in the wall and took out a book.
“That’s clever,” I remarked approvingly, “Bookcases built in!”
“Yes, they are everywhere now,” said Nellie. Books — a few of them — are common human necessities. Every home, every room almost, has these little dust-tight, insect-proof wall cases. Concrete construction has helped very much in all such mat — ters.”
Owen had found his place, and now poured upon me a concentrated list of the adulterated materials deteriorating the world in that period so slightingly referred to as “my day.” I noticed with gratitude that Owen said “When we were young!”
“You never were sure of getting anything pure,” he said scornfully, “no matter what you paid for it. How we submitted to such rank outrage for so long I cannot imagine I This was taken up very definitely some twenty years ago, by the women mostly.”
“Aha — ‘when the women woke up!’ ” I cried.
“Yes, just that. It is true that their being mostly mere housewives and seamstresses was a handicap in some ways; but it was a direct advantage in others. They were almost all consumers, you see, not producers. They were not so much influenced by considerations of the profits of the manufacturer as they were by the direct loss to their own pockets and health. Yes,” he smiled reminiscently, “there were some pretty warm years while this thing was thrashed out. One of the most successful lines of attack was in the New Food system, though.”
“IwZZtalk!” cried Hallie. “Here I’ve inveigled Uncle John up here — and — and fed him to repletion; and have him completely at my mercy, and then you people butt in and do all the talking!”
“Gro it, little sister — you’re dead right!” agreed Jerrold, “You see, Uncle, it’s one thing to restrain and prevent and punish — and another thing to substitute improvements.”
“Kindergarten methods?” I ventured.
“Yes, exactly. As women had learned this in handling children, they began to apply it to grown people — the same children, only a little older. Ever so many people had been talking and writing about this food business, and finally some of them got together and really started it.”
“One of these cooperative schemes?” I was beginning, but the women looked at me with such pitying contempt that I promptly withdrew the suggestion.
“Not much!” said Nellie disdainfully. “Of course, those cooperative schemes were a natural result of the growing difficulties in our old methods, but they were on utterly wrong lines. No, sir; the new food business was a real business, and a very successful one. The first company began about 1912 or ‘13, I think. Just some women with a real business sense, and enough capital. They wisely concluded that a block of apartments was the natural field for their services; and that professional women were their natural patrons.”
“The unprofessional women — or professional wives, as you might call them — had only their housewifery to preserve their self-respect, you see,” put in Owen. “If they didn’t do housekeeping for a living, what — in the name of decency — did they do?”
“This was called the Home Service Company,” said Hallie. “(I will talk, mother!) They built some unusually attractive apartments, planned by women, to please women; this block was one of the finest designs of their architects — women, too, by the way.”
“Who had waked up,” murmured Jerrold, unnoticed.
“It was frankly advertised as specially designed for professional women. They looked at it, liked it, and moved it; teachers, largely doctors, lawyers, dressmakers; women who worked.”
Sort of a nunnery?” I asked.
‘My dear brother, do you imagine that all working women were orphan spinsters, even in your day?” cried Nellie. “The self-supporting women of that time generally had
<<< other people to support, too. Lots of them were married; many were widows with children; even the single ones had brothers and sisters to take care of.”
“They rushed in, anyhow,” said Hallie. “The place was beautiful and built for enjoyment. There was a nice garden in the middle ”
“Like this one here?” I interrupted. “This is a charming patio. How did they make space for it?”
“New York blocks were not divinely ordained,” Owen replied. “It occurred to the citizens at last they they could bisect those 200x800-foot oblongs, and they did. Wide, tree-shaded, pleasant ways run between the old avenues, and the blocks remaining are practically squares.”
“You noticed the irregular border of grass and shrubbery as we came up, didn’t you, Uncle?” asked Jerrold. “We forgot to speak about it, because we are used to it.”
I did recall now that our ride had been not through monotonous, stone-faced, right-angled ravines, but along the pleasant fronts of gracious varying buildings, whose skyline was a pleasure and street line bordered greenly,
“You didn’t live here and don’t remember, maybe,” Owen remarked, “but the regular thing uptown was one of those lean, long blocks, flat-faced and solid, built to the side-walk’s edge. If it was a line of private houses they were bordered with gloomy little stone-paved areas, and ornamented with ash-cans and garbage pails. If the avenue end was faced with tall apartments, their lower margin was infested with a row of little shops — meat, fish, vegetable, fruit — with all their litter and refuse and flies, and constant traffic. Now a residence block is a thing of beauty on all sides. The really necessary shops are maintained, but planned for in the building, and made beautiful. Those fly-tainted meat markets no longer exist.”
“I will talk!” said Hallie, so plaintively that we all laughed and let her.
“That first one I was telling you about was very charming and attractive. There were arrangements on the top floor
