It means plumbing and interior finish; it also means
a finish on the outside, smoothly shaven lawns and immaculate sidewalks.
Sigh as we may for the colonial house, we confess that the standards of
the time did not include the comfort of hot baths, polished floors,
plate-glass windows, elevators, ice-closets, and lawn-mowers. These are
necessary adjuncts to what is held as merely decent living; _how_ can the
$2000 man have them, not why _will_ he not?
What then is the house and the life in it to become for the great majority
of families and individuals with an income of $3000 a year and necessarily
nomadic habits. I say necessarily, because these families are at the mercy
of business and social conditions quite beyond their control and
impossible to foretell.
So far as prophetic vision sees through the mists of time, the aim of the
twentieth century is to live the _effective life_.
The simple life has been preached, the strenuous life has been lauded,
but, as William Barclay Parsons recently stated it:[1] "We need force, we
need a vigorous force; we need that direction and avoidance of the
unnecessary which is simplicity, but with either one alone there is
something lacking.
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