Roadtown

by Edgar Chambless

The first function, washing and ironing, has long since been made an industrial function by the rich everywhere, and also by the middle class in our cities. Farmers’ wives and the wives of the city laborers still do home laundrying. In the Roadtown, with its perfect system of transportation, the trouble of sending soiled clothes to the coöperative 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 coöperatively. 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 things depends on traits in human nature that are pretty hard to anticipate. We force people to coöperate, 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 mopping 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.

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, carefully 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 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 housekeeper 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 Roadtown biologist. At stated intervals the outside shutters will be tightly closed as well as door of the closet and the bedding fumigated instead of aired. This method can also be used to disinfect clothing.

There will be few rats or mice in the Roadtown 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 purposes, the damage from rats and vermin, I am told, is often over 10 per cent of the gross sales.

Coöperative Cooking Practical.

Coöperative 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 results 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.