The game of life in wild nature is but the getting of food and water to the consuming plant or animal, or getting the more adaptable animal to the food or water or some warm spot, or the society of his fellows. So the life of man, whether it be the family with the single house or the city with its many houses, shows a similar relation—things needed by the inhabitants, things taken from the place where they are and to a place where we want them—that is transportation.
Start out in the morning, number your every minute’s occupation, watch what your neighbors are doing. The man on the stairs, the wagon on the street, the rumbling subway train in a three million dollar a mile right of way, the elevator in the skyscraper, the office boy at beck and call—it is all transportation. Run over in your mind the work of the office and brain workers in a city business section, how many of them are engaging in planning, directing and accounting the various forms of transportation.
In fact, every hour of existence we are performing some act of transportation except when asleep. If we allow eight hours for rest we find that two-thirds of our lives are spent in transporting ourselves to our wants or our wants to ourselves.
The basic principle of Roadtown is a plan to give the social body proper arms and legs, to make them not as they are, separate and uncoördinated functions, but as part, in fact the most important part, of the scheme of civilization.
The members of society are all engaged in transporting themselves and their belongings a goodly portion of their time, and besides a large group is exclusively engaged in the work of transportation. Moreover, the so-called productive labors are at every step interwoven with operations of transportation. Analyze for a moment the work of the factory, of the farm—how much of it is production, how much is transportation? Could we, like Aladdin, rub a mystic lamp and cause things to be created from nothing, we would indeed be well served. But could we command the génie of transportation, the will to wish what is from where it is to the place where we want it, our power would be equally miraculous and quite as useful.
Our methods of production, though still extremely wasteful, are constantly growing in efficiency. In this age a minority of mankind produce for the entire population. A constant stream of people from the farm pours into the city. These people produce nothing and expect to live by distributing goods to each other; but congestion of population in large cities introduces insolvable mechanical difficulties in distribution, until railroads, ware houses, trucks, wholesale and retail stores, delivery wagons, grocery boys and dumb-waiters, become congested; the machine clogs and thus the growing efficiency of modern production is lost through a more rapidly growing waste in distribution.
The increasing number of those who get their living by taking a slice of profit and the growing expense due to the ever increasing mechanical difficulties in distribution are evils that aggravate each other.
As the makers of law live principally by the profits of distribution, they will not change the scheme, nor can the wealthy, with their country villas legislate the modern city tenant back to the loneliness, long hours and lack of conveniences of farm life. A proposition that would combine cheaper rents, greater conveniences and give all an opportunity to engage in productive work would be a real solution for the high cost of living. Roadtown eliminates all possible waste and relieves the army of distributors of nine-tenths of their present work, thus throwing these people into productive labors.
Labor which results in the creation of a concrete product—something that can be eaten or worn is generally appreciated. Transportation, the far greater necessity, is not so readily appreciated as a source of wealth, nor is the waste in transportation so quickly seen or remedied.