And a notable group of artisans, few in number but steadily increasing, with electric motors at their elbows, to-day enjoy complete emancipation from the factory bell. A woodcarver, bookbinder, leather stamper, forger of ornamental iron, rug weaver, potter, lens grinder, or printer, can have to-day a shop of his own and take pleasure in the chosen and constantly varied toil that gives him bread. In their simpler forms the modern lathe, loom, printing press, are cheap enough to be within the means of poor men, while their product when it displays taste and originality is sure of a market. In times past Palissy, Hargreaves, and many another master of a handicraft, has perfected a remarkable invention in a small shop. We may expect the arts to receive golden gifts in the future from the successors of these men, feeling as they do the stimulus of a broadening demand for work executed on new lines of excellence.
Tendencies Against Centralization.
Until within a few years past economic forces in America threatened soon to place its chief industries in the hands of a few men, so strong and unscrupulous as to be able to extort weighty and increasing tribute. For this danger remedies legislative and judicial are being sought, with the prospect of eventual success. In this place it may be allowable to remark how the progress of invention is working hand in hand with the aims of social justice. In the pages immediately preceding this chapter we have seen how cities and towns are working themselves loose from monopoly. A gas supply, on the old basis of manufacture at least, must be a unit, with a strong temptation to overcharge its customers. To-day the lighting field is shared with electricity, showing many isolated plants; when these purvey heat as well as light their rivalry with central stations may become formidable. In American villages and small towns the principal source of light is petroleum, largely controlled by the Standard Oil Company. From its exactions there opens escape as the farmer finds a source of cheap alcohol in his corn, potatoes and beets, even in his unmarketable fruit or damaged grain, ready to give him more light than petroleum ever did, and besides propel his machinery, or carry his crops to the nearest market town. The betterment of common roads throughout the Union proceeds in earnest. As that reform goes forward we may see motor-driven cars and wagons exerting a restraining influence on local railroad rates. Already the steam railroads are facing keen competition from interurban electric lines. Wherever these lines resist absorption, or control, by the steam carriers they serve the farmer so well and cheaply as to be one of the chief boons he has received at the inventor’s hands.
Take one instance chosen from many as striking. Dayton, Ohio, is a center of interurban lines which enfold in their sweep Urbana, Columbus, Hamilton and Cincinnati. Upon 220 miles of these lines the Southern Ohio Express Company picks up cans of milk, cases of eggs, crates of berries, packages of tobacco, from a thousand farmsteads. In the larger business of carrying grain and live stock the expansion is constant, so that the day seems near at hand when the company will find profit in placing a switch at every farm along its lines, sending cars there for everything the farmer has to sell. And the countryman finds Dayton as good a place to buy in as to sell in; its merchants offer better and cheaper wares than are to be had in the home village or the neighboring small town. To-day a farmer or market-gardener, a dairyman or stockbreeder, does not find the smallness of his capital the drawback it would have been ten years ago. With an interurban line passing near his home, or in front of his door, with a cheap telephone at hand, and enjoying a free rural mail delivery, he can sell his produce when he pleases and at the best market prices, paying but a light tax to the middleman, or completing a transaction with a directness that leaves the middleman out altogether.
Steam railroads seek large trainloads to be moved long distances; an electric freight and express service coins dimes into dollars by picking up market baskets, bundles for the seamstress and the laundress, a bunch or two of saplings for the orchard. The trunk lines of America, with their wide-spreading branches, enable merchants in the cities and the larger towns to replenish their counters and shelves every day. Stocks, therefore, need not be so large as of old, when, let us say, a whole winter’s goods were laid in by October. The change reduces the amount of capital required, the outlays for rent and insurance, the liability to shrinkage and deterioration of values. The interurban roads are extending these advantages to the village storekeeper who, in the morning telephones his wants to Toledo, Cleveland, or Detroit; and in the afternoon disposes the ordered wares on his shelves.[45]
[45] Outlook, New York, January 7, 1905.
New Domestic Architecture.
American dwelling houses, whether in city or country, have within forty years been much improved in plan and equipment. To speak only of dwellings in cities, we may note how designers and inventors have promoted comfort and convenience, healthfulness and cheer. At the close of the Civil War an ordinary house in Philadelphia, or Chicago, as it left the builder’s hands was little else than a bare box. Stoves for warming and cooking had to be brought into it, wardrobes heavy and clumsy were placed beside its walls, cupboards meant to be moved and not moved easily held the raiment and table linen. In rented houses the gas fixtures might belong to the tenant; when he took them away ugly breaks appeared in walls and ceilings. To-day all this is of the past: in important details the design of the mansion is embodied in dwellings comparatively small. Furnaces for heating, ranges for cooking, form part and parcel of the building; fixtures for gas and electricity, yielding both light and heat, are provided just as water faucets are; every bedroom has its clothes closet instead of the lumbering wardrobe. In the kitchen we find dressers and china closets built into the walls; the laundry has stationary washtubs and, in some cases, a drying room as well, so that the laundress does not care should it rain on washing day. The aim throughout is that the house and its equipment shall as far as possible make up a unit, that the labor of housekeeping be minimized to the utmost by a judicious outlay of capital when the house is built.
Electricity at Home.
Since 1900 the American householder, as well as the American business man, has fairly awakened to what the telephone can do for him. It is estimated that in 1905 the telephone in the United States earned four times as much as the telegraph. The day is at hand when every household but the poorest will enjoy the wonderful gift of Professor Bell. In somewhat the same fashion it is dawning upon the public that electricity stands ready to perform other services, each minor, but all, in the aggregate, going far to promote health and comfort at home.