That last step made it possible for people to think of the communization of home industry, to think of eating food cooked in other ovens than their own, to think of one oven large enough for a whole village. Many interesting experiments in co-operative living immediately sprang up. But the next step came slowly and, even now, is only firmly established in the cities, in the actual abandonment of the family kitchen for the community kitchen in the form of the restaurant. In such families we have unity only in the hours of sleep and recreation.
Along with abandonment of the separate kitchen there has proceeded the abandonment of the parlor in the homes of the middle classes. To lose the old, mournful front room may be no subject for tears, but the loss of the evening family group, about the fireside or the reading-lamp, is a real and sad loss. The commercialized amusements have offered greater attractions to vigorous youth. The theater and its lesser satellites, amusements, entertainments, lectures, the lyceum, and recreation-by-proxy in ball games and matches have taken the place of united family recreation. Of course this has been a natural development of the older village play-life and has been by no means an unmixed ill.
Now, behold, what has become of the old-time home life! The family that spent nearly twenty-four hours together now spends a scarce seven or eight, and these are occupied in sleeping! Little wonder that the next step is taken—the abandonment of this remainder, the sleep period, under a domestic roof, as the family moves into a hotel!
Along with the tendency toward communal working and eating we see the tendency to communal living by the development of the apartment building. Since roof-trees are so expensive, and since in a practical age, few of us can afford to pay for sentiment, why not put a dozen families under one roof-tree? True we sacrifice lawns, gardens, natural places for children to play; we lose birds and flowers and the charm of evening hours on porches, or galleries, but think of what we gain in bricks and mortar, in labor saved from splitting wood and shoveling coal, in janitor service! The transition is now complete; the home is simply that item in the economic machinery which will best furnish us storage for our sleeping bodies and our clothes!
We are undoubtedly in a period of great changes in family life, and no family can count on escaping the influence of the change. The one single outstanding and most potent change, so far as the character of family life is concerned, is, in the United States, the rapid polarization of population in the cities. The United States Census Bureau counts all residents in cities of over 8,000 population as "urban." In 1800 the "urban" population was 4 per cent of the total population; in 1850 it was 12.5 per cent; in 1870, 20.9 per cent; in 1890, 29.2 per cent; in 1900, 33.1 per cent; in 1910 it was estimated at 40 per cent.[2] Here is a trend so clearly marked that we cannot deny its reality, while its significance is familiar to everyone today.
However, the village type remains; there are still many homes where a measure of family unity persists, where at least in one meal daily and, for purposes of sleeping and, occasionally, for the evening hours of recreation, there is a consciousness of home life. Yet the most remote village feels the pressure of change. The few homes conforming to the older ideals are recognized as exceptional. The city draws the village and rural family to itself, and the contagion of its customs and ideals spreads through the villages and affects the forms of living there. Youths become city dwellers and do not cease to scoff at the village unless later years give them wisdom to appreciate its higher values. The standard of domestic organization is established by the city; that type of living is the ideal toward which nearly all are striving.
The important question for all persons is whether the changes now taking place in family life are good or ill. It is impossible to say whether the whole trend is for the better; the many elements are too diverse and often apparently conflicting. Faith in the orderly development of society gives ground for belief that these changes ultimately work for a higher type of family life. The city may be regarded as only a transition stage in social evolution—the compacting of masses of persons together that out of the new fusing and welding may arise new methods of social living. The larger numbers point to more highly developed forms of social organization. When these larger units discover their greater purposes, above factory and mill and store, and realize them in personal values, the city life will be a more highly developed mechanism for the higher life of man. The home life will develop along with that city life.
§ 4. PURPOSEFUL ORGANIZATION
At present the home is suffering, just as the city is suffering, from a lack of that purposeful organization which will order the parts aright and subject the processes to the most important and ultimate purposes. The city is simply an aggregation of persons, scarcely having any conscious organization, thrown together for purposes of industry. It will before very long organize itself for purposes of personal welfare and education. The family is usually a group bound in ties of struggle for shelter, food, and pleasure. Such consciousness as it possesses is that of being helplessly at the mercy of conflicting economic forces. The adjustment of those forces, their subjection to man's higher interests, must come in the future and will help the family to freedom to discover its true purpose.
It is easy to insist on the responsibility of parents for the character-training of their children, but it is difficult to see how that responsibility can be properly discharged under industrial conditions that take both father and mother out of the home the whole day and leave them too weary to stay awake in the evening, too poor to furnish decent conditions of living, and too apathetic under the dull monotony of labor to care for life's finer interests. The welfare of the family is tied up with the welfare of the race; if progress can be secured in one part progress in the whole ensues.