The future will surely bring greater mechanical perfection and thus leave it possible for the individual, for each member of the family group, to do for himself many little things which are not comfortable to do now.  But will he be willing to do them?  Not unless he feels it to be a duty or a pleasure.  Not unless there is an undercurrent of principle which carries him along.  Without this principle strong enough to give an impetus over hard places in the early stages of life, the individual and the family will surely drift into the hotel and boarding-house, where everything is done on a money basis and nothing for love of one’s kind; where a tip salves the hurt of menial work.  These habits once gained are hard to break up; therefore it is much better for young people to begin life doing some things for themselves in a house where machinery responds to their call without a tip, where they may economize without loss of self-respect.  We need to revive some of the pagan ideals of the beauty and value of the human body and human life which consists in the care and use of this body.  There is no menial work in the daily living rightly carried out; that which the last century wrongly permitted is made needless by the machinery of to-day.

The point of view is most important.

The first steps toward social betterment will come through a cooperation of three forces:  (1) a recognition of the need; (2) an awakening of social conscience to the duty of supplying the need; and (3) the movement of moneyed philanthropy to fulfil the requirement quickly.

As was natural, sympathy flowed first to the class which had the most visible need, not necessarily the greater need.

The New York Model Tenement Association has shown the world how easy it is, when there is a will, to find a way.  That association has already taken the first step in advanced housing, and reduced the cost of safe and rentable city shelter to its lowest terms.  Fireproof, sanitary, and convenient so far as rooms go (it is quite a climb for the mother with a baby in her arms to the sixth story), with neighbors carefully sorted, repairs well looked after, a sympathetic woman as agent always in the office; but only a minimum of light and air and sun; bedrooms 7x8, living-rooms 10x13; the smallest spaces the law allows; no grass, no flowers outside, no pets, nothing of one’s own that cannot be put in a cart; common stairways where only partial privacy is gained; clothes-yards on the roof, and laundry in the basement, to be used in turn by twenty tenants.  Because this is better than the slums for the emerging class, and because they like the gregariousness, is no argument for continuing the type up into the range of the $2000 group.  But this is just what most of the small apartments do—­those built to make all the money that they will bear.  Hardly any better facilities are given.  It will be easy for more roomy living-places to be built on similar plans, with elevators and labor-saving devices, and yet within the limit of moderate incomes, such blocks to be always under competent sanitary supervision.