Here again a readjustment is coming; some expenses in house construction common now will be lessened or done away with; for example, fancy shapes, grooved and carved wood, projecting windows and door-frames.

It is usual, when the various new methods are brought up, to estimate the cost as additional to all that has gone before, rather than to see in it a substitute for much that may go.

Our family with $1500 income may safely pay $300 for rent, if that covers enough comfort and does not mean too much car-fare.

The house may cost $3000 if built on the old lines, and if the land it is placed on is not too expensive.

A fire-proof house such as is described in the July number of the Brickbuilder and Architect, 85 Water St., Boston, and probably also a house of reinforced concrete, will cost at present some $10,000 besides the land.  Because of freedom from repairs it should be possible to rent such houses for $500, which will bring them within the reach of our $3000 a year family, but not within the means of the $2000.  What is to be done?

It will be remarked by some that little attention has been given in these pages to the various so-called cooperative plans, like Mrs. Stuckert’s oval of fifty houses connected by a tramway at each level, with a central kitchen from which all meals come and to which all used dishes return, with a central office from which service is sent, etc.

Frankly, to my mind this is not enough better than the apartment hotel, as we now know it, to pay for the effort to establish it.  As now evolved by demand, the establishments renting from one to fifteen thousand a year are on progressive lines.  According to Mr. Wells, this shareholding class is on the way to extinction in any case, fortunately he also thinks, and the student of social economics need not concern himself with its future, only so far as its example influences the real bone and sinew of the republic, the working men and women who make the world the place it is.

Within the ten-mile radius it has been usual to include a front yard, if not a garden, in the house-lot.  The cost of keeping this in the trim fashion decreed as essential, of planting and pruning of shrubs, of maintaining in immaculate condition the sidewalks and front steps, like most of the items in cost of living, is due to changed standards, just as the cost of table-board has advanced from $3 to $6 without a corresponding betterment in quality.

Engle’s law, “The lodging, warming, and lighting have an invariable proportion whatever the income,” does not hold under modern conditions for the group we are considering, for our wise ones need the best, and not a few of them are unwilling to buy their family sanctity at the price of a closet in the basement for the faithful maid.

Plans may look well on paper, the completed house may seem attractive, but when the family live in the house its deficiencies become apparent.  Cheap materials, flimsy construction, damp location, any one of a dozen possibilities may make the family uncomfortable, may cost in heating and doctor’s bills, may compel a moving before the year is out.  Cheap houses in this decade are suspicious; the more need for a knowledge on the part of young people of what may be expected.