The only remedy in sight is for an investment of capital in up-to-date houses of various grades in city, suburbs, and country; such investment to bring 4 per cent, not 40, or even 15, unless by rise of land values.  No better use of idle money could be made at the present time.  In “Anticipations” Mr. Wells writes:  “The erection of a series of experimental labor-saving houses by some philanthropic person for exhibition and discussion would certainly bring about an extraordinary advance in domestic comfort; but it will probably be many years before the cautious enterprise of advertising firms approximates to the economies that are theoretically possible to-day.”  This is truer now than when Mr. Wells was writing.

The great difficulty in the way is the first outlay.  So many things will have to be designed, patterns made and machinery built to make them; for this advance in construction will not be by hand-made things.  There will be more head-work put into the various articles, but the mass of constructive material must be machine-made, at least for the family of limited income.  And these articles need not be ugly.  There must be many of the same kind in the world, to be sure; but if the design fits the purpose, this may not be an evil.  No one objects to a beautiful elm-tree in his field because in hundreds of fields there are similar elm-trees.  Slight variations in finish, color, etc., can give individuality to the simplest chair.

Therefore the first outlay for the new order will be beyond the purse of any single family of this group.  If we had learned to cooperate sanely, a group might undertake it, but the most probable method will be for some far-sighted men to agree to sink a certain amount of money in experiment, just as they now sink money in prospecting a mine with all the uncertainty it brings.  Ability to risk in an experiment must go hand in hand with capital to use.

The objection commonly made is that all individuality will be taken away, that each one must live like every one else in the neighborhood.  This is not an essential consequence, but will it be so impossible to have a certain similarity in the dwellings of like-minded people?  In “Anticipations” it is declared that “Unless some great catastrophe in Nature breaks down all that man has built, these great kindred groups of capable men and educated adequate women must be under the forces we have considered so far, the element finally emergent amid the vast confusions of the coming time."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Anticipations, pp. 153-4.]

The practical people, the engineering and medical and scientific people, will become more and more homogeneous in their fundamental culture.