The keen observer hesitates in view of all these conditions to advise any young man to invest in real estate for a home beyond a sum which he can afford to lose if need arises to move.  These changes carry a need for mobilization of its army of workers.  The encumbrance of family Lares and Penates cannot be tolerated.  Only a small per cent of young men are to-day sure of remaining in the city in which they begin business.  What folly to encumber themselves with real estate which, sold at a sacrifice, brings barely half its price!  Moral exhorters have not carefully considered this side of the question in their arguments for house-owning and family-rearing as anchors to the young man.

The fact noted earlier is a case in point.  After the wedding-cards were out the bridegroom was transferred to the charge of the company’s office in another city.

The expenses necessitated by these frequent removals make an unaccounted-for item in many incomes.

If the young couple have saved or inherited between them, say, $3000, shall they build a home with it?  Decidedly not.  Because the house will cost $5000 before they are done.  Not only because of the unexpected in strikes and change in prices of materials, but because, as the plans take shape, the wife or the husband or both will see so many little points which they will ask for, the paper plan not having conveyed a definite idea to either.  An excellent plan was carried out by a college woman.  She made a model to scale in pasteboard, of such a size that every essential detail was shown in its relation to other portions of the structure.

Even if these young people do not yield at the moment of building, they will probably wish they had yielded when they come to live in the house.  There will be nothing for it but to mortgage the place to make it satisfactory.  One cannot take up a newspaper without finding notice after notice, reading, “Must be sold to pay the mortgage.”

Exorbitant rent is of course social waste, and society must protect its ablest young people from their own folly; but when they understand the rules of the financial game better they will lend themselves more readily to some cooperative plan of relief.

It is, as I well know, rank heresy, but I firmly believe that building and owning of houses can be afforded only by those having the higher limit of income, $3000 to $5000 a year, unless the person has a permanent position or a business of great security, and in these days who can be sure of anything?

When the land-scheme promoter advertises homes on the instalment plan, beware of the trap!

Let no one buy in the suburbs from a sense of duty and then hate the life.

Comfort in living is far more in the brains than in the back.

It is so easy for a man or woman with one set of ideals to do that which another would consider impossible drudgery.