Let society once thoroughly understand that safe shelter is essential to its very life, that this safety is threatened, if not lost, by present habits, and, by quick money-making schemes in house-building, it will establish standards of living which shall not only be for the material welfare, but for the mental, moral, and spiritual progress of the race.

This progress can be secured by applying centrifugal force to congested districts, by interesting capitalists to consider housing at the same time with manufacturing plants, not only providing safe, economical houses, but by making it socially possible to live in them on moderate incomes.

The rising half, we must remember, is more affected by social conventions than the submerged tenth.

The well-to-do should consider more conscientiously those who recruit their ranks, who, if started right without danger of debt, will have freedom to advance.  The present muddle has come about in part because no one has taken the trouble to investigate the reasons.  The young family with $3000 a year has ideals for the manners and morals of the children which are not satisfied with those of the inexpensive tenement quarter.  Prevention they consider better than cure, hence they pay higher rent than the income warrants to secure elevating examples and morally wholesome surroundings.

[Illustration:  The Morris Company’s Block of Single Houses, with Central Heating Plant (remainder cut off).]

[Illustration:  The Morris Building Company’s Block of Single Houses, with Central Heating Plant, Brooklyn, New York.]

A single family cannot control a whole street, although cooperation can accomplish a great deal in the way of congenial neighborhoods.  But the risk involved, the liability to error of judgment, as well as the large outlay of capital, at once prevents the adoption of this means of satisfactory housing for the business and professional class to any great extent, at least in the city.  The acumen needed to discover the profitable in real estate, the skill to acquire large contiguous tracts of land, both belong to the capitalist.  Only when he is a philanthropist besides, is the housing question safe in his hands.  Such an example we find in the Morris houses, Willoughby Ave., Brooklyn, N.Y.  This set of family dwellings was put up to meet this very need.  Congenial neighborhood, safe playgrounds for the children, labor-saving devices for the housekeeper.  When first built they were in advance of anything in an eastern city of their class.  To-day Mr. Pratt has even more advanced ideas which will take form in the future.

[Illustration:  Aerial-view Drawing:  The Morris Building Company’s Block of Single Houses, with Central Heating Plant, Brooklyn, New York.]

These attractive and comfortable houses, so near the working places of the teachers and professional and business men who occupy them, were possible only because of the comparative cheapness of the land, which had been held undesirable for high-class single houses, not for sanitary reasons, but solely on account of social conditions.  This cluster of forty houses makes its own atmosphere.  This is the lesson to be learned.  Let groups of like-minded families make their own surroundings.  The capitalist will soon learn where his interest lies.