take a hand in the matter.




CHAPTER IV.


THE PLACE OF THE HOUSE IN THE SOCIAL ECONOMY OF THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY.

"We have entered upon the period of conscious evolution, have
begun the adaptation of the environment to the organism."--Sir
OLIVER LODGE.


The hopeless pessimism of the past, that saw in the unmerciful progress of
organic evolution no escape for the human animal from the grip of fate, is
about to give way to the enthusiasm of conscious directing and controlling
power.

This is the beneficent result of the age of the machine. Man has
discovered that he can not only change his environment, but that by this
change he can modify himself. The hope of the future lies in the moulding
of man's surroundings to his needs. In physiological terms, "the
adaptation of structure to function."

The day is long past when shelter implied chiefly a tight roof and a dry
floor. The housing of the twentieth-century family means location, central
and fashionable. It means in cost far more than what the roof covers and