The Cost of Shelter by Ellen H. Richards
page 50 of 105 (47%)
page 50 of 105 (47%)
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architect to improve the hearth out of existence." Sentiment is a useful
emotion, but when it held open funerals of diphtheria victims, society stepped in and forbade. With a certain advance in social consciousness public opinion will step in and regulate sentiment in regard to many things depending on individual whim. Heating might now be accomplished without dust and ashes, without the destructive effects of steam, if enough houses would take electricity to enable a company to supply it in the form of a sort of dado carrying wires safely embedded in a non-conducting substance, or in the form of a carpet threaded with conducting wire. Both heating and cooling apparatus could be installed in the shape of a motor to replace the punkah man and the present buzz-wheel fan, and to give fresh air without the opening of windows which leads to half our housekeeping miseries. O woman, how can you resist the thought of a clean, cool house, sans dust, sans flies and mosquitoes, sans the intolerable street-noise, with abundance of fresh filtered air at the desired temperature! It is all ready at your hand. A windmill on the roof can store power, or a solar motor can save the sun's rays, or capsules of compressed air may be had to run the machine, if only you were not so afraid of the very word machine that no man dares propose it to you. Of what use is all the invention of the time if it cannot save the lives of the children, half of whom fall victims to house diseases, if it cannot sweep away consumption and influenza and all the kindred diseases arising from over-shelter and under-cleanliness of that shelter (lack of air). Both men and women are sentimental and non-progressive, but education is assumed to make wiser human beings. Women are said to be monopolizing the education; is it making them more amenable to reasonableness and less under the control of unprogressive conservatism? It does require quick adaptation to keep up with the possibilities of |
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