THE HOME OF THE FUTURE

In Which Our Higher Natures Will Be Given a Chance to Shine

Anne O'Hagan

"A number of men and women, believers in feminism, organized the Feminist Alliance yesterday. The Alliance will proceed at once to build a new twelve story apartment house, on the feminist plan, having obtained funds from rich friends. The housekeeping problem will be handled with the idea of freeing the housewife from all household work even to the caring for her children. In place of the kitchen there will be fireless cookers sent up the dumb waiter with the evening meal. For the children there will be rooms in the basement where Montessori teachers will be in charge— with cribs for the children to sleep in 'while their parents go out together at night to places of entertainment and public instruction.' The family wash and even the family sewing is to be given to a corps of experts in the basement. Max Heidelberg was made chairman of the Committee of the Socialization of the Primitive Industries of Women. The architect will design an apartment house with all the mechanical fixtures needed to relieve women of the work that machines can do. The 'primitive industries of women' were named—as 'the care of children, the care of the home, the preparation of food and the preparation of clothing.' "

FROM "THE NEW YORK TIMES," APRIL 5, 1914.

CENE: A living-room in the apartment house La Place aux Dames, in which Woman, freed at last from the petty and harassing details of the kitchen and nursery, has uninterrupted opportunity to develop her Higher Nature.

Time: Any winter evening in 1915 when there is no Cooper Union or Carnegie Hall meeting requiring Woman's appearance on the platform.

Dramatis Personœ: Any wife and any husband.

The perfect waitress from the Efficiency Bureau of Material Needs in the basement has fust withdrawn in the wake of the fireless cooker in which had been sent up the evening rations of proteins, carbo-hydrates, fats and sugars, prepared according to the prescriptions of the Physical Welfare Director of the building.

HUSBAND: Shall I read you this editorial from the Evening Post, my dear, on the year's lynchings in Mississippi?

WIFE (looking up from her book, entitled, "Into the Discard with All That Is, or a New Deal All Around," by W. L. George, Dora Marsden and General Flora Drummond): Thank you, dear, you were not taught voice-placing in youth, and consequently you are an execrable reader. If you are in the mood for reading aloud to-night, suppose I telephone downstairs to the office for Miss Chrysostom, the elocutionary expert. If she is not already engaged, she-

HUSBAND: Oh, no, thank you! I only thought you might care to hear what this fellow says. I certainly don't want to spoil our evening by dragging in any more experts.

WIFE (amused but caressing)'.What a quaint old cave-man it is. The husband rattles the pages of the Evening Post and resumes his reading.

A pause of five minutes.

HUSBAND: By the way, did you see Buster this evening?

WIFE: Little Pankhurst (rebukingly) looked very well when I went into the dormitory at six. He was already asleep. Miss Vandeveer, the baby expert, gives all the children under four their final feeding at five o'clock and they are all asleep by six.

HUSBAND (sarcastically): Would he have known you if he had been awake?

WIFE (patiently): Dearest, do not allow your reactionary temperament to make you unjust and unreasonable. Surely the true relation between mother and children is based upon something profounder than her subserviency to the needs of their little bodies.

HUSBAND: By the way, who is the Infant Face-Washer this week? I hear that the one of last week discovered that she, too, had a Higher Nature?

WIFE (coldly): There has been a change in play-mothers, I believe.

Both continue reading for a time. Husband finally yawns, puts aside his newspaper, rises and fills his pipe.

HUSBAND: Wish you'd give us a little music, Betty. Court was very wearing to-day.

WIFE (carefully marking her place in her book and rising): What would you like to hear?

HUSBAND (lazily): Anything at all you feel like giving me—oh, no, Betty! Not the Perfected Piano Player, please! I don't want paper punctured Paderewski or cold storage Hoffman! I meant you—you and the old piano and "Butterfly," or something of that sort.

WIFE (despairingly): O, my dear, how long will it be before you grasp the fact that I can't play? Music is an art—a profession— and the amateur performer is a menace to musical art. She was excusable only during the dark period of the world's history when she was practically the only means of acquainting a large part of the community with the work of the great composers. But here, here in this house where, in every department, the perfect machine has superseded the bungling woman, where mechanical contrivances are so arranged that you may hear at any time the best music faultlessly performed—really, dear, you are discouraging!

HUSBAND: Never mind then, if you don't want to. I'm not yearning for any Boston-Symphony.

Wife, after looking at him reproachfully, sighs with a martyred air, seats herself again and resumes her book. He wanders restlessly about the apartment. Finally he goes to his overcoat pocket, produces documents and, sitting down at a desk, falls to work upon them. Wife eventually notices this.

WIFE: George! You haven't brought work home with you again?

HUSBAND: I have.

WIFE: But that's awfully wrong and foolish. Your system requires relaxation after the day's labors. You will work less efficiently to-morrow because of this.

Husband makes no reply. Wife tries to continue reading, but is restless, stealing worried looks at him. Finally she says: Would you like to play a game of chess?

HUSBAND: NO, thank you! Neither you nor I can touch Lasker or Capablanca as chess players. It's ridiculous for us to do badly what they do with absolute science and skill.

He continues to work. Wife sighs, moves about restlessly, and gets her. embroidery. Finally speaks again: What do you think of the Legislature's action on the old-age pension bill?

HUSBAND: I have never studied the workings of the old-age pension laws in other countries. Therefore, I have no opinions in regard to the matter. I leave that to Lloyd-George and to Experts.

WIFE (after a pause): Did you see Tom to-day?

HUSBAND: Yes.

WIFE: Did he say that he and Lily had come to a better understanding?

HUSBAND: My dear Elizabeth, have we nothing better to do with the precious leisure we have been at such pains to procure for ourselves than to gossip about the romantic vaporings of a pair of young imbeciles who have not progressed emotionally beyond the early McKinley era? .(He looks up from his w,ork and perceives what she is doing.) Isn't that needlework you are doing? Is it allowed by the charter of this institution, the terms of our lease? Oh, it is! As an idle-hour pursuit, I suppose and not as an industry? That seems to me inconsistent. Don't you know that you are a bungler at embroidery compared with the French nuns and . the women of Madeira?

WIFE (half pouting, half wistful): Well, you won't stop work! I want you to stop—and to talk to me. You remember you used to say that all the time in the world would not be enough for you to tell me—just one little thing.

HUSBAND: But now I know that I'm neither an expert conversationalist nor an expert love-maker. Telephone down to the office if you want those; they must keep wits and matinee idols on tap. Every shoemaker to his last—I'm merely a lawyer.

WIFE: Well, what am I to do?

HUSBAND: Express your Higher Nature. Isn't this edifice built solely because all your lovely sex has so much Higher Nature that it needs more room for its expression? Freed from the drudgery of the what-d'-you-call'ems—the 'primitive industries of women'— fall to! Don't admit that finer characters have been developed in nursing croup than in reading Ellen Key.

Wife sits and stares gloomily at nothing. Husband watches her for a few seconds.

HUSBAND: Well, aren't you going to go ahead and develop your higher nature? Listen, I have an idea. How would you like to see Ziegfeld's "Follies of 1915" or some other equally purifying drama of uplift?

WIFE (brightening): George, for an old fogy, you have moments of positive inspiration! Wait till I get my hat.