An outlay of $1500 to $2500 will secure a cottage in the country, or a
tenement with five or six rooms in the suburbs, for a wage-earner's
family. The rent for this should be from $125 to $200 per year, but, as in
the case of the model tenements in New York, a minimum of sanitary
appliances and of labor-saving devices is found in such dwellings. They
are adapted to a family life of mutual helpfulness and forbearance.

The lack of this kind of housing has been a disgrace to our so-called
civilization. Public attention has, however, been directed to the need,
and it is gratifying to find in the report of the U.S. Bureau of Labor,
Bulletin 54, Sept. 1904, a full account, with photographs and plans, of
the work of sixteen large manufacturing establishments in housing their
employees.

Euthenics, the art of better living, is being recognized as of money value
in the case of the wage-earning class, but the wave of social betterment
has not yet lifted the salaried class to the point of cooperation for
their own elevation. They are obliged to put up with the better grade of
workmen's dwellings, or to pay beyond their means for a poor quality of
the house designed for the leisure class. In either case, the weight bears
hardest on the woman's shoulders, and it is to her awakening that we must
look for an impetus toward an understanding of the problems confronting
us.

The college-educated women of the country believe so fully that the
twentieth century will develop a civilization in which brain-power and
good taste will outrank mere lavish display, that they have sent out a
call to their associations to devise methods of sane and wholesome living
which shall leave time and energy free for intellectual pleasure--some, at
least, of that time now absorbed by the house and its demands as insignia