William Francis Channing

“ Here is one of the greatest existing wastes of labor. The separate house necessarily and permanently dooms woman to drudgery. Under the present system she necessarily carries on a hundred trades every day by hand-work, as wasteful of productive force as the old spinning-wheel. The labor of women, saved in this way, would find new channels. The steam-power in the unitary building, in constant use for elevators, pumping, washing, cooking, heating, lighting, would always furnish a surplus of motive power for sewing-machines and small industries which would naturally grow up. ”

“ The claim that the Federative Home, or "People's Palace," is the natural, inevitable form of the organized Household—coextensive with the future society—brings the subject within the domain of legitimate social science. The consideration of improved expedients for housing the people, without regard to the essential form and tendencies of civilization, is no part of social science, but only a discussion of the arts of life. ”

“ What is needed in agriculture to charm the population back to the fields, and to double the production of the soil, is to substitute suitable buildings at the centre of an agricultural township for unsuitable, straggling farm-houses and barns, and to replace solitary labor on farms by the modern method of organized industry, applied to the cultivation of a domain large enough to permit selection of soils and the use of adequate machinery. ”

“ In the older States our population is rushing into the towns, not because the earth has grown barren, or because our town-life is natural or beautiful, but because modern civilization attracts and marshals mankind to coöperative work, and the universal instinct revolts against anti-social methods and solutions. More farmers and farmers' wives, in proportion to the population, are insane, than any other industrial or professional class in America ”

“ The want of either of these factors, the distinct individual units, or the scientific grouping and marshaling of units in a collective unity, deprives a body of its place in the organic world. The same factors must enter into every social organization which is entitled to the name. We have in this country an example of a true organization in our federative political system, composed of townships, counties, States, and nation, with its motto, "Out of many, one." I have drawn thence the designation Federative for the organized Homestead. ”

“ The first step toward social order is to secure the independent existence of the individual or family in a home which, like the traditional English house, shall be a castle inviolable and safe from all intrusion. ”

“ Witness the insecurity and ruinous waste of our separate households, the drudgery of women, and the slavery to servants. In agriculture witness also the loss of at least one-half the natural product by incoherent labor in the fields, and by the isolated farm-house and barn. ”

“ Between the transmitter and receiver, on whose necessary identity of vibrations he constantly insists, he employs an electric current as the intermediate, to take on, in its wave-motions or polarizations, all the possible variations of the sound-waves striking on the transmitter, and to give them up again to the receiver. Reis, without talking about "undulatory" currents, makes them the staple of his telephone. ”

“ Our present common-school system (the best of our institutions) is a violation of social organic law, on the side of communism, to balance its violation in the opposite direction by incoherent industry and incoherent homes. ”

“ In palatial buildings, occupying with inclosed and surrounding gardens a whole city square, erected with the wealth of a hundred rich families, nine-tenths of all the work would be done by the collective labor of employés, who would have no personal relations or contact with the individual proprietors. The remaining one-tenth of domestic service would admit of such selection and improvement of present methods as to get rid of the principal part of the evil. It is much easier to drill and actuate a corps of one hundred operatives in a public service than to direct a single domestic ”

“ The memoir concludes thus: "There may probably remain much to be done toward making the telephone of practical commercial value. For physics, however, it has already sufficient interest in that it has opened out a new field of labor. . . . Philipp Reis, December, 1861." It will be observed that this date precedes the improved forms of Reis's telephone, by which the somewhat better practical articulation, hereafter testified to, was obtained. But, even on this showing, what can be plainer than that Reis was the originator of the new art of the electrical transmission of speech? ”

“ The most obvious form of the People's Palace in the town is a hollow square, surrounded with streets, with inclosed and surrounding gardens—the space in the centre being large enough to give air and a pleasant outlook to the inner domiciles. ”

“ What we need, in order to harmonize our household system with other branches of modern industry, is a Federative Homestead, owned by those inhabiting it, in which the great entries or halls may be considered as streets under cover, and the individual or family domiciles, houses under a common roof. For such buildings a new architecture and new machinery are needed. ”

“ It is essential that relations of precise equity shall prevail between the proprietors of a Collective Home. The right of individual property in each domicile should be fortified by separate title and right of sale, subject only to chartered restrictions. In a well constructed and organized Federative Homestead such domiciles would always be salable at full cost value. A precise account, based on accurate standards of measurement, must be kept with each individual or family, including both general and special supplies and services. ”

“ The single but sufficient means of resisting the communistic dissolution of our present society is to substitute everywhere for inverted methods natural organization, or, in other words, scientific coöperation. ”

“ The comparison of the Philadelphia system of separate houses, poorly constructed, and purchased by installments from building corporations not always purely mutual, should be made with such collective, self-owned homesteads, not with hired tenements, even should these be on the scale and with the appliances of the Peabody tenement-houses in London, erected by a magnificent charity. ”

“ The Peabody tenement-houses in London, the family club-houses in England and on the Continent, the family hotels in this country, and the Familistère at Guise, though furnishing valuable architectural suggestions, have solved as yet but few of the problems of construction of the "People's Palace," as it has been called. Invention also has done comparatively little to furnish labor-saving machinery for agriculture and the household on account of the segregated and slovenly character of these industries. ”

“ In the People's Palace a Kindergarten for the youngest children, and schools more or less industrial and technical for those older, would have a natural and inevitable place. While this would still further relieve the mothers, it would also be a field for the occupation of women and men living in the Homestead who were specially gifted in these directions. ”

“ A conical chamber, a b, is bored through a cubical block and is closed at d by a membrane. A platinum strip, b, extends from the screw-cup p, to the center of the membrane d, to which it is attached. From the screw-cup n a spring, n d, carrying a platinum style, makes contact at d with the platinum strip p d. This original instrument, presented by Reis to Professor Böttger, is now in the possession of Professor Thompson. ”

“ A building of architectural beauty, favorably situated in country or town, to contain one hundred domiciles, would cost, including land, not more than two-thirds as much as one hundred separate houses of the same class, giving to each family the same amount and quality of habitable room. ”

“ The only scientific justification, if it may be so called, of the present system, is the rule that two wrongs make a right. The relation of highly-organized societies to children will, without doubt, be parental, through the recognition of new equities and the extension of mutual affection and service. ”

“ The economies would increase, and also the independence of the occupants, with the increase of numbers within certain limits. While the edifice might be of equal size for rich or poor, the separate domiciles would naturally be smaller and more numerous where the means of the proprietors were less. In the same building the various domiciles would differ in value according to situation and size, and thus would suit persons of different means. Not less than one hundred nor more than four hundred families may be assumed for illustration as probable limits of number. ”

“ The description of Reis's telephone is divided naturally into two sections. Here, fully illustrated in Professor Thompson's book, we have ten forms of transmitter, all imitating the mechanism of the ear, and applying the vibrations of an artificial tympanum to vary or modulate a current of electricity, by varying the degree of contact at a loose joint in the circuit, one or both of the members at this point of contact having an elastic bearing. ”

“ This expansion of the armature is for the purpose of increasing its superficial contact with the air for the propagation of sound-waves. The Reis armature, so equipped, is the equivalent of the "diaphragm" in what is commonly called "the Bell receiver," a form, however, which appears to have originated with Elisha Gray. In the "Bell receiver" the diaphragm is an elastic, expanded, circular armature. ”

“ In the very first transmitter made by Reis, in 1860 or 1861, a little curved lever is attached by one end to the center of an elastic tympanum, while the other end makes varying contact with a delicate spring, regulated by an adjusting screw—the surfaces of contact being of platinum—and the lever and spring included in a telephonic circuit equipped with a galvanic battery and receiver. ”

“ The spring g is adjustable by the screw h. The electric connections will be easily traced. In the description, g is explicitly described as a spring; and the essential feature to be observed in this type is the current regulator, or loose-contact mechanism, consisting of the spring g bearing on the lever c d, actuated by the elastic membrane o.
The receiver in this figure consists of an electro-magnet, m, on a sounding-board, with an armature, regulated by an adjustable spring, g, pendulum-mounted, and "connected with a lever, i, which is as long as possible, but light and broad." ”

“ Granting that the articulation at this time, and even in 1864, was poor—poorer even than Gray's in 1875, and Bell's in the spring of 1876—it was still articulation, understood where the words were not foreknown by the listener. ”

“ The Reis electro-magnetic receiver is thus a complete and perfect anticipation of that of Yeates, of Dublin, in 1865, and of the later receiver of Gray or Bell. The function of all is to move an elastically supported armature backward and forward, and so throw it into vibrations corresponding to those imparted by the sound-waves to the transmitting apparatus. ”

“ The third form was the electro-magnetic which will be described in connection with Fig. 1. Of this class of receivers Reis himself writes, "Electro-magnetism affords the possibility of calling into life, at any given distance, vibrations similar to the vibrations that have been produced (in the transmitter) , and in this way to give out again in one place tones (sounds) that have been produced in another place." In the fourth form of receiver Reis recurred to the "knitting needle," more elaborately arranged. ”

“ Other collective work of the People's Home would give occupation to some of the inmates. Halls for lectures and social purposes, a library and reading-room, would also be among the endowments of every People's Palace. ”

“ A finely-appointed kitchen, laundry, heating, lighting, and elevating apparatus, with telegraphic and other means of communication, sufficient for the wants of a hundred families, would replace one hundred sets of inferior work-rooms and apparatus in the separate houses. ”

“ A helix of insulated wire is attached horizontally to a sounding-box. Through the helix a steel wire or knitting-needle is passed without contact, and supported at each end by a bridge. The vibrations of this knitting-needle magnet, corresponding exactly to the vibrations of the tympanum of the transmitter, are converted into sound-waves by the extended surface of the box acting upon the air. On the side of the box is a telegraph-key to communicate back to the transmitter. The code of signals suggested in the accompanying "Prospectus" contains the following:
"One tap sing. ”