Roadtown

“ The Roadtown is remarkable for the new things that it will add to civilization, but it is even more remarkable for the things that will be conspicuous for their absence. In the Roadtown there will be no streets, no street cars and no “subway air” ”

“ All stairs, roof promenade, hallway and monorail platform will be matted; while the noiselessness of the transportation service is one of the fundamental conceptions of Roadtown. There is no clanking furnace in the Roadtown dwelling. There is no common dumb-waiter through which one receives unwelcome knowledge of his neighbor’s business. That the sound will not enter from the roof above or the open windows of one’s neighbor’s was explained in a previous chapter. To be spied upon by one’s neighbors is even more objectionable than to be overheard. ”

“ But these people have failed to realize the comprehensiveness of the Roadtown project. Indeed, should I have promoted the Roadtown as a monopoly for private gain I would have unquestionably been the meanest man on earth, for in me and my backers would have been combined all the despotism of the landlord, the railroad magnate, the factory slave driver, the wasteful middle-man, the extortionate retailer and half of the commodity trusts. The private owners of the Roadtown would be absolute master of the inhabitants in every phase of life. ”

“ Those who wish to pay a visit to a Roadtown home will come to the nearest point where the railroad crosses the Roadtown or if traveling by horse or auto where the public road crosses the Roadtown and will leave their vehicle in charge of a caretaker and have their name ’phoned in as one does at an up-to-date apartment house or hotel. If the Roadtowner is at home, the caller will then take the monorail or the roof promenade as the distance or his inclination dictates, and thus reach the door of his friend’s home. ”

“ The Roadtowner’s home is his castle in the truest sense of the word, and more private, notwithstanding the close proximity to neighbors, and hence more consecrated to family life than any previous style of dwelling known.
The Roadtown will have no streets because it will need none. As it is built through the country, there will, of course, be roads as well as streets to cross. Here the monorail will run under, and the roof bridge over the roads. At such road crossings and such other places where roads are built back into the country, stables and garages will be provided. ”

“ But the social life of Roadtown will not be limited to city trips and neighborly calls. The Roadtown will have coöperative amusement centers, just as it will have coöperative kitchens and stores. At spots where the Roadtown crosses streams or passes the mountains or the sea shore and at certain distances apart, amusement parks will be located. ”

“ Would you prefer to go five miles to that field every day for fifteen or twenty days, or even take a tent with you and go twenty miles and camp there, and for the rest of the year enjoy the coöperative and waste eliminating features of the Roadtown home life, or would you live in a frame house on the land and wash your face in cold water and get up winter mornings to start a fire and drink impure water from a polluted well and make your wife a kitchen scullion, isolated and lonely, and send your children two miles through the storm to an inefficient country school? ”

“ The whole question of the value of the Roadtown bonds depends upon the question as to whether or not people will live in the Roadtown after it has been built. I have spent a hundred pages telling of the comforts, conveniences, social and industrial advantages of Roadtown life. Heretofore I might have fallen into minor errors, but no sane and fair mind can reason away the fact that Roadtown life will be wonderfully attractive to the vast majority of mankind. ”

“ The entire Roadtown will be in connection by the loud speaking telephone, and folks can call on each other on a stormy night without so much as getting out of their comfortable rockers, but, for that matter, while there will be more to keep a Roadtowner at home, there will be less to keep him from going away from home when he wants to. If anyone is lonesome in Roadtown, it is simply because he has no friends, and if he has no friends, it can scarcely be anyone’s fault but his own. ”

“ The people will return to Mother Earth because it is in every way desirable for them to do so and not because some merchant prince, railroad king or social worker says they ought to go.
In modern life an office building, store or apartment house is considered especially fortunate if it has a rapid transit station near or better still within the building. All the inhabitants of the Roadtown will live upon the main line and be near the station. They will live there because the utilities of civilization can be provided there more economically than elsewhere. ”

“ With all the coöperative utilities and mechanical perfections that Roadtown offers there is a very natural tendency to associate the essentials of home life with certain forms and locations of houses that our experience connects with the best home life we have known rather than to get down to the real causes and principles involved. ”

“ At this time considerable humorous comment is being made in the newspapers over the tearing down of a twenty-two story building in Wall Street to make room for a forty story one. The old one is only thirteen years old. The Roadtown will always be “modern,” and increase in efficiency as it increases in length while the separate building is a complete unit with its height and utilities stationary. ”

“ The Roadtown will bring the opportunity to indulge in the sports and recreations much nearer the life of the whole people than in the present civilization.
There is no reason why every boy, big and little, should not attend the ball games and athletic meets on the home field as well as the grand finale in which his team participates. ”

“ The individual pleasure of house construction will be lost in Roadtown, just as we have already lost the pleasure of vehicle construction.138 The man who argues that people will not live in Roadtown because they cannot build and own their own homes is a lineal descendant of the man who said they would not ride on railroads for similar reasons. The Roadtown inhabitant will simply transfer his sentiments and put his individuality into other arts. ”

“ But home is a place for companionship as distinct from the swirl of business and the jostle of the crowds; nor is all companionship necessarily human. A lawn to keep and some chickens and garden to care for are far closer to the essence of home than the gable on one’s cottage.
In the first place the Roadtown will be freer from noise than either city or village. There will be no lumbering vehicles and no tramp of either horse or man upon unshielded pavement. ”

“ But for every such a one that I may here include, there will be several others that science has already or will yet devise and which can be63 installed in Roadtown as soon as perfected and demonstrated with no more expense than there would be if it were put in when the houses were built. This feature alone is a tremendous argument in favor of the Roadtown, for every previous form of house construction once finished is set in its equipment and soon gets behind the age and must be torn down to make room for the new. ”

“ The Roadtown, either through its central coöperation or in the form of individual citizens will be a great consuming market for the Roadtown farmer. Certain products, however, for which the locality is especially adapted must necessarily be sold outside the Roadtown. ”

“ The Roadtowners in all thickly-populated sections will be within commuting distance of nearby cities and the attractions of these centers will be open to them. But such social life, even for those who live in the city, is sadly deficient. ”

“ In the Roadtown, this problem, old as civilization, will be solved, not by bringing in outside workers to break up family life, but by sending most of the present work out of the home and simplifying that which must remain until the task becomes so light that each member of the family will perform his share of the housekeeping just as he now dresses himself, or walks to catch the trolley car. ”

“ The Roadtown is a scheme to organize production, transportation and consumption into one systematic plan. In an age of pipes and wires, and high speed railways such a plan necessitates the building in one dimension instead of three—the line distribution of population36 instead of the pyramid style of construction. The rail-pipe-and-wire civilization and the increase in the speed of transportation is certain to result in the line distribution of population because of the almost unbelievable economy in construction, in operation and in time. ”

“ I think a little explanation will show that the basement is the only logical location for the Roadtown transportation line.
If it is above ground it will have to be fenced off or elevated to prevent loss of life. If it is fenced it will keep people from the land. If it is elevated the stations will be expensive and an eyesore. As for the idea of a view, we can say that the Roadtown railroad is not for sightseeing any more than an elevator in a hotel. If placed beside the house line it would destroy the natural “view” and privacy of the home, and the roof is reserved for a better use. ”

“ It is upon the roof that the Roadtown will be upon dress parade. Here maids with their lovers will stroll of evenings and matrons with their baby carriages on Sunday afternoons. It is here that children will have never ending sport. Skating and cycling can have an unprecedented opportunity to develop for health and pleasure. It is here that Easter hats will be shown and neighbors’ crops discussed and new acquaintances made and local pride developed. ”

“ Because I have spoken in favor of the Boyes Monorail I do not wish the reader to infer that the development of the Roadtown depends upon the progress made by this invention. We have noiseless electric automobiles to-day and noiseless bicycles that serve well to demonstrate the feasibility of building a noiseless service for the purpose of Roadtown and such a later system will indeed probably be installed in the first demonstration section. No man of a mechanical turn of mind will doubt for a minute that noise in transportation can be eliminated where it is desirable to do so. ”

“ People who cannot content themselves with the quiet of a Roadtown home will have to use the telephone, electric music, roof promenade or go to the social center. Promenaders cannot stare into nor listen at their neighbors’ windows. ”

“ Another advantage of Roadtown for intensive agricultural development is that, because of the numerous other functions that transportation is to serve, Roadtown agriculture has a perfected system of transportation immediately at its service to say nothing of an immense consuming population on the line. ”

“ This feature of Roadtown offers great economies over the single large building. For instance, in an apartment house accommodating one hundred families, light, heat, telephone, sweeping systems, etc., must all be one hundred family systems, regardless of whether that is the most economical unit for the system or not. Roadtown utilizes every utility in length which gives the maximum efficiency for that particular device. ”

“ I am satisfied that very few if any sections of Roadtown will be built in villas because they will offer no advantages that I am aware of to offset the disadvantages. People will accept the uniformity of the exterior of the roofs and walls as they now accept the uniformity of the street. Their personal tastes will be put on interior decorations or in beautiful gardens that may be seen from the roof promenade and enjoyed by all. ”

“ Thus there will be ample vacant ground to start a Roadtown at the uptown end of the New York Subway that could build right through to Boston. Real estate within or near the city will, of course, be higher in price, but as such Roadtown dwellings will be160 able to compete in every sense with the present prevailing forms of two story houses seen in such districts, and have in addition all the Roadtown advantages including indoor rapid, noiseless and dustless transportation, they could afford to pay for the extra value of such land and still be the object of envy by the outside residents. ”

“ The Roadtown has a message not only for men, but for women, and most especially for young unmarried women who are looking forward to the time when they can fulfill their highest mission on earth, that of establishing a home and raising a family. ”

“ Such a system will give the humblest Roadtowner the opportunity of the high class apartment house dweller to say that he is not at58 home to unwelcome visitors, and yet the Roadtown home built on the ground floor with its windows looking out into a private garden will have all the home-like simplicity of a cottage, and at the same time modern conveniences and luxuries which cannot be found in any King’s palace. ”

“ The distance back which land will eventually be tilled by farmers living in the Roadtown, is a matter on which I hesitate to express my opinion for fear it will discredit the worth of my judgment in the minds of those who have given the matter no thought, but I think I can carry the points by examples: Imagine yourself to be a farmer of the future, and accustomed to the luxury of civilization ”

“ The mission of the Roadtown is to assist in the development of the physical, mental and moral qualities of mankind through the gradual elimination of all physical, mental and moral waste, thus creating an environment where selfishness and inequality of opportunity will gradually disappear and where man will finally enjoy all the fruits of his labor. ”