ent partner of the firm, lived, as it perhaps
deserved to do, a little the longest; but it passed away, and the
tobacconist's counter, like the dram counter, has disappeared.
The streets of our city, though sufficiently filled with busy people,
are comparatively silent. The subways relieve the heavy traffic, and
the factories are all at short distances from the town, except those
in which the work that is carried on is silent and free from nuisance.
This brings me to speak of some of the public buildings which have
relation to our present studies.
It has been found in our towns, generally, that men and women who
are engaged in industrial callings, such as tailoring, shoe-making,
dressmaking, lace-work and the like, work at their own homes amongst
their children. That this is a common cause of disease is well
understood. I have myself seen the half-made riding-habit that was
ultimately to clothe some wealthy damsel rejoicing in her morning ride
act as the coverlet of a poor tailor's child stricken with malignant
scarlet fever. These things must be, in the ordinary course of events
under our present bad sanitary system. In the model city we have
in our mind's eye, these dangers are met by the simple provision of
workmen's offices or workrooms. In convenient parts of the town there
are blocks of buildings, designed mainly after the manner of the
houses, in which each workman can have a work-room on payment of a
moderate sum per week. Here he may work as many hours as he pleases,
but he may not transform the room into a home. Each block is under
the charge of a superintendent, and also under the observation of the
sanitary authorities. The family is thus separated from the work,
and the working man is secured the same advantages as the lawyer,
the merchant, the banker now possesses: or to make the parallel more
correct, he has the same advantage as the man or woman who works in a
factory, and goes home to eat and to sleep.
In most towns throughout the kingdom the laundry system is dangerous
in the extreme. For anything the healthy householder knows, the
clothes he and his children wear have been mixed before, during, and
after the process of washing, with the clothes that have come from the
bed or the body of some sufferer from a contagious malady. Some of the
most fatal outbreaks of disease I have met with have been communicated
in this manner. In our model community this danger is entirely avoided
by the establishme
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