easily be managed by a single
person, either selected from among the 80 families and suitably
recompensed, or employed as a professional manager at a regular
salary. Or the entire control of the _cafe_, and kitchen could be let
out by contract to some suitable caterer, if preferred.

Corresponding savings are evidently possible in every other department
of housekeeping, including steam-heating, ventilating, laundry-work,
lighting and elevator-work. In all of these particulars, cooeperation,
judiciously conducted, has been shown to yield surprising economies.

But there are other advantages even more important than its economy in
favor of the "flat." Freedom from housekeeping cares has already been
touched upon. In the "tower," life is spent in training and treating
with servants, mechanics and market-men. The private cook is a volcano
in a house, slumbering at times, but always ready to burst forth into
destructive eruption. True repose is out of the question, and we are
told that "the motive for foreign travel of perhaps one-half of
Americans is rest from household cares and the enjoyment of good
attendance, freed from any responsibility in its organization and
management."

Security against burglary and fire is another. In a good
apartment-house, trained watchmen stand on guard night and day to
protect the occupants, and stand-pipes, hose and fire-buckets are
provided in all the halls, and kept in repair for emergency.

The family may leave their apartments for travel summer or winter,
knowing that their property is as secure as modern appliances, system
and ingenuity can make it. Not so with our isolated dwelling. The cost
of providing all these means of protection is too great to make them
practicable. The result is that the fear of burglary and fire at all
times causes uneasiness, particularly on the part of the wife during
the absence of her husband.

Beauty in the architectural arrangement of the rooms is a third
advantage of the "flat." In this it has all the advantage of the
double house or residence of the immensely rich. The rooms may be
grouped in a manner which renders possible the highest architectural
effect, whereas in the "tower" the perpendicular arrangement evidently
precludes such opportunity by limiting the design to a wearisome and
monotonous repetition from basement to attic.

No argument can be sustained against the "flat" on the ground of
transmission of sound or want of privacy and isola