When the occupation
is likely to be permanent, the greatest comfort and well-being will
usually result from establishing early a permanent home; and this
involves a long look ahead to justify the selection of a site. Not
only must health and convenience be considered, but future questions
relative to the expanding requirements of the homemakers and to the
education and proper upbringing of a family as well. Then, too, young
people must usually begin modestly from a financial standpoint, and
they are therefore cut off from certain locations which they may
perhaps desire and which they might hope to attain in later years. In
the country, where the livelihood is often gained directly from the
land, a new element enters into selection and must to some extent take
precedence over others. Soil considerations aside, however, we have
health, beauty, social environment, educational advantages, and
expense to consider; and we should establish certain standards in
these directions for our young people to measure by.

Considerations of health must include not only climatic conditions,
but questions of drainage, water supply, time and comfort of
transportation to work, and the sanitary condition of the
neighborhood.

Prospective homemakers must learn, too, the value of reposeful
surroundings and of some degree of natural beauty. They must recognize
the value also of desirable social environment--that is, of such moral
and intellectual surroundings as will be uplifting for the homemakers
and safe for the future family. They will, it is hoped, learn that a
merely fashionable neighborhood is not necessarily a desirable
environment. The church, the school, the library, and proper
recreation centers are also to be considered in one's social outlook.
They are all distinctly worth paying for, as also is a good road.

With the site selected, the great problem of building next confronts
the homemaker. Here again the principles of selection should be
sufficiently known to young people, boys and girls alike, to save them
from the mistakes so commonly made and frequently so regretted.

The people who can afford to employ an architect to design their homes
are in a decided minority, and the only way to insure good houses for
the less well-to-do majority is to see that the less well-to-do do not
grow up without instruction as to what good houses are. The great
tendency of the day in building is fortunately toward increased
simplicity and tow