ses. If unsuited to this need, it
irritates and deforms character, as a plaster cast compresses a limb
encased in it.

Imagine the young people beginning life in the average city flat, at a
rent of twenty to thirty dollars a month, with its shams, its makeshifts,
its depressing, unsanitary, morally unsafe quarters for the maid, its
friction with janitor and landlord--the whole sordid round necessitated by
the mere manner of building, and by that only.

A few strong souls flee to the country. Counting the cost and finding that
all the earnings go to mere living, they decide to get that living in
company with nature under free skies--their own employers. Such may live
in Altruria with the happy zest of the authors of that charming sketch.

It is not given to many of earth's children to be so well mated and so
heavenly-wise. The young man has been brought up to consider the house the
young wife's prerogative, and she--well, she has been trained to believe
that housewifely wisdom will come to her as unsought as measles.

Two thirds the friction in the early years of married life is caused by
the house and its defects, resulting in dissatisfaction, disenchantment,
and the flight to a hotel or non-housekeeping apartment.

If some of the problems to be faced and the difficulties in solving them
could be presented to the young people to be studied and discussed before
the actual encounter came, they would be more prepared.

In discussing this part of the subject, as in the consideration of the
Cost of Living in general and the Cost of Food, we shall deal in
particular with incomes of from $1000 to $5000 a year for families of
five, recognizing that under present-day conditions the annual sum of
$1500 to $3000 means the greatest struggle between desires and power of
gratifying them.

On the surface it appears that the things which go to make up delicate
cleanly living cost more and more each year, with no limit in sight. It is
not only the poet who moves from one boarding-house to another; the young
clerk and struggling business man go into smaller and smaller quarters
until the traditional limit of room to swing a cat is reached.

The constantly diminishing space occupied by a family seems to prove that
the 40% increase in the cost of living within a few years is not caused
by an advance in the necessary cost of food; it is certainly not due to
the increased cost of necessary clothes. It is more than probable that the
i