Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1894-03-03
MORE THAN HOME COMFORTS,


Help Of All Sorts of Up-tO-Date Con-
trivances.
From the Chicago Record.
Mrs. Coleman-Stuckert has come to Chi
cago to build a 100000 co-opera tive home
that will cover entire block in Hyde
Park. The colony will consist Of forty
FOUR houses on forty-six lots, with a COM
mon lawn, laundry, kitchen, furnace, cleo
trio light plant, assembly hall and read
ing room. 1t will make life a luxury for
married clerk who earns $65 q month,
and will give his family all the comforts
OF Prairie avenue mansion. This sounds
utopian, and too good to be true. but Mrs.
Coleman-Stuckert has a pyramid of fig
ures to prove it and scientific estimates
that show 1t is possible. and all she now
wants Is a generous philanthropist to start
the fund for the experiment.
Mrs. Coleman Stuckert Is doing the work
because she Is convinced 1t costs too much
to live. especially in the cases of the poor
and middle class people. These classes do
not know how to eeonomize. and they
waste more than they consume. These
facts she promulgated on paper during
the worlds congress last summer, and now
she has come to put into brick and NOR
tar her ideas. 1t is all work of humani-
ty with her, and she comes from Denver
to this town because she realizes Chicago
is about the present center Of the earth.
One home here will exert an influence
over a considerable portion Of the planet,
and, once started, she is confident the
scheme of cooperative living will be gen.
orally adopted. Beginning with small COM
munities, 1T may be enlarged to entire set
Elements. and then to include all the dwell
lers in the suburban cities. The only limit
the promoter will allow Is final great
universal kitchen with pots and kettles
large enough to supply all the human fam
NY: it,,
building and thus have the chara cteristics
that belong to existence in hotel. Each
family will be allotted house, with room
sufficient unto the members thereof. Each
tenant is to become a householder and own
his rooms. and thereby become a stockhold-
and a voter in the common affairs of the
community. He will select such location
as he can afford, the prices ranging from
$1,000, and he will pay on the installment
plan. He will meet his payments very
easily, so Mrs. Coleman-Stuckert proves,
and still have money to save out of his $65.
This one fact Is her strongest point, since
her investigations show that the middle
class people lose much of the chance of
married happiness in the cheerlessness of a
fiat. This Is the way she proposes to make
poverty a hearable evil and ordinary sue
cess one endless bed Of roses and riches-the
very acme Of earthly blessedness.
1t will be necessary to get forty-four fam
lilies willing to enjoy this new idea. They
some Spectator to do 1t for them. There
will be some small houses and some large
ones, all equipped and trimmed exactly
alike and with the very latest and best con-
veniences that 60 into homes. Each dweller
will furnish the parlors, and all the rooms
will be parlors or sleeping rooms to suit in
dividual taste. The architecture will follow
harmonious lines. each house standing close
against its neighbor, with lawns and paths
in front and rear. So far the cooperative
system has made nothing different from the
present system. The revolution begins at
this point
The central court will contain a common
building, where all the drudgeries will be
performed. Here will be all the cooking,
heating and lighting machinery, the ice
chests, the dish washers, servants and but
Ter. Thereby all the invaders of home life
will be removed and the domestic anarchists
will find victims only In themselves. The
forty-fcur families will need but fourteen
people to do all their household work,
fact found by a very elaborate figuring at
the hands of Mrs. Coleman-Stuckert These
people include the baker, the professional
cook, a gardener. superintendent. two en-
gineers and the corps of helpers. This saves
the salaries of at least eighty domestic
servants, besides having the food cooked
economically and in excellent taste, and all
other things executed by the most skilled
labor.
An electric carrier will distribute the
cooked meals. Each house will be a station
and when the big dinner gong sounds the
COOK
out forty-four smoking dinners. Each ham,
per will be heated, so that the hot viands
and vegetables will be at their prime when
the good wife lifts them into her window.
Each matron will then serve the meal in
the common dishes or remove 1t to her own
china. The hamper will then go back for
the second course and the third. until the
dessert and coffee shall be reached.
The cost? Why, Mrs. Coleman-Stuckert
has a diagram showing it will be only 81 a
week for each person. This will give all
frst-class eating, of course barring straw
berries at 50 cents quart or radishes at 40
cents each. This will include all the common
dishes served to the colony. while each day
each housewife may order for three meals
ahead any speciality which the market af
fords. These extras. of course. will be
charged for specially, but only enough to
pay the cost. She may also order additional
quantities for company, at a cost only equal
to the price of the raw material bought at
wholesale by the buyer for the company.
So much for the eating.
This new-idea home will also have joint
heating and lighting plant. Thus all the
distress Of fire building and fuel will be re-
moved and the gas bill will fade before the
colony's meager assessment to keep it's own
dynamo running. Each house will get it's
steam at cost from its own boiler. and all
this branch Of the household economy will
aggregate but SIS month for each family.
And there you are. according to Mrs. Cole
an-Stuckert. The entire cost of living for
the $85 a month man and his wife will ag
eregate but $50 a month, and he has all the
comforts his rich neighbor has enjoyed He
has lived in a suite Of six rooms. eaten the
best in the market. read his paper by cleo
trio light, warmed his feet on a steam radi-
ator, taken his bath in a porcelain tub, and
watched his wife grow handsomer as she
grew older, with her face unwrinkled by
worry and her constitution undestroyed by
drudgery.
These figures are applicable only to the
second-best system of cooperative homes
Mrs. Coleman-Stuckert has drawings for
one for the very poor. They are all equally
practical in her mind. and she is going to
prove this is the way to live by building the
first one in Hyde Park. Dr. Gunsaulus has
promised to assist. and several men of means
are going to back the enterprise
A Heightened Article of Apparel.
From the Boston Journal.
Several urchins noticed hanging in the
windows of a drug store in this city nu-
merous lung protectors, and one said:
What's Them"
Another said in reply: well. you don't
know much about how heightened folks