The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-10-09

advance our social standards center around homes, religion, education and play. When these fail, and when ac- cident, incompetence, and injustice overtake people, we have to develop philanthropies, settlements, child helping societies, courts, probation, police and medical charities.
 Now as to the home! the house is not all of it. but, as Joseph Lee says: Although the home is itself invisible, a spiritual, not a material, body, it's expression has to be concrete, and condition to the best development of all the rest, is the house or physical setting in which i+ finds itself. The question of the sort of niche that shall exist in the community in which family can build. is vital to the de- velopment of this most fundamental of our institutions
 We are, in this country, slow in arriving at a proper understanding of the housing problem. As a rule, "our town has no housing problems" Did you ever hear of mother who wait ed till her boy was ready for the ju- veni1e court, the hospital. or the i'm sane asylum before she admitted that she had 8 boy problem? Did you ever see a manufacturer recognize a. factory problem only after his build ing was burned down or ready for the junk heap? No, the mother and the manufacturer both recognize their problems at the very start. They also know thtt the remedial aspects of the problem are greatly increased by careIessness. toward the first part of the work.
 Our towns and cities refuse to rec ognize the real, the constructive prob lem and even after the damage is done they too commonly introduuce paIliatives instead of removing the cause. The problem is present when every house is built, when every street is laid out, when every bit of plumb laid, and when every water connec- tion is made. It is the problem of making comm unities.
 For many years we have had in Massachusetts a succession of short lived organizations to improve the ap- pearance of towns. They have died mainly because beauty cannot easily be engrafted upon rottenness. Peo- pie are beginning to see that, in a town in which every house is of good design, there are those elements of art which when combined make for a beautiful community. The town of Bournvi1le, in England, has no sIunn district, no ugly section. It is beau  has never been heard of there as a l problem within itself, simply because it has always been looked upon as an inherent part in the development of l the community The people of Bournville have not had to try to 1 graft impossible stone aeanthus 1 leaves upon store-box architecture, 1 upon unpaved streets, and uupon neg Iected back yards.
 Bad. homes are responsible for al large percentage of the imnorAlity which the churches are trying to l cure;, and for much of the poverty | the charities are trying to cure. The | housing problem, that is, the con- structive problem. is one of the big-i gest items in honae-making.
 The econ omic aspects of the hous- ing problem are serious Towns get. as rule, what they bid for. That is, if force of circumstances brings a. large number of people to a town, the quality of these people will depend in 1arfe measure the kind of homes which are offered to them. If the people have to content themselves with abandoned dwellings. out-build- ings, and similar inferior homes, they will be an inferior type of people; be- cause self-respecting people will not live in such homes. What is the re- suit, therefore, when a town sets up a call for an increase of population on