The Blackfoot optimist. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1907-1918, 1914-12-17

Britain co0ld employ, II necessary,
compulsory powers to purchase land
In considerable blocks, erecting cot
tage~ tour to an acre. thereon and
mako the scheme profitable at Is
cents = week This estimate included.
In addition to $3.50 for the cost of the
cottage. $3.50 for the land. After due
allowance was added for loan charges,
repairs, insurance, and supervision,
the total annual cost to be met was
set down at $3.50 per group of four,
which works out about Is cents .
week for each.
Model Cottage for 81 Cents Weekly.
The model was shown of q cottage
in Surrey, England, actually built and
rented to three young women earning
their living. This cottage has three
bedrooms, parlor, kitchen, pantry.
bathroom. coalcellar. A framework
of block weather boarding was used
for the external walls. Between this
and the plaster interior is an air space
which Is said to make the house warm
and dry and perfectly weather-proof.
1t cost, land included, $500 and rents
for 62 cents a week.
Better housing on the farm may not,
of course. check the movement OF pop
ulation to the city. Perhaps it 10
neither necessary nor desirable to re-
tain upon the soil, under today's con-
dition, SO large proportion Of the
population as yesterday. The more
rural conditions are improved, the bet
ter the wages and the housing, the
higher the education at the school,
the less will the farm-laborer be salts
fled with the country as It is. So
better farm conditions, through Hous-
ing Reform and in other ways, brings
an increased betterment OF all rural
life conditions for those who remain
and. with better conditions, fewer
hands are needed. 1t was not a far
cry, therefore, when the Town Plan
ming Congress heard one speaker en-
phasize the need for more comforta-
BILE rural life and for q more intensive
agriculture.
A Stun Life Story.
Over against the progress >of the
new attack upon the old slum. as
shown by the Client Congress, may be
put story told a few evenings before
at London club. Miss B., an old
maid with much money and nothing to
do, became interested in slum work.
She rented rooms in q London ,slum
district, gave tea and cake-the Brit
ish climax OF afternoon hospitality
1r3aM
material for any garments they would
make. One little girl worried Miss B.
She looked SO poor and i'll and mis-
cradle. Finally the Good Samaritan
decided to invite the child to her coun-
try home for a weeks holiday, an in
vitation accepted with delight. The
good woman made every provision for
her comfort, a pretty bedroom, toys
and playmates and books, food and
flowers. The child of the slums could
stand 1t only four days. She wanted
to go back to London the second day,
she cried all the third day and neither
food nor fruit nor flowers could tempt
her on the fourth. She invented ex-
cuses to induce her benefactor to take
her back to her tenement dwelling
she dreamt her mother was dead, she
had sprained her foot. her father had
written that her baby brother was i'll.
The truth was that her small Cockney
soul fairly sickened for the sights and
smells of the sflms and that ha'pen.
ny worth of chips eaten from a scrap
Of newspaper tasted to her sweeter
than well-cooked omelette served in
a china plate. They are all the
same" said he who told the story as
argument against the new crusade
against the slum, tOwn-planning for all
the people, they are all the same;
You can do nothing with thsm-dress
them. feed them, pamper them, it is
all the same, they will fall back into
the gutter and regard you as an enemy
for trying to lift them out"
1T is not an effort to lift men from
the Sums" quietly replied the st. An.
drew's professor, '.it is an effort to
abolish the slum, so that no one will
be born therein. For if there is no
hog-wallow. even the swine cannot re-
turn to it."
Heaven, If the town plans of John
the Beloved are realized, is to be a
sunless city-not a country. place-a
city in which there will be neither sor
row nor crying nor pain, for the for.
mer things of yesterday will have
passed away. And this city, near at !
hand on earth, the Jealous, optimistic !
town-planners of Client all see, at
least 'in their minds eye. Horatio!"
Copyright 1914. by Joseph b. Bowles.)
Cannot Fix Age of World.