The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-07-25
AMERICAN HOUSING CAPTURES ENGLAND
Newspaper Articles By Woman Great Factor in
 Improvement Shown

London, June 1.-(By Reciprocal News Service,)-Dr. c. W. Saleeby of the Brit | iSh ministry of health has letter in the current number of The Landmark" in which he attributes great influence to- ward the improvement of British homes to series of articles by an American woman, Mrs. Arlene Coyle Bye. on
 Homes and Housekeeping in America, ,' appearing in various issues of the mag azine.
 Dr. Saleeby declared that the series of articles formed the subject of a confer ence called by the minister of health re- sulting in plans for many ''smokeless houses" with American kitchens being passed in various parts of the British Isles.
 Dr. Saleeby writes in part: ''Iii New York I found the smokeless city of my dreams. (Venice and Munich have their points in that conne>r on, for very ciNerse reasons, but New York is
 the proper and complete contrast to l-opdon.) So l! made up my mind that 1 you'd set tC work and make London and other Cites of my native land ds smoKe- less c.ean and bright as New 1ork
 The factory chimney is bad enough. q am writing this in Dundee, in full view of scores of chimneys abominably defiling the air and blackening the city) But the domestic chimney is the chief of- fender. by reason of it's numbers If we are to make British cities habitable- as their vital statistics prove them not to be-we must revise our ideas of hous- ing. This is naught to the politician, who sees no votes in it; but it is much to me, who am only domestician, and who sees lives in it.
 Now. you canno. convince people who are doing things wrong until you show them how to de them right. Ever since last September my campaign has been aided at every point by the various ar ticles on Homes and Housekeeping in America, which Mrs. Arlene Coyle Bye has contributed to the columns of The Landmark. Quotations from these ar ticles, and the use of lantern slides made from certain of their illustration-such as the ground plan of small American house have been used to prove beyond caviI that the smoke curse in this coun- try is unnecessary, that sanitary and ex- peditious housekeeping, to quote s4rs. Eyes admirable epithets, is possible, and to al ouse in the women of this country a demand for homes fit for women to live Ill
 T have incorporated these references in my evidence before the departmental committee on smoke abatement, which the minister of health has at last seen fit to appoint and I know that already in certain parts of the country plans for many sznokeless houses have been passed as 8 direct result of the evidence to which The Landmark has thua contrib uted.
 "The editor, however superhumanly president, can scarcely have foreseen what he was doing. He published these articles for their general interest, but could not have expected them to be used as scientific evidence of hygienic house. keeping before an expert committee in London, to which, it must be admitted, the elementary facts of American house. keeping seemed entirely novel"
 Dr. Saleeby concluded with the infor- nation that he was about to install an American kitchen in his home in Hamp- stead, the garden suburb of London, and that fin due course everyone will do like wise. These articles may. help to trans form the type of new housing in this