The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1935-09-26

NOSSIBLY within five years-cer-
- tainly within ten-our houses
will be built around the machine,
in the most literal sense of the
term.
Our new houses will be fabricated
houses, manufactured on a mass-pro-
duction basis that will bring the most
scientifically modern of them within
the reach of the family of moderate
brought the automobile into millions
of family garages.
Every new house will be a sort of
slipper" house whose parts can be
'buttened" together and "unbuttoned"
again with the greatest of ease. All
houses will be of pleasing simplicity
of design. All will have fiat roofs that
will be so much more Giving surface"
in pleasant weather. All houses will be
air-conditioned in all kinds of weather.
In the center of every house will
be compact, electrically driven motor
unit which will furnish power for the
hundreds of tasks which make house
keeping a chore today, will heat the
house in winter and cool it in summer.
These are not idealistic fancies,
framed in fragile smoke rings from the
dream pipes of impractical social plan
ming bugs. They are facts.
For such houses already exist, both
individually and in communities. Their
manufacture and design is being fOs-
tered by some of the biggest and most
progressive Industrial giants of the
day.
Houses for Low Incomes.
For the principal strides in develop
ing houses of this sort the credit must
go to Owen d. Young, head of General
Electric company and to Foster Gun
nison, president of Houses, Inc.
Houses, Inc, has been formed not to
build houses, but to conduct research
for the entire building trade Through
which new ideas in home building will
be tested and cleared and also to Gull
ture, assist in the management of, or
help finance any worthy project de-
signed to produce modern homes that
" LII UC WlIliih easy ICdSh VI
those with low incomes"
Houses, Inc, has been subsidized by
General Electric. Mr.. Gunnison has
been one of the leaders in the pre-
fabricated housing movement. Motor
lied, pre-fabricated houses, already
past the experimental stage, have been
assembled at White Plains, N. Y, Gar
den City, L. l., New York city, Boston
and Philadelphia. At Boston there is a
whole colony of such houses which is
visited by thousands of persons daily.
Purdue university, at Lafayette, Ind,
for the administration of its new
course, "The New Science of Better
Living" is preparing to start whole
modern community to use as a gar
gantuan laboratory for the study Of
tomorrow's scientific housing.
David Ross, chairman of the board
of trustees of the university, has do
mated 143 acres of land where the
new village will be assembled. Here
every house will be subjected to ex-
IRENE temperatures and weather con-
ditiOns and even man-made earth
quakes and cyclones. In thirty days
1t will go through the same rigors that
the ordinary house suffers in the
course of twenty years.
What interesting possibilities these
new houses offer!
Suppose Jack Edwards of Chicago
and Mrs. Edwards have just finished
for <hn; 1ocf
after long saving and struggle their
ambition to Gown their own home"
has become a glorious and happy re-
ality. Then, suddenly, Jacks firm de-
cides to transfer him to New Orleans.
Must they give up the lovely dwelling
they have worked so hard to own?
House-Moving Is Easy.
No, indeed. Jack simply calls the
movers. They take screw-drivers and
unbutton the little house, lift it aboard
their truck and soon it is rolling gaily
along to Dixie. Only a new cement
foundation need be built That is a
simple matter that should take no
more than a couple of weeks.
Should the new climate suggest a
different way of laying out the rooms,
why that is simple matter, too. They
can be butt6ned together again in
whatever arrangement its owners de-
sire. And if the young couple would
like to have guest room to make it
more convenient for his or her folks
to visit them in New Orleans next
winter, couple of new panels can
be bought, buttoned on and made into
"a new room. When the Edwardses