our food in our bodies, on which our knowledge is limited. We cannot live wholly on animal gelatine, on vegetable gluten, on vegetable oil, or animal fat. If we prepare these substances separately, although we saturate the stomach with them, we die as of inanition. There is an assimilation required. We lack the knowledge of the aromatic world -the osmazome-the aroma that, like the lime in iron-smelting, seems to form the flux that is to unite dead matter to living. The "tired meat" of the shambles lacks this aroma-this "animal spirit,”—and without it, it will not assimilate with our bodies, or nourish us. Here, then, it would seem, is the great triumph of the chemist to be found-wondrous as mesmerism or electricity. Palpable to our senses, but beyond our understanding as yet, are the myriad odors wafted around us on all sides, spirits and genii of magic power. Come forth, then, ye chemists! conjure up and lay bound before us the "tricksey Ariel" of the pine, the orange, the lemon, the strawberry, the raspberry, the peach, the apricot, the venison, the October partridge, pheasant, and woodcock. Give over to us, not the "spirits of wine," but their aromas. We can make the acid of the lemon, but where is its odorous zephyr We can make the sugar of the honey, but where is its scent sweet as honeysuckle? We are on the eve of wondrous discoveries, but none shall be more marvelous in their results than the discovery how to produce the aromas at will. This achieved, the heaviest portion of the primal curse will be removed from us-feeding on the "beasts that perish," by the "sweat of our brows." Give us this knowledge, O ye chemists! and the whole world shall fall down before ye, and bless ye as its greatest benefactors. of the habitable and uninhabitable globe. "The sheep and silkworm wore Those very garments once before." Much as mechanism, springing from man's much as it has done for man, poor as well as rich, giving sheets, and shirts, and stockings, and thus facilitating cleanliness and health of body, it has left yet more to do. Tailors and sempstresses are yet a reproach amongst us. Of the word tailor, we have even lost the original sense; the tailleur, or artist of men's and women's shapes and forms, seeking to clothe them in comely garments. The word has long been degraded ?-from the time since Queen Bess, of coarse memory, addressed the deputation of eighteen tailors with "Good morning to you, gentlemen, both." The term "ninth part of a man" is but the rude perception of wasted drudgery. The phrase to "tailor" a thing, is but another word for cobbling or botching it. To ride or drive, or play cricket badly, produces the ready vituperative from the mob-individually, perhaps, just as awkward-of Tailor! What the tailor is in the sex masculine, the shirtmaker is in the sex feminine-a thing of There is more work yet to do in the me- stitches-endless, eternal stitches. Nothing chanical world, in the preparation of human but degradation could be the result of such clothing. Of the materials-animal and a monotonous occupation, so utterly insigvegetable-such as skin, wool, hair, silk, nificant a process; universal as that of the cotton, flax, hemp, caoutchouc, gutta percha, individual efforts of the coral insects, but with and other materials, we are yet far from results altogether ephemeral. The coral inknowing all the uses; and of inorganic prep- sect is an architect or builder. The sempster arations we know almost nothing. Asbestos or sempstress is a thing of seams—a mere and woven glass are as faint visions of some-joiner of edges. Wofully did theything that yet may be done, whereof the glass slipper of Cinderella was also a shadowy type. But even with the materials at our disposal we have rather worked as laborers than as artists. We have made huge flat webs of wool, and flax, and cotton, and of the latter we have made acres and miles of extent, sufficient to cover over the whole "Turn their wit the seamy side withcut," who made a society, and invented strikes or Nei 2 their war upon women for this object-to monopolize the right to be the "Feebles" of the community. It is true that Sir John Falstaff asserted his Feeble to be "forcible;" and Colonel Thompson, in our own day, has threatened what bees'-wax to their horses he could make of London tailors in the form of dragoons; but we apprehend this was and is, not a consequence of their being tailors, but in spite of their being tailors. The trade of sempsters fought for themselves as a body of "Flints," to turn out the "Dungs" from exercising the art and mystery of stitchmaking, and returned to the charge again and again, warring for the right to charge higher prices for stitches than other men, and boys, and women, and girls were willing to do them at. They advocated "division of labor," in the mode of keeping all the "stitches" for their own dividend. But it was fruitless. The shoal came in, deluging the stitch-market with competition, if not in labor, in "stitches." Shirt-making came to be the lowest kind of stitching, and Moses and Son obtained profits, as Hebrew-Caucasians will occasionally do, by employing the lowest races of women to stitch shirts for the lowest races of men, competing with each other as virulently as Flints against Dungs, till Lord Ashley arose in the might of his chivalry, to proclaim that the iniquity of underpaid stitches should no longer exist, that he would drive Moses out of the market by paying higher wages himself. Brave Lord Ashley! and wise as brave, were it only practicable. But it was not practicable. Many though the stitches be, still more numerous are the stitchers-still more numerous do they grow; and their cry is still, as the daughters of the horse-leech, Give, give! But even Hood's "Song of the Shirt," with its deep-toned earnestness, cannot prevail to raise the wages of all; how then should Lord Ashley? To stem the overwhelming torrent, he proclaims aloud that only "professed sempstresses" shall find work at his shop-the others may go to Moses. Alas! alas! what is a professed sempstress? Seven years of misery-stitch, stitch, stitching to learn the lowest of mechanical operations. A new trades'-union of women, headed by Lord Ashley, in a crusade against irregular interloping stitchers of their own sex! Is this all that poor benevolence can do? Well said Johnson-" Merit in a nobleman should be handsomely acknowledged.' The late acute and wisely-benevolent magistrate, Mr. Walker, said in his "Original," "If we permit the existence of stagnant | waters we shall infallibly promote gnats; and there is no conceivable amount of degradation to which human beings may not be brought, provided it be by degrees." There is one way, and one only, to uproot the distresses of sempsters and sempstresses. It is to prohibit seams-not by Act of Parliament, but by rendering them worthless and useless. Take away the stitches, and there would no longer be a mass of people brought up to make them. They are a remnant of our imperfect condition of the patchwork contrivances which began with the skins of beasts as a necessity, and which we have perpetuated in particular forms till we have grown to believe it ornamental artistry. The Sussex peasant covers his unsightly smock-frock with superfluous stitching, as a rude embroidery; and gent and gentleman do the same by the fronts of their shirts. They go about God's earth, walking reproaches on the inhumanity of man, who, not satisfied with exacting drudgery from his fellow-men and women, seeks to increase that drudgery by studious contrivance. Nor are women exempt from the charge of inhumanity, who carry wasted human labor on their own persons. Let us not be told that it "provides work for the poor." The hackneyed excuse shall not shield the miserable vanity that can only find gratification in the servitude of numerous fellow-beings. There is a morbid vanity that values things only for what they have cost in the amount of human labor wasted upon them, not for their artistical result, as Panama chains and hand-made lace, proclaiming to the world how rich the wearer is. The Scottish fishwives have a quaint way of calling their haddocks "lives o' men," indicating the perils which have procured them. Embroidered shirt-fronts, hand-wrought, might be justly designated "lives o' women." As the basis of true politeness is good-heartedness, so should the externals of a lady or gentleman indicate humanity, and thoughtful avoidance of human infliction. The garment of Christ without a seam, was the type of that which is to come, when another leaf in man's brain shall have been unfolded. In after years people will wonder at the ancestral processes which constructed large flat webs of machine-made cloth, and then cut them into fragments to be joined together again by hand drudgery. The time is coming that shirts will be made perfect in the loom by machine labor. The succinct garments of industry will be produced at prices lower than even Moses has dreamed of, and the flowing drapery of the man of | contagious fever in a road-side hovel, and Shelter from the "skyey influences" is The next question is of our dwellings. In the first consideration-in other words-a these, as regards the general masses of man- roof; a huge umbrella-covering, on walls inkind, we are as far behind as in our food and closing a sufficiently large space, and this clothing. In the warm regions of the earth space should be gravel soil-the soil nature we require shelter chiefly from the sun. In has provided for man to dwell on, and not England, much more than this is required. for vegetables to thrive on, other than those We require sun-shade occasionally, but for that gladden the sight of man. The matethe greater part of the year all that relates rials for constructing a roof were "some to our comfort, and the care of our bodies, time a problem, but now the time gives them must be transacted beneath a roof. Thus, proof," since Robert Peel abolished the duty as in other things, the problem to solve is on glass, and set man's brain free to work how may the greatest amount of comfort be on nature's materials, before reserved as a achieved for human beings, with the mini- costly luxury for the wealthy. Four extermum of drudgery to other human beings? nal walls, then, of sufficient height and We have no sympathy with those whose thickness, and constructed with large hollow aim it is to engross the largest possible bricks, should be covered in with a roof of amount of personal service from others. We rough-surfaced glass, of greenish tinge, and do not believe that human happiness is con- of sufficient thickness to defy the hailstone. sequent on party-coloring the externals of The roof structure should be of wrought iron, our fellow-creatures, even though it be on the tension principle, and divided into as "considered in their wages." We are still many spaces as may be desirable, supported lamentably deficient in our dwelling arrange- on stone or cast-iron columns. Portions of ments, far behind those of our factories. We the glass might be left bright, for the sun's have thought more of working for general rays to enter; other portions colored, for and individual profit-which, fairly trans- artistic effect. The glass should be inserted lated in the great book of nature, does not in the roof in large sheets, with elastic packmean mere sordid gain, but the great work ing round the edges. The greater the numof the world's progress-than we have of ber of the floors there can be the better, as our domestic comforts. A movement in the height above the earth's surface is always right direction is taking place in these latter favorable to health, rising above the vapor days, partly the result of philanthropy, and exhalation line. But, of course, there must partly of a growing conviction in the minds be a certain proportion of width to height. of the wealthy, that they cannot neglect If we assume six ranges of apartments eight their poorer fellows with impunity. One f feet high each-supposed for working men our greatest writers has forcibly stated this and families, then the area within the internal walls should not be less than one hundred feet. The floors should be double, of sawn slate, with air spaces between, and supported on iron girders. The partitions and staircases also should be of sawn slate. The apartments should all be against the external walls, with the windows opening outward, and the doors opening on inner gal 66 once a poor Irishwoman stopped in the environs of Merry Carlisle,' and was refused help in her sickness. She fell prostrate with * While writing this, we are informed that an American has brought over a "stitching machine." This is the first step. The next is, to manufacture garments not requiring stitches. The artist and mechanician must combine for this. £1 leries. The ground-floor rooms should be apportioned to a dining and coffee-room, a library and lecture-room, and a kitchen. The central portion, to the height of the first floor, should be covered in with glass pavement, and applied to hot and cold baths, and wash-houses. The cellars beneath, to the stowage of provisions and fuel. The upper story should be the nursery for children, and the school-rooms. The intermediate ranges of apartments would be sittingrooms and bed-rooms. On the north side of the building, external to the kitchen, should be a building containing a steamengine and well, and small gas-works, with a lofty chimney running above it close to the external wall. The waste heat from the gas-works would serve to heat economically the engine boiler, and to prepare heated air to warm the building generally in the galleries and halls, and particularly in the private rooms, being in the hollows of the floors at all times, and admitted into, or excluded from the apartments, at the pleasure of the inhabitants. Each bed-room and sitting-room would be provided with a closet, dust-shoot, and sink; and some of them would be arranged to throw three or four or more apartments in groups at pleasure. The use of the engine would be, to grind and chop for the kitchen, to clean boots and shoes with circular brushes on a shaft, to clean knives and forks by the same process, to pump up hot and cold water into all the apartments, to furnish steam for the dryingclosets and cooking, and cleansing earthenware and utensils, and keep going a rising and falling lift to the upper stories, to save the labor of mounting stairs. Westward and southward of the building should be laid out a garden and pleasure-ground, kept cultivated by the manure and refuse, chemically treated, to neutralize the gases. The garden would furnish plants to place in the interior of the building, to consume any vitiated air that might escape the ventilating processes. Open fire-places might be placed in the apartments on the ground floor, and gas stoves in the others. These arrangements would suit the solitary as well as the gregariously disposed. The gas and hot water arrangements would serve for all the processes of private cookery, and the public kitchen would supply food for single men or families, to whom household drudgery were a nuisance. The furniture should be chiefly metallic, to prevent risk of fire, and of forms simple, yet graceful. The beds should be spring mattresses or water beds. It is not gener ally understood that the object of a soft bed is chiefly to fit the body, to prevent undue strain on any portion of the bones or muscles. Feather beds do not well attain this object, because the feathers not being pliant or moveable, are consequently compressed. The water bed obviates this, and produces equal pressure. Could the body be laid in a plaster cast exactly fitting it, there would be no sensation of hardness. Plaster casts and prints, multiplied by mechanical art, should abound. The large halls, and dining and lecture-rooms, might be furnished with statues and paintings, if they could be afforded. But all should wear a severe simplicity, though the eye should never rest on an ugly or ungraceful object. It may be objected that this mode of living would not suit the tastes of English people, who consider "every man's house his castle," and prefer model cottages to model lodging-houses. This idea, we believe, has chiefly arisen from the distaste consequent on inconvenient and miserable lodginghouses. But there is no reason why this system should not combine all the advantages of the clubs with all the privacy of domestic life, free from its drudgery. It is certain that, upon this system, the maximum of comfort, with the minimum of labor, may be realized; and it is only by the congregation of individuals that high civilization can be attained. Let us consider the advantages. 1 First, the most thorough and absolute independence of all personal attendance. In such a dwelling a man might conveniently obtain all that he would require for personal use, as simply as he could buy goods in a shop. There could be no dirt, with hard slate surfaces for floors and walls. His hot and cold water, and gas, all arranged to his hand, and with the means of getting rid of waste water; with couch and furniture so simple as almost to be self-arranging; and with ready access to food at any time he might require it; he would need no personal attendance, save in case of illness. might go in and out at his own pleasure, without trouble to himself or others. Advantageous as all this would be to individual men, infinitely greater would be the advantages to families. A large assemblage of people could maintain their own physician on the establishment; could engage their own lecturers and school teachers; could have a public nursery; could tend the sick; could have their own gymnastic grounds: in short, all the appliances which are now the ex He clusive privileges of the wealthy. In such an We have contemplated such an establishment as this for the use of working men and their families-a species of communism for the purpose of economizing expenditure, just as gas companies, and water companies, and canal and railway companies, are enabled to accomplish, economically, things which are beyond the reach of individuals. Whether out of this condition of things, long practiced and widely diffused, may ultimately grow associations for the purposes of Production amongst working men, is a fit problem for contemplation. It is the probable course of man's progress; but assuredly no fallacy can be greater than that of assuming that men who have been forced into selfish thoughts and habits by bad training and privation, can be fitted for communist association. The class of men in the mass, fitted for such purposes, have yet to be born and bred. Individuals may be found from whom pattern associations of an imperfect kind may be congregated; but it is only by a fine race of nature's gentlemen that the perfect result can be obtained. Meanwhile "coming events cast their shadows before;" o'er all the earth nations are dreaming the dream of man's coming equality, and the wonder-working process of social reforms. It will not be in our time, but we may sow the good seed which shall bear blossoms in the future. Misapprehension will probably retard it; for people will dream that it is proposed for them to live in public caravansaries, the truth being that it is desired to obtain for them, more perfectly than ever, the most complete privacy at their own option-that privacy which is ever sought in great cities, by those who understand the course of human action. We have contemplated such an establishment as erected for working men; and the outlay of capital will not frighten those who know how comparatively cheaper large houses are built than small ones. But it is a matter for the serious contemplation of the middle and wealthier classes, if they would retain their comforts around them. Upon domestic service, their comforts, in these badly arranged dwellings, mostly hinge, and a change is fast arriving in the character of domestic service. The position of both men and women domestic servants, is that of painful privation. Taken as a mass, good feeling is the highest of their engood lodging is uncommonpleasant lodging a rare exception; social intercourse is practically denied. They are, in short, mostly treated as a species of white slaves; and, as a natural consequence, they will many of them lie and pilfer like black slaves. Their higher feelings are rarely cultivated; they are regarded as a necessary evil, and " envy, and hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness," are begotten in them toward those whom they regard as cruel taskmasters. It is said that there are upward of a million of women servants in England; and so commonly is their condition that of unjust treatment, that where individuals behave kindly to them, they are apt to think them fools or designing persons. It is impossible that this mass of injured human beings should long remain contented in their condition. They have human feelings, and they will have human ties. Domestic Servants' Associations will infallibly rise up to resist this great injustice; and infallibly they will commit other injustices in redressing their own wrongs. In England we have the example of employers' injustice; in the United States we have injustice on the part of the "helps." But to the position of the United States we are fast approaching. Service is distasteful, because, practically, it is accompanied by loss of freedom. The word service is in itself a gracious word, as it is a gracious thing to serve our fellows; but in our domestic servants' apprehension it has lost its original meaning, and has become distasteful servitude, or service rendered for hire. So surely as the years roll on, higher wages and lessening performance will mark domestic service, till the time comes round that the obligation is considered equal to serve and be served; that mutual attachment from superiors to inferiors in the social scale, arising from the possession of different qualifications, will be a far stronger bond than that of mere cash payment. Ere this comes to pass, there will be heavy domestic feuds between the ill-instructed of both classes, and by which the better instructed will suffer. Meanwhile, the only remedy for the middle classes, loving their ease, will be to increase their mechanical appliances and labor-saving processes, to make themselves self-dependent |
