CHAPTER IV.
THE PLACE OF THE HOUSE IN THE SOCIAL ECONOMY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.
"We have entered upon the period of conscious evolution, have begun the adaptation of the environment to the organism."-- Sir OLIVER LODGE.
The hopeless pessimism of the past, that saw in the unmerciful progress of organic evolution no escape for the human animal from the grip of fate, is about to give way to the enthusiasm of conscious directing and controlling power.
This is the beneficent result of the age of the machine.

Man has discovered that he can not only change his environment, but that by this change he can modify himself.

The hope of the future lies in the moulding of man's surroundings to his needs.

In physiological terms, "the adaptation of structure to function." The day is long past when shelter implied chiefly a tight roof and a dry floor.

The housing of the twentieth-century family means location, central and fashionable.