It costs too much to have a furnace large enough to warm a sufficient volume of air, it costs too much to put in safe plumbing, it costs too much to keep the house clean, and so on through the list.

We have been too busy getting and spending money to study the cost of neglect of cardinal principles of right living.

The farmer knows the cost of his young animals, but the father cares little and knows less of what it ought to cost to bring up his children--of the economy of spending wisely on a safe shelter for them.
A new estimate of what necessary things must cost has to be made before the present generation will live comfortably in presence of the account-book.
Here again a readjustment is coming; some expenses in house construction common now will be lessened or done away with; for example, fancy shapes, grooved and carved wood, projecting windows and door-frames.
It is usual, when the various new methods are brought up, to estimate the cost as additional to all that has gone before, rather than to see in it a substitute for much that may go.
Our family with $1500 income may safely pay $300 for rent, if that covers enough comfort and does not mean too much car-fare.
The house may cost $3000 if built on the old lines, and if the land it is placed on is not too expensive.
A fire-proof house such as is described in the July number of the _Brickbuilder and Architect_, 85 Water St., Boston, and probably also a house of reinforced concrete, will cost at present some $10,000 besides the land.

Because of freedom from repairs it should be possible to rent such houses for $500, which will bring them within the reach of our $3000 a year family, but not within the means of the $2000.

What is to be done?
It will be remarked by some that little attention has been given in these pages to the various so-called cooperative plans, like Mrs.Stuckert's oval of fifty houses connected by a tramway at each level, with a central kitchen from which all meals come and to which all used dishes return, with a central office from which service is sent, etc.
Frankly, to my mind this is not enough better than the apartment hotel, as we now know it, to pay for the effort to establish it.