[Gutenberg 58964] • Roadtown

Nineveh, Babylon, Rome, London, New York,—all cities from the twilight of the past to the high noon of the present have been constructed on one plan, which is no plan at all. Like Topsy, they jest growed, with no further aims in view than to huddle together for the sake of companionship and self-protection against enemies. A map of the haphazard streets straying crookedly through them looked like cracks in an earthenware dish. The siege-walls which until recently surrounded them emphasized the prisoner-like existence of their inhabitants. Noise, dirt, disease, suffocation and confusion, crime—these spirits of evil took up their abode in the midst of them, never to be dislodged, and students of political economy, hygiene, decency and morality wasted eloquence and logic in showing how bad it all was, and in suggesting picayune and transient remedies. The true Moses, with the effectual remedy, which will lead us out of our long Egyptian bondage, arrives only to-day, and if we will but follow the teachings of the gospel contained in the ensuing pages, we may be free, healthy, wealthy and happy forevermore.

This Moses of ours, contemporarily incarnated as Mr. Chambless, arrives at the psychological moment when we are all ready for him. The Jeremiahs of rotten conditions and the Cassandras of impending woe had prepared us for the necessity of change, and the Edisons, Teslas and Lodges of electrical and other inventions had supplied the means for it. The great riddle was ripe for the guessing: and Mr. Chambless has guessed it.

Transportation, distribution, and the middle-man,—what a waste of time, energy, economy and common sense are involved in our present handling of these elements? The domestic servant problem,—how sorry and slipshod a solution of it are the hotel and boarding house of to-day? The elimination of the open country from our children’s training and from our own opportunities for peace and sanity,—what a paltry and impotent substitute for it is the hybrid suburb? Personal independence, social harmony, full value for work done, adequate leisure after toil,—does not this sound like the Millennium? Read Mr. Chambless, O ye captives of Civilization, and burst your shackles!