§ 14

There is one railway station, but, unlike those the other world made, it is clean, orderly, dustless and smokeless. Electric power drives the trains, which in some subtle way are provided with noiseless wheels, which run as smoothly as on ice. When, in my dream, I first saw the railway station, I was sorry. My spirit had been hoping that the world would be content to travel slower. But when it gave no evidence of squalor in its neighbourhood or smoke in its vicinity, my spirit was quieted. Nevertheless, it has not been drawn thither again. When the new city was laid out, a boundary was fixed, and no extension is permitted within prescribed limits. One of the great curses of the old world was the inordinate size of cities. Impossible to govern well, certain to create squalor and be refuges for the idle and dissolute, they were intractable. First comes the open country, freely cultivated, then the city, then a highly cultivated garden of fruit and flowers on the gradual slope of the Acropolis, upon which stand the factories, simply and grandly designed, with no pretence of architecture. What look like broad chimney stacks, reminding one of the towers of some Italian city, are storehouses as well as shafts in which fans are constantly working to take pure air into the factories and workshops. No one but caretakers and watchmen lives on the Acropolis.

As we have seen, the City is surrounded by a wall. There are four entrance gates, which are closed at night, when no work is permitted by the Commune.

More and more interested my spirit became as it made its unseen journey. The houses of the city are erected upon the flat land, and entirely surround the Acropolis. They begin in something over a mile from the Acropolis walls. The circumference of the gardens is two to three miles. They provide a considerable portion of the fruit and vegetables for the city inhabitants. They are tended not only by special gardeners, but any capable citizen is welcome to work in them in spare time under certain restrictions. A beautiful walk indeed it is from the city up to the Acropolis, shaded in summer by luxury of growth (for there is sun now that the smoke fiend has been slain). It was midday, a bell rings, reminding me by its majestic tone of the “Vacca,” in Florence. No ear-distracting hooters are permitted or hellish shrieks of discordant whistles, which in the old factory towns were so nerve-racking. As the sound of the bell filled the air, out of the city came its crowd of workers to make their dinners in their homes. They are a healthy, happy-looking crew. Life shines her best light upon them. They are cared for; they are good citizens, content, honest, and industrious. If the climate is not the best, what is good of it is no longer spoiled. What has become of “strike leaders” and suchlike misleading and “out for themselves folk,” I did not hear for certain. But I did hear one man say to another, “We are well rid of them,” and upon another occasion, pointing to a pond, a man said, “That’s where we ducked him, he wasn’t straight.”

How solid and compact the city appeared, how sensible its houses, how clean and orderly. What a change from the old dreary rows of boxes called houses, slate roofed, almost windowless, more fit for pigs than human habitations. These being novel in construction, and with no pretence to be “architecture,” are quite interesting. It appears that the original soil has been dug out, probably a foot and a half of it, a solid mass of concrete run in, framed by four courses of damp-proof bricks; thus is the floor made and a foundation for walls established. Piers of concrete are erected, from which the roof springs. The ends of timbers are imbedded in these piers, which are thereby strengthened. The intervals between the timbers are filled with strong laths, well bedded in tenacious plaster. Upright posts are placed between the horizontal timbers, which prevent the longer ones from sagging and firmly bind together the intervals of lath and plaster. The roofs are timber covered with red tiles. The colour effect is very pleasing. The ground plan is oblong, formed of two cubes. To avoid monotony, the houses are grouped in four, six and two. Each house measures 40 feet in length and 20 feet in depth. What would be called the ground floor is open to the height of 7 feet. Here are kept household implements. The space serves also as a play-place for children, and in winter can be used by members of the household for skittles, bowls, and other pleasant games. Rising from the centre of the ground plan is a shaft showing at regular intervals pigeon-holes. These shafts contain heat generated in the neighbourhood by electricity. Instead of wasting energy upon the discovery of poison gas to slaughter fellow-beings, science has found means to collect and generate electricity as an agent not only for movement but for heating, and without the expenditure of coal. At intervals stand towers, which have a fine effect among the houses. Within them are the electrical generators.

The houses are composed of two floors, one forming the upward boundary of the ground floor, the other eight feet above that, forming the ceiling of the first floor and the floor of the upper chambers, which are immediately under the roof. To save space, the stairway to the upper chambers is in the form of a ladder with hand rails. The largest room is that occupied by the women, where are their looms and all other implements belonging to their home trades, which are several. The kitchen is a walled off space within the foundation level; from it, the upper floor is reached by a ladder and handrail. The entrance to the first floor is by a stairway parallel with the elevation.