MY many friends have advised me to sell the Roadtown patents or form a company and sell stock. But these people have failed to realize the comprehensiveness of the Roadtown project. Indeed, should I have promoted the Roadtown as a monopoly for private gain I would have unquestionably been the meanest man on earth, for in me and my backers would have been combined all the despotism of the landlord, the railroad magnate, the factory slave driver, the wasteful middle-man, the extortionate retailer and half of the commodity trusts. The private owners of the Roadtown would be absolute master of the inhabitants in every phase of life.
I know no better way to explain to my well-meaning friends who wear dollars instead of lenses in their spectacle frames why I do not140 care to make a private monopoly of Roadtown, than to say that I was raised in a country town and know the sad limitations of human aspirations due to the loneliness and narrowed horizon of isolated existence, and that I have also lived in the congested districts of New York and of other large cities and know the pain and misery of the life of the city, and that for me to think of promoting Roadtown as a private graft would be exactly comparable to the idea of the discoverer of diphtheria antitoxin keeping the secret for selfish gains.
The Roadtowns will be built by the people who believe in its principles and who have money to invest at 5 per cent, or the market price of a security better than municipal bonds. The Roadtown corporations will each be chartered with a nominal capital stock which will bear no dividends. I will at first hold this stock in trust. This stock will be the voting stock of the corporation, hence, I or trustees I might name will have control of the policy of the company within the limitations of the charter. I wish this stock to be non-dividend paying so the Roadtown can never be made to141 pay profits to me or anyone else and to pay interest on bonds only to those who are cash investors. My object in holding or trusteeing this stock is to keep the control of the Roadtown out of the hands of those who may use such control as a means to the numerous forms of graft commonly present in corporations. I wish to stand between the bond holders and the residents of Roadtown and the grafters, and this privilege is the reward I ask for the invention of Roadtown—I want no promoters or monopoly profits, no inventors’ stock, and no fancy salary, but I do want the opportunity to see that no one else gets any such advantage over the Roadtowners.
My reason for wishing to control the voting stock of Roadtown is that I do not believe a democratic organization can be created at once in its entirety but that it will have to evolve naturally. If an oligarchic form of control was established now it would doubtless be perpetuated for generations and become corrupt as are present corporations and governments. I believe that during my life time, I, with the aid of good advisers, can evolve a purely142 democratic form of control and thus permanently prevent it from falling into corrupt hands. I confidently expect the co?peration of men of the highest national reputation in matters of trusteeships.
Home Rule for Roadtowners.
The Roadtown management will have to grow and develop starting perhaps with one-half mile section and adopt such rules as are necessary to the protection and comfort of the tenants. They will be consulted about whatever concerns them directly and thus gradually evolve into a plan of self-government. When I say self-government I mean as regards the things that under our present system they haven’t a word to say. They go to the polls occasionally and vote for somebody but can seldom trace any benefit from the vote. In Roadtown direct legislation, initiative, referendum and recall will enable a man to really have a say.
The control of the local affairs in Roadtown will be wholly a matter of local option143 and the suffrage will be exercised by both sexes.
There will be no definitely set districts as townships or municipal wards, but each question to be voted upon will be submitted to the parties concerned, for illustration: the steward will be elected or recalled by the people whose food the preparation of which he superintends. They will also determine his salary. If they vote him a high salary and he hires an expensive set of helpers and sets a luxurious table the people who elected him can eject him if they do not approve of his extravagance, but if they desire to live wastefully they can do so and the people of more moderate tastes can move into a section which is known to be moderate. By such opportunity for local option, people will be given the chance of finding sections to suit their tastes and purses.
Roadtown will be a great equalizer of present life by the removal of special privileges of the rich and those who are “in” to reap where they have not sown, but there will be no tendency to dictate to the people how they144 should spend the money they have equitably earned. You now have to ask the gas trust, the ice trust, the milk and meat trust, the middlemen’s trust and many others even if it is permissible for you to marry and live a normal life.
The original price of Roadtown rents will be made to vary with the desirability of the location. Favored localities will be settled by people with the money to pay for it, and these people will naturally vote for high class service and this in turn will be added to the original price of rent. In this manner certain sections of Roadtown may become more expensive and so the various grades of society will find their wants readily supplied.
Roadtown will possess a leveling influence, it will hasten the equality and brotherhood of man and the Kingdom of God upon the Earth, but it will not reduce man to a single level at one operation, and if these natural laws of human nature should be outraged by an enforced leveling programme, the full Roadtown development would be seriously retarded for a generation. 145
Detached Villas Practical but Undesirable.
In my earlier work of planning on Roadtown I thought it would be necessary to cater to the wishes of the well-to-do by discontinuing the house line in some sections and breaking it up into detached villas. By carrying the monorails and all pipes and wires in a trench from villa to villa the full benefit of the co-operative functions could be attained, but of course with the additional expense of the extra land, extra length of the trench and its contents, the extra wall and the loss of the roof promenades. I know of nothing that will give a better conception of the wonders of Roadtown than to consider for a moment this villa construction. By the continuation of the Roadtown trench between villas it would be possible to give to a modest ten or twenty thousand dollar villa facilities that would cost half a million if installed in a single country or suburban home.
But when we had such a villa completed what advantage would we have over the continuous house? A few added windows on two146 sides of the house that would look out into the other fellow’s windows across the lawn and instead of passersby on a grand promenade above our heads entirely removed from our sight, or we from theirs, we would have a sidewalk by the door where our neighbors who became curious as to our domestic affairs could stroll and stare into our windows and doors. In practice more light and air could enter the two freely open sides of the Roadtown house than through the carefully shuttered windows on four sides of a “private” villa. I am satisfied that very few if any sections of Roadtown will be built in villas because they will offer no advantages that I am aware of to offset the disadvantages. People will accept the uniformity of the exterior of the roofs and walls as they now accept the uniformity of the street. Their personal tastes will be put on interior decorations or in beautiful gardens that may be seen from the roof promenade and enjoyed by all.
Before the bonds are offered for the development of any section of Roadtown the matter of municipal franchise, and options from147 suburban land owners and farmers for the right of way and for garden sites will progress as much as is practicable and a statement will be issued showing the appraisal value of this land, the status of the franchise matter, together with architects’ drawings and engineers’ plans, and specifications setting forth the estimated cost of a certain finished structure with equipments in a certain locality. This will give the prospective bond buyer an exact knowledge of the property upon which he may secure the mortgage in exchange for his money which will be held by trustees until the required amount is raised and then disbursed by them according to the specifications. That this will be an excellent security will be assured by the fact that the options will be secured at a very low rate because of the competition raised between rival land owners all of whom desire transportation and the other Roadtown facilities.
This principle has been made use of thousands of times in railroad and trolley promotion and has poured millions of dollars worth of watered stock into the hands of crafty promoters. As there is no promoter’s graft in148 Roadtown the bidding of land owners for this line of city through their neighborhood or property will turn to the benefit of the bond holder in enhancing the solidity of his security and to the land owner in bringing a strip of city to his farm.
Builders of Roadtown Take Minimum Risk.
The wonderful economies of the Roadtown construction, such as cheap building material, principally rock and sand from the farm, steam shovel excavation instead of hand shovel, work train instead of cart hauling and poured cement construction instead of hand labor, the economies of open piping and wiring, and the valuable patents that are being donated because of the humanitarian bases of promotion, will give a better building for the money than can possibly be made under present conditions anywhere and make the first mortgage on Roadtown, including as it does transportation, telephone, water, gas, electric, sewage and other franchises, real estate mortgage and a mortgage on a permanent fireproof house, will make it the best possible form of security149 known, and no inflated land values. Don’t forget that feature. Such a bond will be virtually a municipal bond as the people living in Roadtown can be taxed in the form of rent to meet the interest. No one who has fully grasped the principle of Roadtown will doubt for a minute that it can be built, for it is not a complicated mechanism which must fail if one part proves faulty, but simply the grouping together of inventions already in use. And even if some of these should prove to be unfeasible they would hardly be missed in the total.
The whole question of the value of the Roadtown bonds depends upon the question as to whether or not people will live in the Roadtown after it has been built. I have spent a hundred pages telling of the comforts, conveniences, social and industrial advantages of Roadtown life. Heretofore I might have fallen into minor errors, but no sane and fair mind can reason away the fact that Roadtown life will be wonderfully attractive to the vast majority of mankind. As proof of this, over a hundred high class families have spoken for apartments in the first section, if it happens to150 be built near New York. But suppose we admit for the sake of argument that the Roadtown house was no better and no worse to live in than a typical suburban house of to-day. Clearly then the worth of the Roadtown bonds will depend wholly upon the price of Roadtown rent which in turn will depend upon the original cost and the cost of operation.
The Cost of the First Mile of Roadtown.
With a view of answering this question I submit the following letters and figures from Frank L. Sutton, a consulting engineer of 80 Broadway, New York City. These figures are based upon the cost of the first mile of Roadtown. These figures show that it will not be necessary to build a long section of the Roadtown before it can underbid the rental of the isolated house or city apartment and thus secure population and begin business.
It goes without saying that as the length of the Roadtown increases the cost per mile and the cost per house both in construction and operation will decrease.
151 FRANK SUTTON,
CONSULTING ENGINEER,
80 Broadway,
New York, November 12, 1909.
Mr. Edgar Chambless,
150 Nassau Street, New York City.
Dear Sir: Referring to the report hereto attached giving a general description and the estimated cost of the mechanical and electrical equipments for the Roadtown, as well as the cost of construction of the building and equipment, and further the cost of operation, would say that these results have been carefully computed and there is no doubt but that the Roadtowns can be built and operated for the figures given in the report.
On account of the arrangement of the building and the convenience by which raw material can be transported, the proposition is without doubt the most economical and efficient form of good construction that can be devised.
Very truly yours,
Frank L. Sutton 152.
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