Roadtown transportation includes all the links in the system of transportation automatically coupled into one system. This is what I mean by a new conception of transportation.
22 The functions of housing and transportation are fully3 co?rdinated by Nature in the individual animal—legs are her vehicle of passenger transportation, talons4 and arms are her freight system, the animal body is the house. Housing and transportation exist together, being mutually interdependent. They are inseparable, the building is worthless without transportation and conversely there would be no need for transportation without the house.
There is no better illustration of the need for a proper combination of transportation and housing than that of the human body. The baby’s first task is to learn to use its transportation devices, otherwise its house or body is useless. Life is full of lessons of the necessity of the harmonious5 combination of the functions of transportation and consumption. The monkey was provided with means for transporting himself up the banana tree and an efficient means of getting the banana from the stalk to his mouth. Gold carried from mines in Peru to a jewelry6 shop in Madrid;23 men carried from their homes in Brooklyn to their offices in Wall Street; food carried from a farm in Canada to a dining-room in a Boston hotel; gas carried from retorts to the burner in a parlor7 chandelier; electricity carried from the generator8 in Niagara to the motors in Rochester; a pound of steak carried by the delivery boy to the basement of your house and pulled up in a dumb-waiter; a letter carried by a postman; the song of a Prima Donna sent scintillating9 through the air by a wireless10 phone—all these things and a million others are but a civilized11 man’s arms and legs—his means of transportation.
Transportation in Nature.
The game of life in wild nature is but the getting of food and water to the consuming plant or animal, or getting the more adaptable12 animal to the food or water or some warm spot, or the society of his fellows. So the life of man, whether it be the family with the single house or the city with its many houses, shows a similar relation—things needed by the inhabitants,24 things taken from the place where they are and to a place where we want them—that is transportation.
Start out in the morning, number your every minute’s occupation, watch what your neighbors are doing. The man on the stairs, the wagon1 on the street, the rumbling13 subway train in a three million dollar a mile right of way, the elevator in the skyscraper14, the office boy at beck and call—it is all transportation. Run over in your mind the work of the office and brain workers in a city business section, how many of them are engaging in planning, directing and accounting15 the various forms of transportation.
In fact, every hour of existence we are performing some act of transportation except when asleep. If we allow eight hours for rest we find that two-thirds of our lives are spent in transporting ourselves to our wants or our wants to ourselves.
The basic principle of Roadtown is a plan to give the social body proper arms and legs, to make them not as they are, separate and unco?rdinated functions, but as part, in fact the25 most important part, of the scheme of civilization.
The members of society are all engaged in transporting themselves and their belongings16 a goodly portion of their time, and besides a large group is exclusively engaged in the work of transportation. Moreover, the so-called productive labors18 are at every step interwoven with operations of transportation. Analyze19 for a moment the work of the factory, of the farm—how much of it is production, how much is transportation? Could we, like Aladdin, rub a mystic lamp and cause things to be created from nothing, we would indeed be well served. But could we command the génie of transportation, the will to wish what is from where it is to the place where we want it, our power would be equally miraculous20 and quite as useful.
Our methods of production, though still extremely wasteful21, are constantly growing in efficiency. In this age a minority of mankind produce for the entire population. A constant stream of people from the farm pours into the city. These people produce nothing26 and expect to live by distributing goods to each other; but congestion22 of population in large cities introduces insolvable mechanical difficulties in distribution, until railroads, ware23 houses, trucks, wholesale24 and retail25 stores, delivery wagons, grocery boys and dumb-waiters, become congested; the machine clogs26 and thus the growing efficiency of modern production is lost through a more rapidly growing waste in distribution.
The increasing number of those who get their living by taking a slice of profit and the growing expense due to the ever increasing mechanical difficulties in distribution are evils that aggravate27 each other.
As the makers28 of law live principally by the profits of distribution, they will not change the scheme, nor can the wealthy, with their country villas29 legislate30 the modern city tenant31 back to the loneliness, long hours and lack of conveniences of farm life. A proposition that would combine cheaper rents, greater conveniences and give all an opportunity to engage in productive work would be a real solution for the high cost of living. Roadtown27 eliminates all possible waste and relieves the army of distributors of nine-tenths of their present work, thus throwing these people into productive labors.
Labor17 which results in the creation of a concrete product—something that can be eaten or worn is generally appreciated. Transportation, the far greater necessity, is not so readily appreciated as a source of wealth, nor is the waste in transportation so quickly seen or remedied.
Our Disjointed Civilization.
Our factories and our farms—the places of production—our houses and cities—places of consumption, and our railroad trucks, delivery wagons and dumb-waiters, means of transportation, have been developed by separate minds—they work together—clumsily—wastefully33. Civilization is a black cabinet of plates and doughnuts, arms and legs, and consuming mouths dancing around in an unco?rdinated fashion, occasionally getting together and serving each other, but more often missing the mark—two hands going to one mouth, another28 hand missing the mouth altogether; there is no plan, no unity32, no harmony, no mind behind it all. The farm and factory, the railroad and the city grow separately, each to serve the other it is true, but the machine as a whole is woefully disjointed and inefficient34. We may liken our present system of living to old style harvesting. A binder35, wonderful enough in itself, left the bundles of grain strewn about the field. They were shocked by hand. Later they are gathered into wagons and hauled to the farm yard and built into stacks. Then the thresher comes and with another complex machine delivers the grain, loose, through a running spout36, where men weigh it and sack it and load it into wagons, which are as crude as the threshing machine itself.
Compare this system, wonderful though it be, with the combined header-thresher, which at one operation cuts, threshes and delivers the grain weighed and sacked into the wagon. In the combination of the previous operations many of the steps, the binding37 and hauling and stacking and weighing drop out. The machine simplified the whole process, it eliminates29 waste, it represents a unity of plan, a harmony of operation.
Our modern complex systems of production, transportation and consumption, like the old-fashioned method of harvesting, require many separate machines. Take the one product of butter for illustration: the farmer produces milk, the milk hauler carts it to town, the creamery man manufactures the butter, then packs it into tubs and sells it to a dealer38; the dealer ships it to the city by rail and then another truckman delivers it to a jobber39 which means more trucking; the jobber molds the butter into prints and boxes them. A wagon takes it to a grocer where it is again stored, sold, and goes the round of another wagon, a dumb-waiter, a pantry, a waiter, a table, and at last consumption. This is a sample story of civilization, a heterogeneous40 mass of independently acting41 individuals and separate mechanisms42, full of mechanical waste, full of human waste, full of financial waste. The butter fat as is now wastefully produced is worth twenty cents in the farmer’s milk pail, it cost two cents to skim it and churn it, the rest is transportation.30 It is worth forty cents at the grocery store and fifty cents to one dollar on your table, according to how much of your household distribution is done by your wife who gives services gratis43 and how much by servants whose arms and legs move only in response to the rattle44 of the shekels. And how much would this service of transportation cost if production, transportation and consumption, like the modern header-thresher, were built upon a plan of co?rdination, that is, if the farmer’s dairy was on a transportation line with the creamery, and the creamery on a line with the kitchen where machinery45 and specialized46 labor are available, and the kitchen was on a line with the consumer’s dining-room, and the only expense of transportation was the cost of power to move the material object and the cost of labor to perform the actual processes of manufacture that intervene between production and consumption.
The Roadtown is a single unified47 plan for the arrangement of these three functions of civilization—production, transportation, and consumption.
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1
wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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wagons
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| n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车 | |
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3
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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talons
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| n.（尤指猛禽的）爪( talon的名词复数 )；（如爪般的）手指；爪状物；锁簧尖状突出部 | |
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harmonious
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| adj.和睦的，调和的，和谐的，协调的 | |
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jewelry
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| n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝 | |
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7
parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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8
generator
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| n.发电机，发生器 | |
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scintillating
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| adj．才气横溢的,闪闪发光的; 闪烁的 | |
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wireless
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| adj.无线的；n.无线电 | |
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civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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adaptable
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| adj.能适应的，适应性强的，可改编的 | |
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rumbling
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| n. 隆隆声, 辘辘声 adj. 隆隆响的 动词rumble的现在分词 | |
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14
skyscraper
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| n.摩天大楼 | |
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accounting
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| n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表 | |
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belongings
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| n.私人物品，私人财物 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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labors
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| v.努力争取(for)( labor的第三人称单数 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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analyze
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| vt.分析，解析 (=analyse) | |
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20
miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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wasteful
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| adj.（造成）浪费的，挥霍的 | |
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congestion
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| n.阻塞，消化不良 | |
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23
ware
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| n.(常用复数)商品，货物 | |
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24
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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retail
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| v./n.零售；adv.以零售价格 | |
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clogs
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| 木屐； 木底鞋，木屐( clog的名词复数 ) | |
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aggravate
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| vt.加重(剧)，使恶化；激怒，使恼火 | |
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makers
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| n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式） | |
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villas
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| 别墅，公馆( villa的名词复数 )； （城郊）住宅 | |
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legislate
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| vt.制定法律；n.法规，律例；立法 | |
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tenant
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| n.承租人；房客；佃户；v.租借，租用 | |
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unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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33
wastefully
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| 浪费地，挥霍地，耗费地 | |
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inefficient
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| adj.效率低的，无效的 | |
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binder
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| n.包扎物，包扎工具；[法]临时契约；粘合剂；装订工 | |
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spout
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| v.喷出，涌出；滔滔不绝地讲；n.喷管；水柱 | |
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37
binding
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| 有约束力的，有效的，应遵守的 | |
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dealer
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| n.商人，贩子 | |
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39
jobber
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| n.批发商；(股票买卖)经纪人；做零工的人 | |
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40
heterogeneous
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| adj.庞杂的；异类的 | |
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41
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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42
mechanisms
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| n.机械( mechanism的名词复数 )；机械装置；[生物学] 机制；机械作用 | |
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43
gratis
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| adj.免费的 | |
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44
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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45
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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46
specialized
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| adj.专门的，专业化的 | |
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47
unified
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| (unify 的过去式和过去分词)； 统一的； 统一标准的； 一元化的 | |
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