ROADTOWN
ROADTOWN
BY
EDGAR CHAMBLESS
NEW YORK
ROADTOWN PRESS
150 NASSAU STREET
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1910
BY
EDGAR CHAMBLESS
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to J. Pierpont Morgan, a straight player ofa crooked game, who, it is said, played his usual role in the WallStreet manipulations of the Central Railroad of Georgia securities,which adroitly and legally absorbed the small savings and happiness ofmany unsophisticated investors—an action which, in my case at least,proved to be a blessing in disguise, for it made me suffer first andthen made me think. Hence the gratitude and consequent dedication toMr. Morgan for starting the train of thought, which finally resulted inthe invention of Roadtown, a plan for side-stepping the crooked gameas now played so that henceforth whosoever will may become a straightplayer of a straight game.
FOREWORD
Nineveh, Babylon, Rome, London, New York,—all cities from the twilightof the past to the high noon of the present have been constructedon 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 sakeof companionship and self-protection against enemies. A map of thehaphazard streets straying crookedly through them looked like cracks inan earthenware dish. The siege-walls which until recently surroundedthem emphasized the prisoner-like existence of their inhabitants.Noise, dirt, disease, suffocation and confusion, crime—these spiritsof evil took up their abode in the midst of them, never to bedislodged, and students of political economy, hygiene, decency andmorality wasted eloquence and logic in showing how bad it all was,and in suggesting picayune and transient remedies. The true2 Moses,with the effectual remedy, which will lead us out of our long Egyptianbondage, arrives only to-day, and if we will but follow the teachingsof 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. TheJeremiahs of rotten conditions and the Cassandras of impending woe hadprepared us for the necessity of change, and the Edisons, Teslas andLodges of electrical and other inventions had supplied the means forit. The great riddle was ripe for the guessing: and Mr. Chambless hasguessed it.
Transportation, distribution, and the middle-man,—what a waste oftime, energy, economy and common sense are involved in our presenthandling of these elements? The domestic servant problem,—how sorryand slipshod a solution of it are the hotel and boarding house ofto-day? The elimination of the open country from our children’straining and from our own opportunities for peace and sanity,—what3 apaltry and impotent substitute for it is the hybrid suburb? Personalindependence, social harmony, f