8 Analysis of standardization, truth, advertising and control.
2Many are the units which have become standardized and therefore subject to mass production in our great buildings of today, such as floor heights, etc. Be it an apartment house or an office building, floor or ceiling heights do not vary throughout at any one great city building, though they may vary from building to building for no other reason than the arbitrary choice of the architect. The vast majority of the public is fearful of the word ‘‘Standardization’’. It seems that standardization implies to them the ability of a manufacturer to produce, by his own arbitrary choice, millions of some type of product, let us say for instance, a scrubbing board, entirely new and untried in design, and that he can force this on the public. This is not so. If his product is not standard, by dint of past public use and customary acceptance, and actually fulfills a need better than anything else available under the particular circumstances of the individual, he cannot for love of money get the public to take it. That is, not so long as the public has to pay for it. Uncontrolled bestial greediness will assure a certain consumption of ‘‘Bargains’’ by those who are not sufficiently balanced in abstract reasoning to realize that everything must balance, and that you can’t get something for nothing. Many times those unstandard ‘‘Bargains’’ are very costly over a period of TIME. Bit by bit as truth is revealed in the multitudinous functions of living, and there is always but one truth, just as there is only one shortest distance between two points the public adopts this one ‘‘best’’ way of doing the thing. When enough people have recognized the truth to warrant someone investing his time or capital in the production of a mechanical means of performing that true and accepted standard function, we then have standardized production. Standard then means truth and should no more be avoided than truth. Both may be harmonized or harmonically presented. It is the lack of the latter and the prosaicness that has made standard things seem something to be avoided. Truth and the standard are always there. It is merely a matter of mental ability to perceive them. We use truths long before we recognize them and standardize them, just as the steam kettle had always emitted steam before harnessing it took place, so have the many truths herein brought out existed and been used in one way or another, but are now being called into sufficient recognition to permit of their being harnessed or standardized. Standardization is but a common formula basis of dealing with material things, to permit of reaching abstract or mental leisure and harmony. It is a paradox on life that one of the first things which we standardized was the TIME as its natural intervals were on too great a scale for our small use, and yet it is popularly ascribed to standardization, that it lacks time or progressive ability. It is actually the very meaning of progress. Again what is progress? Does it involve ultimate robotism of individuals? Not at all. Progress is merely transition from bestial, material, control, where all is time to the mental, or spiritual control where there is no time, through recognition of truth and harmonious application of it, ever approaching the state wherein all temporal matter is completely controlled by the abstract mind. Industry is merely the broadcasting system of truth to individualism.
3 Must we think so abstractly as this in consideration of the housing problem. Most assuredly we must for it is our failure to think in this very manner, and our readiness to accept the dogmas of habit, that has so held us back in our housing problem. It is practically necessary to go way back to the beginning of things to find all the mistakes that have been made in this way in the most necessary of life’s activities—home building—before we can correctly create the industrially produced home that will ring true to the world and therefore be acceptable and beneficial to it. We realize that many industrialists would be scared to death if they were talked to of the fourth dimension as applied to house design, while they carry time pieces in their pockets, unaware that fourth or time dimension figuring is simpler than the mechanism of the watch. So long as anything is not understood by man will he be afraid of it, wherefore will those designing the house, along, have to acquaint themselves of the new method, and the industrialist convinced of the profit, and as a result the world, provided with its new home, will have mental leisure to learn of the time dimension.
4 Just as two and two make four, by our system of mathematics, which is an arbitrary formula, and that is a mathematical truth, so are there mechanical truths, mechanics being but the application, in one of its forms, of time or the fourth dimension to the other three dimension which mathematically describe matter.
5 It must be clearly understood throughout al) this discussion that whether we have a formula that describes or controls a truth, or not, that the truth nevertheless exists. We are so bound up today in formula and red tape that we find most of the world in the mental condition that makes it refuse a truth, because it cannot formularize it. Like: the people who were so versed in geometry that they could readily prove flying to be impossible, while some ‘‘poor benighted half wits.’’ steadfastly trusting their observance of natural truths, set about to control them, and provided or invented the flying machine.
6 Man-made formula or standardization of abstracts is too much for the simply physical or material man or for the mentally exercised man who is selfish or self-conscious. They cannot see beyond it. It takes real mental abstraction to usefully compass formula, and apply it, where fitting, to natural truths. As mechanical truths are revealed so do we progress towards perfection; though there can be no absolute perfection in the material world. So has the automobile or airplane continually approached perfection. As it has approached perfection, by the process of the application of truth, so has it approached one final design. There are few biplanes or tri-planes today, mostly monoplanes. To the absolute stranger to our present day method of living, observing our stream of automobiles rolling down any of our great avenues, they would be practically indistinguishable, except as to color and accommodation units. Despite their makers claims of multi-divergency, and despite the misguided surge for individual expression therein. Just so is there a final best design, in our mechanical age, of the home or living quarters. Eventually, through economic pressure, and the desire of mankind for individual abstract expression, property ownership, and travel, this home will come. By application without fear, as has been necessary, in scientific exploration of chemical, philosophic, or other truths, to our problem of living, as applied to the home, will we discern the trend of this industry.
7 Every person in the world is willing to have every other person in the world change his method of living before he does himself. This is the great inertia that must be overcome in the most important field for the progress of truth today. Advertising can do this. As Mr. Babson says, in an extremely intelligent article recently appearing in Collier’s magazine, the world has now changed from instinctive motivation, in all its human movements, to a psychology of desire, as opposed to the former psychology of fear. This has been evolved through realization of the truth by the few and by their advertising of the truth to the many.
8 As part and parcel of the era before the metalic or mechanistic age, was the feudal system with its Stone Age or oppressive style of building, its oppressive style of living, its maintenance of ignorance by the masses. The buildings themselves involved the very heaviest materials available. Little or no light was let into their buildings. Little or no light was let into their lives. People acted only for fear of starving, or freezing, or death and sickness due to the bullying of weight and might.
9 In our new era, when as Lincoln says ‘‘Right makes Might’’, instead bf the reverse of the feudalistic age, truths will out in rapid succession. Truth and light are rapidly revealing to the minds of science newer, cleaner, quicker, more efficient ways of living. Science is creating mechanical tools for living and providing sustenance. The average length of life has been doubled in the last few years. The great power of public free press, public discussion of facts, and lastly advertising, is rapidly forcing truthful announcement of facts. The whole world has come under this spell of action due to desire for more truthful things. To correct the final and greatest problem, that of the home, we have then the great power of advertising, through the press, the radio, the moving picture, and soon television.
10 There is not a single condition of the new home, that has not already been solved in some field of industrial endeavor, in the great search for truth today. In describing the final house, which will in truth be upon us in a comparatively short time, it will be noted that there is not a function described, which is not entirely understandable to the modern and well-educated mind. By a careful study of industry along these lines, it has been possible to discern within definite limitations, the design of the coming home. Patents controlling the final design have been taken. The phases of industrial transition from our present method of housing to the ultimate have been carefully worked back, from that ultimate, to the present. Arriving at the final design through research and analysis it is easy to conceive of the intermediary steps.
11 It is with the greatest feeling of awe and sense of responsibility, that those who have worked out these truths approach their task of fulfillment. Only through completely abstract endeavor are truths undeniably revealed. When commercial introduction has been made and the public has taken to the new home in some measure, great groups of industry will be organized to compete along the new lines. Competition always results in benefit to mankind, although often in much struggle to a minority. That the period of transition may be as short as possible, and mankind generally benefit the sooner, the most rigid control will be maintained of the patents and the knowledge necessary to their exploitation until the new home is successfully launched.