Primitive man was a nest-builder.

For many centuries the human family lived in the tree tops, making therein their nests, much like the birds. The tree top home was not one of choice so much as necessity, for primitive man was without tools or weapons, and a legitimate prey of all the beasts of the field. Even in their tree top homes they were not safe from the huge reptiles that were so feared that unto this day the race shudders at the sight of a harmless garter snake.

Did you ever dream that you were falling, falling? Ask the psychology man; he can explain to you how this dream comes from the distant past when your forebears lived in the tree tops and actually took a tumble out of them occasionally. It was probably not until man discovered and tamed the fire that he dared to crawl down from his tree top home and live on the ground, in some sheltering cave or excavation of his own construction.

One of the sights that interests the northern visitor to the south is an occasional stone fireplace and chimney that stands out in the open without any house around it, the wooden structure having burned away. It may not be a fact, but I surmise that they frequently rebuild a house around a good chimney of this kind; if so, they are simply following out the plans of the first architects, for the home, as we think of it today, was built around the hearth.

With the development of the tools the homes developed, though it took many, many centuries for us to learn how to make a house that is really adapted to the physical life and comfort of the human animal. The fact is, that we have yet to learn a few important things, and to apply the many things we do know so that universal benefit will result.

Strange to say, with all our knowledge as to how to construct most wonderful buildings of stone, brick, cement, and wood, structures that rear their spires and turrets almost into the clouds, yet a great many people still live in shacks, and square wooden boxes with windows in them, that are little better than the early structures of the savages; and many thousands live in congested slum districts of the cities, in places that are foul and unsanitary and far worse than the tree top nests of our primitive ancestors.

There were undoubtedly serious objections to these tree top homes, and no one would advocate a return to this mode of living; yet with all these objections they were well ventilated, and that is more than can be said of many of our dwelling-places today. One thing is certain, every savage had some kind of a home, some kind of a nest or cave or hollow tree that was his, or that was tribal property and that meant the same thing. After many, many thousands of years of so-called "civilization" we have finally reached a stage where a majority of the race have no homes of their own, and must pay tribute to those who own many homes in order to have a chance to live inside protecting walls.

It isn't because we, as a race, do not know how to build homes, beautiful homes, homes fitted with every convenience and adapted to shelter and prolong human life, that so many people are "homeless." Neither is it because these people are not industrious that they are homeless, for it is the vast working class, the real useful toilers of the world, who are the homeless ones today - but this is another question for the political economist to answer. It is my purpose here to state just what are the requirements of a shelter adapted to human habitation under modern conditions.

The first essential is thorough ventilation. This question of air is more important than most people understand it to be. A loosely constructed "shack" out in the woods is a far more healthful abiding-place than a closely walled-in mansion in the heart of the dusty, stench-reeking city, no matter how modern its structure or how beautiful and comfortable its equipment. With plenty of fresh air, especially at night, the body will gather in much strength and put up a vigorous resistance to any germ intruder that comes along.

The human animal needs sunshine just as much as a plant.

And right here is an idea I want to impress upon you very strongly: no structure can be built that is a proper habitation for man all the time. He must get out in the open, out where there is green grass and trees and flowers and water and nature. If he persists in shutting himself up inside, no matter how nice his quarters, old Mother Nature will resent his slighting her in this way and soon send a messenger for him. no other than the Grim Reaper himself.

Herein has modern civilization reached a dangerous stage. It has compelled millions of men and women to spend their lives inside the various buildings it has constructed, its mills and factories and workshops and stores and offices and warehouses. It has even sentenced hundreds of thousands to live beneath the earth in its mines. Were these work-places carefully built with an idea of furnishing the maximum of air, and amid natural surroundings, it would not be so bad; but constructed as they are, jammed up one against another, with millions of feet of space where the sunlight can never enter, they are nothing but germ-infested death traps.

I say it deliberately: no one can live in a modern city of any size, with its indoor life, its stench, its gassy, smoky air, and live anywhere near his normal years; it is simply slow suicide, and not so slow at that.

We are paying an awful price for this so-called civilization of ours, a price in human life that is not to be reckoned from the long lists of murders, accidents, and victims of war and disaster, so much as from the shortening of the normal years that we all ought to live.

You can't possibly live and work in stuffy, restricted quarters and have an abundance of life and vital force. You can not occupy a little "two by twice'' office in a modern skyscraper or a beautiful mansion near a city and escape the penalty of the law of nature, for around you is the seething city air, full of dust and smoke and foul odors and death.

The sooner you, as an individual, learn that the normal, rational place for man to live is out in the open air, and that if compelled to work inside, his inside surroundings should be as much open to the air and "outside" as they can be, and that the proper way to sleep is with your head outdoors, in an outdoor bedroom (or this impossible, with windows wide open ), the sooner you will commence to store extra vitality for the days when you have past the zenith of your physical career and started on the downward decline.

While it is important that a home should have conveniences, a modern system of lighting, heating, hot and cold water, bath, etc., it is far more important that it should have lots of pure air all the time, and that every room should have sunlight. There should be no dark closets or halls. The ideal house of the future will be made of glass, or largely of glass, and so that every room can be frequently washed from cellar to garret, not only the floors, but the walls and ceilings as well.

In this matter of house-building we have certainly been doing a lot of experimenting, from the birds' nests and caves of primitive man, the skin tents of the Indians, the snow houses of the Esquimaux, the adobe houses of the Mexicans, the stone structures of the ancients, to the steel-frame, fireproof buildings of today, but we have still got another guess coming. From the standpoint of health the modern city is "impossible" - and some day people will think more of keep ing their body in a healthy state and prolonging its life than they will of making money.

Another thing: the people who are now forced by economic necessity to work long hours in crowded, poorly ventilated, unsanitary shops and factories are commencing to understand that these conditions are not necessary, and that they can, by cooperative action, be changed, and they are not going to stand for this program much longer. The right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" has not been safeguarded by modern commercialism, which has failed to construct either sanitary shops or homes for the workers, and even the master class must suffer from the general contagion and contamination, though they are able to escape much of it by taking to their summer resorts and woodland retreats.

It is not the masters about whom the writer is concerned, but the great masses of the common people who are not really living, but are existing under an environment that can yet be called "hostile," an environment that fails to shelter them properly, and at the same time provide the necessary fresh air, without which the human organism can not live its normal lifetime.

Between a mansion in the heart of the city's stench and a shack in the woods, the preference is in favor of the shack - but there should be no necessity of a choice between either of them. The race will yet solve the problem of living a normal human life without reverting to savagery, but it can not solve this problem by forming congested groups, such as our modern cities, neither is the isolated rural dwelling the solution.

Thank goodness, there is still plenty of outside room, and when we get really sensible, we will quit crowding and smothering the life out of each other.

In the meantime, spend as much time outdoors as you possibly can, - and spend it where there are flowers and birds and trees and fresh air, - fresh with the scent of the roses or the new-mown hay or the verdant foliage; or in the winter spend it in the snowdrifts, if necessary; but spend it outside some place, though it be in your own back yard or on a tenement roof.

It is about time the human race crawled out of their holes into the sunlight.