their Grecian porticos, out from the high banks that command the stream. You may see some of them yet, faded and old and full of family history, most of which was not so important as it

own, a few minutes' ride from Trenton, sits complacent amid its

E TOWN, A ST

s country. It is a rattler of the dry bones of tradition, and pretty nearly the last word in corporation communities. Roebling maintains no staff of highbrow sociologi

MAKE WIRE

wing by in its beauty, accounts for part of this. But to the Roeblings the Delaware means plentiful water supply and river transportation. To the workmen in the big mills which lie just at

re buildings could not be crowded into the original ground space. More land was needed, and as usual in such cases, men with land

little old station called Kinkora, where the real estate infection had not appeared. There was land well up above high water, and plenty of it. The Del

LACE FOR A

harge. But, again, they didn't go looking for any welfare engineers. The whole job of planning plant and town alike was done in the long engineering room of the Roebling offices. At first they called the plant the Kinkora. They do yet, off and on, but the mills were a little below the station, and when the new venture was well under way, and the machinery had begun to squ

was named "Kinkora." In 1836 an ambitious Irishman named Rockefeller (not John D.) conceived the idea of an air line railroad from thi

itself died a

te as big a business as almost anyone would want to do, and houses to shelter all its workmen. If the company shoul

O LET THE

shets of centuries had left hollows here and hummocks there. They were levelled. The knolls-dunes they would call them along Lake Michigan-were scraped down and dumped into the swales, and the excess was thrown into a sedgy morass along the river front, t

sixteen years ago, and it has kept on growing. Every year sees a lot of new houses, of various values, and one and all well built and com

OFIT BUT TO

dn't want to be tied to anybody's apron-strings, that he wanted a square deal and a chance to live his own life out of business hours, and to get the worth of h

llage store," which sells everything from a pork chop to a piano, and the drug store, which is just as "Riker-Hegeman" as any live town could wish, are

rice down where a man can afford to pay it. Water is supplied free. The idea is that the man owes the company nothing but good work in return for his pay. After quitting time he's h

TOWN H

he's going to get it, especially the foreign born. We don't propose to pick his drinks for him. If he wants whiskey it's a good sight better for us that he should be able to get it here like a human

ng it kept the men from going to town to battle with the "embalming fluid,"

ICE, BANK

leads on past the ground of the plant and its fence of tall pickets, toward the river, and the town. As you go, you meet with courtesy. It is not drawing the long bow to say everybody in Roebling-outwardly at least-is civil and good natured. Just beyond the mill grounds you come upon the police office, with trig coppers who seem to have very little t

no more like a toy city. The streets are 80 feet wide, with the exception of Main Street and Fifth Avenue, which are 100 feet wide. Trees have be

US

ss has expanded to such an extent that it has been enabled to move to the centre of

ock, giving access to the back-doors, run clean alleys, wide enough to allow wagons to pass for the delivery of coal, foodstuffs and other commodities, and for the collection of waste. The company is now halting between the erection of an incinerator plant to consume the g

tes the labor of housekeeping. More pretentious dwellings, for the men holding important positions in the plant, are sufficient to make a rent-ridden, janitor-jaded, bell-boy b

TION BUILDING, T

ks team is now prominent in one of the State Leagues. There is a recreation building, with billiard and pool tables and the best bowling alleys that can be built. There is a spacious assembly hall, with theatre stage and a scrumptious curtain bearing a picture of

well and cheaply, of the public school, the hospital, the doctors,

SICKNESS, VE

ou, which is also "good business," and babies are a favorite form of diversion. This is impressively true. You sense it whe

OY SCOUT

on the river bank, with its big meeting room, its open mouthed fireplace, its mounted deer heads, and banners, and books and guns and spears and swords and all the other junk the boy soul loves, they'd have to work for it. Goodness knows they do. The grounds around that shack in spring are

own vegetables. The manure from the stables, where sixty horses are kept, helps to make gardening worth while. Even to be a mule in Roebling is comfortable. There are old mules there-you see them just wandering around the paddocks, eat

grown, this custom has continued. Today the entire office force at the headquarters in Trenton-some 230 persons of all ranks-gets a dinner every day that for sheer quality can

E

it taking the air on a hot summer night. In a neat enclosure of Roebling wire, convenient to all parts of the town, are tennis courts, for general us

EIGNER LIVE

n that the foreign workman in the United States lives poorly. In Roebling it is remarked that it is the foreigner who is the best customer in groceries and butch

uropean bread," which they say "has the strength" in it. The baker's wagon, loaded to the very top of the canvas cover, goes through the town and the workers' little children run h

quarters. They have everything anybody else has including a

ed has never proved itself more conclusively than here. It is a suggestive fact that in all that time, save for some insignificant incidents, the Roeblings have been free from the nigh

business theory. In these times