Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 16, 1913

The Passing of the Old-Time Home

OLD-TIME home life is beginning to sadly suffer from the innovations of modern living. In the large cities especially, the old-fashioned detached home is giving place to the modern flat or the modern apartment-house. Speaking of the opening of a large family hotel in Philadelphia, the Lutheran of Dec. 19, 1912, says:—

While hotel accommodations and apartment-houses are growing apace, the voice is heard pleading for the restoration of the home, with all its attractions. And the voice protests the multiplication of lodges and clubs for men and for women and the hundreds of other influences which are converting the average American home into a mere sleeping bunk. The decay of religion, the decrease in the number of candidates for the ministry, and scores of other tendencies of which Christians rightly complain, may all find a basic cause in the breaking down of true family life. We know of men who, through the stress of business and the demands of social and club life, pass days without even seeing their children. Under such conditions there can not be much love to lose. Less money, less society, and less societies will make better homes for many men and women. After all, the home is the bulwark of the nation. Philadelphia welcomes her fine, palatial hotel. Every city boasts of the fine hotels which it may possess; but in passing we pride ourselves rather in Philadelphia’s long rows of humble homes. May their ratio to the hotels and the apartments never grow less.