A WONDER HOUSE

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 16, 13 October 1933, Page 4

A WONDER HOUSE

Doors Open Automatically

Labour-saving devices have turned “the modern home into a modern factory,” and they should be made to “spread” the advantages which accrue from them. So said Mr. Matthew Woll, vice-president of the American Federation of Labour, at the formal opening of "Wonder House” in America recently. The house, a modernised reproduction of a Normal! cottage, is equipped with numerous labour-saving devices. A push of the door bell sounds chimes instead of a bell. • Swinging doors between kitchen and dining-room open automatically before the tread Of feet and close quietly behind them. “Happily, every woman whose work is saved by labour-saving machinery does not have to go elsewhere in search of a means of earning bread,” Mr. Woll said. “We. have not even learned’to use properly the democracy of which we boast, and it is perhaps not to be wondered that we have not learned how to derive for all the best results of the astounding inventions of so short a period. “We must so arrange our economic processes that leisure can be earned and enjoyed through the stored benefits of toil that is made a thousandfold productive by the machine and the power that drives it.” Mr. Gerard Swope, president of the General Electric Company, characterised Wonder House as a demonstration of faith, courage, and confidence in the future. The increasing use of electricity in the home has continued during the past three years, and had been one outstanding fact quite at variance with the depression, Mr. Swope declared.