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House Furnishing and Decorating: Floor

Use of Floor Coverings. -Floor coverings doubtless originated in the use by our primitive ancestors of the skins of animals as rugs, and the earliest floor coverings used by civilized nations were in the form of rugs. This usage still continues in the Orient.

The later custom of manufacturing carpets and other floor coverings in long, narrow strips, to be joined together, grew out of the desire to cheapen the process of manufacture by adapting the size of the fabrics to the uses of the loom. The custom of covering the entire floor of a room with carpet or other floor covering doubtless arose, in great degree, from the desire to cover cracks, knots, and other unsightly defects in cheap and badly made floors, to prevent softwood floors from wearing, and also to lessen draughts from the cracks between floor boards. The present tendency among wellto-do people is back to the original idea of scattering rugs upon a smooth, polished surface. The ideal floor is undoubtedly of hard wood, properly laid and highly polished. This is the most sanitary, durable, and beautiful of all floors. It is the easiest to clean, and furnishes an ideal foundation as a basis for any interior decoration.

The growing wealth of farmers as a class throughout the great central West and elsewhere, by reason of improved machinery and modern scientific methods of agriculture, has resulted in the building and furnishing of many homes having floors of this sort in the smallest towns and rural districts throughout the United States.

Moreover, modern means of transportation, as trolley systems, interurban electric railways, automobiles, and the upbuilding of local telephone systems, have promoted the building in rural neighborhoods of a vast number of summer homes. There is hardly a community in the United States where modern houses constructed with polished hard-wood floors and furnished with Oriental or domestic rugs as floor coverings is not to be seen.

Another great educator has been the periodicals devoted to home making and especially catering to the class of suburban residents above mentioned.

These models have set the fashion for bare floors and rugs, and there is no doubt but that as time goes on this custom will become increasingly popular.