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10 - Agreeable Work - The Conquest of Bread · Sacred Texts Archive

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  Chapter ten, Agreeable Work, Part One. When socialists declare that a society
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  emancipated from capital would make work agreeable and would suppress all repugnant and unhealthy drudgery,
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  they get laughed at. And yet even today we see the striking progress
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  made in this direction, and wherever this progress has been achieved, employers congratulate
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  themselves on the economy of energy obtained thereby. It is evident that a factory
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  could be made as healthy and pleasant as a scientific laboratory, and it is
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  no less evident that would be advantageous to make it so. In a spacious
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  and well ventilated factory, work is better. It is easy to introduce small
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  ameliorations, of which each represents an economy of time or of manual labor.
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  And if most of the workshops we know are foul and unhealthy, it is
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  because the workers are of no account in the organization of factories, and because
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  the most absurd waste of human energy is its distinctive feature. Nevertheless, now
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  and again we find some factors so well managed that would be a real pleasure
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  to work in them, if the work be well understood, were not to
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  last more than four or five hours a day. And everyone had the possibility
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  of varying it according to his tastes. Look at this factory, unfortunately consecrated
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  to engines of war. It is perfect as far as regards sanitary and intelligent
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  organization. It occupies fifty English acres of land, fifteen of which are roofed
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  glass. The pavement of fireproof bricks is as clean as that of a miner's
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  cottage, and the glass roof is carefully cleaned by a gang of workmen who
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  do nothing else. In this factory are forged steeled inguts or blooms weighing as
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  much as twenty tons. And when you stand thirty feet from the immense furnace,
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  whose flames have a temperature of more than a thousand degrees, you do
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  not guess its presence, save when its great jaws open to let out a
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  steel monster, and the monster is handled by only three or four workmen who
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  now here. Now there open at taps, causing immense cranes to move by
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  pressure of water in the pipes. You enter expecting to hear the deafening noise
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  of stampers, and you find that there are no stampers. The immense hundred
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  ton guns and the crankshafts of Transatlantic steamers are forged by hydraulic pressure, and
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  instead of forging steel, the worker has but to turn a tap to give
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  its shape, which makes a far more homogeneous metal without crack or flaw of
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  the blooms, whatever be their thickness. We expect an infernal grating, and
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  we find machines which cut blocks of steel thirty feet long with no more noise
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  than is needed to cut cheese. And when we expressed our admiration to the
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  engineer who showed us round, he answered, it is a mere question of
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  economy. This machine, the plane steel, has been in use for forty
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  two years. It would not have lasted ten years if its component parts badly
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  adjusted, lacking in cohesive strength, interfered and creaked at each movement of the
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  plane. In the blast furnaces, it would be a waste to let the
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  heat escape instead of utilizing it. Why roast the founders when heat loss by
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  radiation represents tons of coal. The stampers that made the building shake five leagues
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  off were also a waste. It is better the forge by pressure than by
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  impact, and a cost less There is less loss in a factory light planning
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  less the space allotted to each bench is but of a simple question of economy.
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  Work is better done when you can see and you have elbow room.
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  It is true, he said, we are very cramped before coming here.
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  Land is so expensive, in the vicinity of large towns. Landlords are so
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  grasping. It is even so in mind. We know what mines are like
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  nowadays, from Zola's descriptions and from newspaper reports. But the mind of the
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  future will be well ventilated, with a temperature as easily regulated as that of
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  a library. There will be no horses doomed to die below the earth.
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  Underground. Traction will be carried on by a means of an automatic cable put
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  in motion at the pit's mouth. Ventilators will always be working, and there
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  will never be explosions. This is no dream. Such a mine is already
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  to be seen in England. We went down it here again. This organization
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  is simply a question of economy. The mind of which we speak, in
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  spite of its immense depth, four hundred and sixty six yards, has an
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  output of a thousand tons of cola day, with only two hundred miners five
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  tons a day per each worker, whereas the average of the two thousand pits
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  in England is hardly three hundred tons a year per man. If necessary,
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  we can multiply examples proving that Fuye's dream regarding material organization was not a utopia.
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  This question has, however, been so frequently discussed in socialist newspapers that
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  public opinion might have been educated. Factory forge and mine can be as healthy
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  and magnificent as the finest laboratories in modern universities, and the better the organization,
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  the more will man's labor produce. If it be so, can we
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  doubt out that work will become a pleasure and a relaxation In a society of
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  equals, in which hands will not be compelled to sell themselves to toil and
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  to accept work under any conditions. Repugnant tasks will disappear, because it is
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  evident that these unhealthy conditions are harmful to a society as a whole. Slaves
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  can submit to them, but free men will create new conditions, and their
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  work will be pleasant and infinitely more productive. The exceptions of today will be
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  the rule of tomorrow. The same will come to pass as regards domestic work,
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  which today's society lays on the shoulder of that drudge of humanity woman.
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  Part two. A society regenerated by the revolution will make domestic slavery disappear.
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  This last form of slavery perhaps the most tenacious, because it is also the
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  most ancient. Only it will not come about in the way dropt by the
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  Palistarians, nor in the manner often imagined by authoritarian communists. Balisteries are repugnant
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  to millions of human beings. The most reserved man certainly feels the necessity of
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  meeting his fellows for the purpose of common work, which becomes the more attractive
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  the more he feels himself a part of an immense whole, but is not
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  so for the hours of leisure reserved for arrest and intimacy. The falistery and
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  the familistairy do not take this into account, or else they endeavor to supply
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  its needs by artificial groupings. A falanstairy, which is in fact nothing but
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  an immense hotel, can please some and even all, at a certain period
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  of their life, But the great mass prefers family life, family life of
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  the future. Be it understood. They prefer isolated apartments Normans and Anglo Saxons,
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  even going as far as to prefer houses of from sixty eight rooms in
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  which the family or an agglomeration of friends can live apart. Sometimes a falanstery
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  is a necessity, but it would be hateful were it. The general rule,
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  isolation alternated with time spent in society is the normal desire of human nature.
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  This is why one of the greatest tortures in prison is an impossibility of
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  isolation, much as solitary confinement becomes torture in its turn when not alternated with
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  hours of social life. As to considerations of economy, which are sometimes laid
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  stress on in favor of balansteries, they are those of a petty tradesman.
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  The most important economy, the only reasonable one is to make life pleasant for
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  all, because the man who is satisfied with his life produces infinitely more than
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  the man who curses his surroundings. Other socialists reject the falinsteri. But when
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  you ask them how domestic work can be organized, the answer each can do
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  his own work. My wife manages the house. The wives of the bourgeois
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  will do as much. And if it is a bourgeois playing at socialism who
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  speaks, he will add with a gracious smile to his wife. Is it
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  not true, darling, that you would do without a servant in a socialist
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  society, you would work like the wife of our good comrade Paul, or
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  the wife of John the carpenter, servant or wife. Man always reckons on
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  a woman to do the housework. But woman, too, at last claims
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  her share in the emancipation of humanity. She no longer wants to be the
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  beast of burden of the house. She considers it sufficient to work to give
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  many years of her life to the rearing of her children. She no longer
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  wants to be the cook, the mender, the sweeper of the house.
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  And owing to American woman taking the lead and obtaining their claims, there is
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  a general complaint of the dearth of woman who will condescend to domestic work.
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  In the United States, my lady prefers art, politics, literature, or
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  the gaming tables as to the work. Girls. There are few those who
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  consent to submit to apron slavery, and servants are only found with difficulty in
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  the States. Consequently, the solution is a very simple one is pointed out
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  by life itself. Machinery undertakes three quarters of the household cares you black your
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  boots, and you know how ridiculous this work is. What can be more
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  stupid than right being a boot twenty or thirty times with a brush. A
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  tenth of the European population must be compelled to sell itself in exchange for a
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  miserable shelter and insufficient food. And a woman must consider herself a slave in
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  order that millions of her sex should go through this performance every morning. But
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  hairdressers already have machines for brushing glossy or willy heads of hair. Why should
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  we not apply then the same principle to the other extremity? So has not
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  been done, And nowadays the machine for blocking boots is in the general use
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  in big American and European hotels. Its use is spreading outside hotels. In
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  large English schools where the pupils are boarding in the houses of the teachers,
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  it has been found easier to have one single establishment which undertakes to brush a
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  thousand pairs of boots every morning. As to washing up, where can we
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  find a housewife who has not a horror of a long and dirty work that
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  is usually done by hand, solely because the work of the domestic slave is
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  of no account. In America they do better. They are already a number
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  of cities in which hot water is conveyed to the house as cold water is
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  in Europe. Under these conditions, the problem was a simple one, and
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  a woman, miss Cochrane, solved it. Her machine washes twelve dozen plates
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  or dishes, wipes them, and dries them in less than three minutes.
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  A factory in Illinois manufactures his machines and sells them at a price within the
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  reach of the average middle class purse. And why should not small households send
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  their crockery to an establishment as well as their boots. It is even probable
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  that the two functions brushing and washing up will be undertaken by the same association.
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  Cleaning rubbing the skin off your hands when washing and wringing linen, sweeping
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  floors and brushing carpets, thereby raising clouds of dust which afterwards occasioned much trouble
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  to dislodge from the places which they have settled down. All this work is
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  still done because woman remains a slave, but it tends to disappear as it
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  can be infinitely better done by machinery. Machinery of all kinds will be intrance
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  us into households, and the distribution of motor powered in private houses will enable
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  people to work them without muscular effort. Such machines cost very little to manufacture.
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  If we still pay very much for them, it is because they are
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  not in general use, and chiefly because an exorbitant taxes levy upon every machine
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  by the gentlemen who wish to live in grand style, and who have speculated
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  on land, raw material, manufacturer sale patents, and duties. But emancipation
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  from domestic toil will not be brought by small machines. Only households are emerging
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  from their present state of isolation. They begin to associate with other households to
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  do common what they did separately. In fact, in the future we shall
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  not have a brushing machine, a machine for washing up plates, a third
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  for washing linen, and so on in each house. To the future.
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  On the contrary, belongs the common heating apparatus, which sends heat into each
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  room of the whole district and spares the lighting of fires. It is already
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  so in a few American cities a great central frame and supplies all houses in
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  all rooms with hot water, which circulates in pipes and to regulate the temperature,
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  you need only to turn a tap. And should you care to have
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  a blazing fire in any particular room, you can light the gas specially supplied
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  for heating purposes from the central reservoir. All the immense work of cleaning chimneys
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  and keeping of fires, and a woman knows what time it takes is disappearing.
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  Candles, lamp, and even gas have had their day. There are
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  entire cities in which it is sufficient to press a button for light to burst
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  forth. And indeed it is a simple question of economy and knowledge to give
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  yourself a luxury of electric light. And lastly, also in America, they
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  speak of forming societies for the almost complete suppression of household work. It would
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  only be necessary to create a department for every block of houses. A cart
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  would come to each door and take the boots to be blocked, the crockery
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  to be washed up, the linen to be washed, the small things to
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  be mended, if it were worthwhile, the carpets to be brushed, and
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  the next morning would bring back the things and trusted to all well cleaned.
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  A few hours later, your hot coffee and your eggs done to a nicety
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  would appear on your table. It is the fact that between twelve and two
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  o'clock there are more than twenty million Americans and as many Englishmen who eat roast
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  beef or mutton, boiled pork, potatoes, and a seasonable vegetable. And
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  at the lowest figure, eight million fires burn during two or three hours to
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  roast this meat and to cook these vegetables. Eight million women spend their time
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  to prepare this meal that perhaps consist at at most ten different dishes. Fifty
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  fires burn, wrote an American woman the other day. Where one would suffice
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  dine at home at your own table with your children if you like, but
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  only think yourself. Why should these fifty women waste their whole morning to prepare
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  a few cups of coffee and a simple meal. Why fifty fires when two
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  people in one single fire would suffice to cook all these pieces of meat and
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  all these vegetables. Choose your own beef or mutton to be roasted, if
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  your particular season the vegetables to your taste, if you prefer particular sauce,
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  but have a single kitchen with a single fire, and organize it as beautifully
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  as you are able to. Why has woman's work never been of any account
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  why in every family are the mother and three or four servants obliged to spend
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  so much time at what pertains the cooking. Because those who want to emancipate
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  mankind have not included woman in their dream of emancipation, and consider it beneath
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  their superior masculine dignity to think of the kitchen arrangements which they have raid on
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  the shoulders of that drudge woman. To emancipate woman, it is not only
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  to open the gates of the university, the law courts, or the parliaments
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  for her. The emancipated woman will always throw a domestic toil onto another woman.
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  To emancipate woman is to free her from the brutalizing toil of kitchen and
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  wash house. It is to organize your household in such a way as to
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  enable her to rear her children if she be so minded, while still retaining
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  sufficient leisure to take her share of social life. It will come to pass.
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  As we have said, things are already improving. Only let us fully
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  understand that a revolution intoxicated with the beautiful words liberty, equality, solidarity would
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  not be a revolution if it maintained slavery at home. Half humanities subjected to
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  slavery of the earth, which still have to rebel against the other half.
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  End of Chapter ten