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A Modern Utopia Chapter 3 - Utopian Economics, Sections 5-8 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter three, Utopian Economics, Sections five through eight of a
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Speaker 1: Modern Utopia. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
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Speaker 1: are in the public domain. For more informission or to volunteer,
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Speaker 1: please visit LibriVox dot org. A Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells,
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Speaker 1: Chapter three, Utopian Economics, sections five through eight. Section five.
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Speaker 1: Within this scheme, which makes the state the source of
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Speaker 1: all energy and the final legatee, what will be the
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Speaker 1: nature of the property a man may own under modern conditions? Indeed,
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Speaker 1: under any conditions, A man without some negotiable property is
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Speaker 1: a man without freedom, and the extent of his property
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Speaker 1: is very largely the measure of his freedom. Without any property,
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Speaker 1: without even shelter or food, a man has no choice
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Speaker 1: but to set about getting these things. He is in
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Speaker 1: servitude to his needs until he has secured property to
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Speaker 1: satisfy them. But with a certain small property, a man
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Speaker 1: is free to do many things. To take a fortnight's
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Speaker 1: holiday when he chooses, for example, and to try this
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Speaker 1: new departure from his work, or that. With so much more,
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Speaker 1: he may take a year of freedom and go to
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Speaker 1: the ends of the earth. With so much more, he
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Speaker 1: may obtain elaborate apparatus, and try curious novelties, build himself
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Speaker 1: houses and make gardens, establish businesses, and make experiments at large,
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Speaker 1: very speedily. Under terrestrial conditions, the property of a man
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Speaker 1: may reach such proportions that his freedom oppresses the freedom
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Speaker 1: of others. Here again is a quantitative question, an adjustment
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Speaker 1: of conflicting freedoms, a quantitative question that too many people
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Speaker 1: insist on making a qualitative one. The object sought in
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Speaker 1: the code of property laws that one would find an
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Speaker 1: operation in utopia would be the same object that pervades
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Speaker 1: the whole utopian organization, namely, a universal maximum of individual
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Speaker 1: Feurso whatever far reaching movements the state or great rich
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Speaker 1: men or private corporations may make, the starvation by any
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Speaker 1: complication of employment, the unwilling deportation, the destruction of alternatives
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Speaker 1: to servile submissions, must not ensue. Beyond such qualifications. The
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Speaker 1: object of modern utopian statesmanship will be to secure to
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Speaker 1: a man the freedom given by all his legitimate property,
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Speaker 1: that is to say, by all the values his toil
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Speaker 1: or skill, or foresight and courage have brought into being.
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Speaker 1: Whatever he has justly made he has a right to keep.
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Speaker 1: That is obvious enough. But he will also have a
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Speaker 1: right to sell and exchange. And so this question of
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Speaker 1: what may be property takes really the form of what
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Speaker 1: may a man buy in Utopia. A modern utopian most
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Speaker 1: assuredly must have a practically unqualified property in all those
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Speaker 1: things that become, as it were, by possession, extensions and
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Speaker 1: expressions of his personality, his clothing, his jewels, the tools
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Speaker 1: of his employment, his books, the objects of art he
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Speaker 1: may have bought or made, his personal weapons, if Utopia
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Speaker 1: have needed such things, insignia, and so forth. All such
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Speaker 1: things that he has bought with his money or acquired,
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Speaker 1: provided he is not a professional or habitual dealer in
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Speaker 1: such property, will be inalienably his his to give or lend,
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Speaker 1: or keep free even from taxation. So intimate is this
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Speaker 1: sort of property that I have no doubt Utopia will
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Speaker 1: give a man posthumous rights over it, will permit him
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Speaker 1: to assign it to a successor, with at the utmost
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Speaker 1: the payment of a small redemption. A horse, perhaps in
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Speaker 1: certain districts, or a bicycle, or any such mechanical conveyance
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Speaker 1: personally used. The Utopians might find it well to rank
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Speaker 1: with these possessions. No doubt too, a house and privacy
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Speaker 1: owned and occupied by a man, and even a man's
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Speaker 1: own household furniture might be held to stand as high
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Speaker 1: or almost as high in the property scale, might be
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Speaker 1: taxed as lightly and transferred under only a slightly heavier redemption,
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Speaker 1: provided he had not let these things on higher or
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Speaker 1: otherwise alienated them from his intimate self. A thoroughgoing democratic
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Speaker 1: socialist will no doubt be inclined at first to object
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Speaker 1: that if the Utopians make these things especially free sort
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Speaker 1: of property in this way, men would spend much more
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Speaker 1: upon them than they would otherwise do. But indeed that
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Speaker 1: will be an excellent thing. We are too much affected
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Speaker 1: by the needy atmosphere of our mismanaged world. In Utopia,
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Speaker 1: no one will have to hunger, because some love to make,
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Speaker 1: and have made, and own and cherish beautiful things. To
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Speaker 1: give this much of property to individuals will tend to
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Speaker 1: make clothing, ornamentation, implements, books, and all the arts finer
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Speaker 1: and more beautiful, because by buying such things a man
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Speaker 1: will secure something inalienable, save in the case of bankruptcy
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Speaker 1: himself and for those who belong to him. Moreover, a
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Speaker 1: man may in his lifetime set aside sums to ensure
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Speaker 1: special advantages of education and care for the immature children
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Speaker 1: of himself and others, and in this manner also exercise
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Speaker 1: a posthumous right footnote. But a statute of mortmain will
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Speaker 1: set a distinct time limit to the continuance of such benefactions.
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Speaker 1: A periodic revision of endowments is a necessary feature in
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Speaker 1: any modern utopia end footnote. For all other property, the
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Speaker 1: utopians will have a scantier respect. Even money unspent by
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Speaker 1: a man and debts to him that bear no interest,
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Speaker 1: will at his death stand upon a lower level than
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Speaker 1: these things. What he did not choose to gather and
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Speaker 1: assimilate to himself or assign for the special education of
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Speaker 1: his children, the state will share in the lion's proportion
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Speaker 1: with air and legatey. This applies, for example, to the
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Speaker 1: property that a man creates and acquires in business enterprises
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Speaker 1: which are presumably undertaken for gain and as a means
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Speaker 1: of living, rather than for themselves. All new machinery, all
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Speaker 1: new methods, all uncertain and variable and non universal undertakings,
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Speaker 1: are no business for the state. They commence always as
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Speaker 1: experiments of unascertained value, and next after the invention of money.
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Speaker 1: There is no invention has so facilitated freedom and progress
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Speaker 1: as the invention of the limited liability company to do
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Speaker 1: this work of trial and adventure. The abuses the necessary
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Speaker 1: reforms of company law on earth are no concern of
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Speaker 1: ours here and now. Suffice it that in a modern
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Speaker 1: utopia such laws must be supposed to be as perfect
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Speaker 1: as mortal laws can possibly be made. Caveat vendor will
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Speaker 1: be a sound qualification of caveat emptor in the beautifully
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Speaker 1: codified utopian law. Whether the utopian company will be allowed
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Speaker 1: to prefer this class of share to that, or to
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Speaker 1: issue deventures, Whether indeed usury, that is to say, lending
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Speaker 1: money at fixed rates of interest, will be permitted at
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Speaker 1: all in utopia, one may venture to doubt. But whatever
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Speaker 1: the nature of the shares a man may hold, they
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Speaker 1: will all be sold at his death, And whatever he
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Speaker 1: has not clearly assigned for special educational purposes, will, with
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Speaker 1: possibly some fractional concession to near survivors, lapse to the state.
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Speaker 1: The safe investment that permanent, undying claim upon the community
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Speaker 1: is just one of those things utopia will discourage, which, indeed,
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Speaker 1: the developing security of civilization quite automatically discourages through the
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Speaker 1: fall and the rate of interest. As we shall see
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Speaker 1: at a later stage, the state will ensure the children
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Speaker 1: of every citizen and those legitimately dependent upon him, against
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Speaker 1: the inconvenience of his death. It will carry out all
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Speaker 1: reasonable additional dispositions he may have made for them in
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Speaker 1: the same event, and it will insure him against old
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Speaker 1: age and infirmity. And the object of utopian economics will
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Speaker 1: be to give a man every inducement to spend his
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Speaker 1: surplus money in intensifying the quality of his surroundings, either
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Speaker 1: by economic adventures and experiments, which may yield either losses
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Speaker 1: or large profits, or in increasing the beauty, the pleasure,
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Speaker 1: the abundance and promise of life. Besides strictly personal possessions
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Speaker 1: and shares in business adventures, Utopia will no doubt permit
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Speaker 1: associations of its citizens to have a property in various
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Speaker 1: sorts of contracts and concessions, in leases of agricultural and
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Speaker 1: other land, for example, in houses they may have built, factories,
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Speaker 1: and machinery they may have made, and the like. And
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Speaker 1: if a citizen prefer to adventure into business single handed,
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Speaker 1: he will have all the freedoms of enterprise enjoyed by
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Speaker 1: a company in business affairs, he will be a company
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Speaker 1: of one, and his single share will be dealt with
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Speaker 1: at his death like any other shares. So much for
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Speaker 1: the second kind of property, and these two kinds of
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Speaker 1: property will probably exhaust the sorts of property a utopian
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Speaker 1: may possess. The trend of modern thought is entirely against
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Speaker 1: private property in land or natural objects or products, and
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Speaker 1: in utopia these things will be the inalienable property of
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Speaker 1: the world state, subject to the rights of free locomotion.
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Speaker 1: Land will be leased out to companies or individuals, but
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Speaker 1: in view of the unknown necessities of the future, never
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Speaker 1: for a longer period than let us say, fifty years.
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Speaker 1: The property of a parent in his children and of
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Speaker 1: a husband in his wife seems to be undergoing a
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Speaker 1: steadily increasing qualification in the world of today, But the
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Speaker 1: discussion of the utopian state of affairs in regard to
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Speaker 1: such property may be better reserved until marriage becomes our topic.
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Speaker 1: Suffice it here to remark that the increasing control of
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Speaker 1: a child's welfare and upbringing by the community, and the
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Speaker 1: growing disposition to limit and tax inheritance, are complementary aspects
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Speaker 1: of the general tendency to regard the welfare and free
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Speaker 1: interplay of future generations, no longer as the concern of
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Speaker 1: parents and altruistic individuals, but as the predominant issue of
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Speaker 1: statesmanship and the duty and moral meaning of the world
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Speaker 1: community as a whole. Section six. From the conception of
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Speaker 1: mechanical forces coming in from nature to the service of man,
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Speaker 1: a conception the utopian proposal of a coinage based on
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Speaker 1: energy units would emphasize arise profound contrasts between the modern
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Speaker 1: and the classical utopias, except for a meager use of
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Speaker 1: water power for milling and the wind for sailing, so
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Speaker 1: meager in the latter case that the classical world never
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Speaker 1: contrived to do without the galley slave, and a certain
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Speaker 1: restricted help from oxen in plowing and from horses in locomotion.
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Speaker 1: All the energy that sustained the old fashioned state was
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Speaker 1: derived from the muscular exertion of toiling men. They ran
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Speaker 1: their world by hand. Continual bodily labor was a condition
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Speaker 1: of social existence. It is only with the coming of coal, burning,
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Speaker 1: of abundant iron and steel, and of scientific knowledge that
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Speaker 1: this condition has been changed. Today. I suppose, if it
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Speaker 1: were possible to indicate in units of energy the grand
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Speaker 1: total of work upon which the social fabric of the
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Speaker 1: United States or England rests, It would be found that
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Speaker 1: a vastly preponderating moiety is derived from non human sources,
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Speaker 1: from coal and liquid fuel, and explosives in wind and water.
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Speaker 1: There is every indication of a study increase in this
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Speaker 1: proportion of mechanical energy. In this emancipation of men from
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Speaker 1: the necessity of physical labor, there appears no limit to
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Speaker 1: the invasion of life by the machine. Now it is
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Speaker 1: only in the last three hundred years that any human
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Speaker 1: being seems to have anticipated this. It stimulates the imagination
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Speaker 1: to re mark how entirely it was overlooked as a
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Speaker 1: modifying cause in human development. Footnote. It is interesting to
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Speaker 1: note how little even Bacon seems to see of this
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Speaker 1: in his new Atlantis and footnote. Plato clearly had no
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Speaker 1: ideas about machines at all as a force affecting social organization.
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Speaker 1: There was nothing in his world to suggest them to him.
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Speaker 1: I suppose there arose no invention, no new mechanical appliance
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Speaker 1: or method of the slightest social importance. Through all his
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Speaker 1: length of years, he never thought of a state that
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Speaker 1: did not rely for its force upon human muscle. Just
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Speaker 1: as he never thought of a state that was not
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Speaker 1: primarily organized for warfare hand to hand, political and moral
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Speaker 1: inventions he saw enough of and to spare, And in
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Speaker 1: that direction he still stimulates the imagination, but in regard
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Speaker 1: to all material possibilities he deadens rather than stimulates. Footnote.
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Speaker 1: The lost utopia of Hippodamus provided rewards for inventors. But
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Speaker 1: unless Aristontles misunderstood him, and it is certainly the fate
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Speaker 1: of all utopias to be more or less misread, the
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Speaker 1: inventions contemplated were political devices. An infinitude of nonsense about
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Speaker 1: the Greek mind would never have been written if the
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Speaker 1: distinctive intellectual and artistic quality of Plato's time, its extraordinarily
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Speaker 1: clear definition of certain material conditions as absolutely permanent, coupled
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Speaker 1: with its political social instability, had been borne in mind.
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Speaker 1: The food of the Greek imagination was the very antithesis
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Speaker 1: of our own nourishment. We are educated by our circumstances
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Speaker 1: to think no revolution in appliances and economic organization incredible.
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Speaker 1: Our minds play freely about the possibilities that would have
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Speaker 1: struck the men of the Academy as outrageous extravagance. And
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Speaker 1: it is in regard to political social expedients that our
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Speaker 1: imaginations fail Sparta, for all the evidence of history is
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Speaker 1: scarcely more credible to us than a motor car throbbing
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Speaker 1: in the Agora would have been to Socrates by sheer inadvertence. Therefore,
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Speaker 1: Plato commenced the tradition of utopias without machinery, a tradition
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Speaker 1: we find Morris still loyally following, except for certain mechanical
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Speaker 1: barges and such like toys in his News from Nowhere.
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Speaker 1: There are some foreshadowings of mechanical possibilities in the New Atlantis,
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Speaker 1: but it is only in the nineteenth century that Utopia's appeared,
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Speaker 1: in which the fact is clearly recognized that the social
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Speaker 1: fabric rests no longer upon human labor. It was I
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Speaker 1: believe Kabei footnote Kabei voyage and Acaille eighteen forty eight
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Speaker 1: end footnote, who first, in a utopian work insisted upon
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Speaker 1: the escape of man from irksome labors through the use
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Speaker 1: of machinery. He is the great primitive of modern utopias,
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Speaker 1: and Bellamy is his American equivalent. Hitherto either slave labor
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Speaker 1: failius footnote Aristotle's Politics Book two du Chapter eight end footnote.
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Speaker 1: Or at least class distinctions involving unavoidable labor in the
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Speaker 1: lower class have been assumed, as Plato does, and as
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Speaker 1: Bacon in the New Atlantis probably intended to do. Moore
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Speaker 1: gave his Utopians bondsman san fras for their most disagreeable toil.
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Speaker 1: Or there is, as in Morris and the outright return
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Speaker 1: to nature Utopians, a bold make believe that all toil
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Speaker 1: may be made a joy, and with that a leveling
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Speaker 1: down of all society to an equal participation in labor.
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Speaker 1: But indeed this is against all the observed behavior of mankind.
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Speaker 1: It needed the Olympian unworldliness of an irresponsible rich man
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Speaker 1: of the shareholding type, a Ruskin or a Morris playing
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Speaker 1: at life to imagine as much roadmaking under mister Ruskin's
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Speaker 1: auspices was a joy at Oxford, no doubt, and a distinction,
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Speaker 1: and it still remains a distinction. It proved the least
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Speaker 1: contagious of practices, and Hawthorne did not find bodily toil
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Speaker 1: anything more than the curse. The Bible says it is
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Speaker 1: at Brook Farm footnote the blithe Dale experiment, and see
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Speaker 1: also his notebook end footnote. If toil is a blessing,
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Speaker 1: never was blessing so effectually disguised. And the very people
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Speaker 1: who tell us that hesitate to suggest more than a
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Speaker 1: beautiful ease in the endless day of heaven. A certain
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Speaker 1: amount of bodily or mental exercise, a considerable amount of
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Speaker 1: doing things under the direction of one's free imagination is
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Speaker 1: quite another matter. Artistic production, for example, when it is
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Speaker 1: at its best, when a man is freely obeying himself
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Speaker 1: and not troubling to please others, is really not toil
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Speaker 1: at all. It is quite a different thing Digging potatoes,
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Speaker 1: as boys say, for a lark, and digging them because
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Speaker 1: otherwise you will starve. Digging them day after day is
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Speaker 1: a dull, unavoidable imperative. The essence of toil is that imperative,
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Speaker 1: and the fact that the attention must cramp itself to
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Speaker 1: the work in hand, that it excludes freedom, and not
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Speaker 1: that it involves fatigue. So long as anything but a
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Speaker 1: quasi savage life depended upon toil, so long was it
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Speaker 1: hopeless to expect mankind to do anything but struggle. To
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Speaker 1: confer Just as much of this blessing as possible upon
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Speaker 1: one another. But now that the new conditions physical science
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Speaker 1: is bringing about not only dispense with man as a
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Speaker 1: source of energy, but supply the hope that all routine
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Speaker 1: work may be made automatic, it is becoming conceivable that
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Speaker 1: presently there may be no need for anyone to toil
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Speaker 1: habitually at all, that a laboring class, that is to say,
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Speaker 1: a class of workers without personal initiative, will become unnecessary
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Speaker 1: to the world of men. The plain message physical science
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Speaker 1: has for the world at large as this, that were
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Speaker 1: our political and social and moral devices only as well
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Speaker 1: contrived to their ends as a linotype machine, an antiseptic
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Speaker 1: operating plant, or an electric tramcar, their need now at
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Speaker 1: the present moment, be known appreciable toil in the world,
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Speaker 1: And only the smallest fraction of the pain, the fear,
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Speaker 1: and the anxiety that now makes human life so doubtful
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Speaker 1: in its value, there is more than enough for every
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Speaker 1: one alive. Science stands a too competent servant behind her,
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Speaker 1: wrangling underbred masters, holding out resources, devices and remedies they
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Speaker 1: are too stupid to use. Footnote see that most suggestive
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Speaker 1: little book Twentieth Century Inventions by mister George Sutherland and footnote.
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Speaker 1: And on its material side, a modern utopia must needs
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Speaker 1: present these gifts as taken and show a world that
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Speaker 1: is really abolishing the need of labor, abolishing the last
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Speaker 1: base reason for anyone's servitude or inferiority. Section seven. The
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Speaker 1: effectual abolition of a laboring and servile class will make
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Speaker 1: itself felt in every detail of the inn that will
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Speaker 1: shelter us, of the bedrooms we shall occupy. You conceive
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Speaker 1: my awakening to all these things. On the morning after
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Speaker 1: our arrival. I shall lie for a minute or so
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Speaker 1: with my nose peeping over the coverlet agreeably and gently
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Speaker 1: coming awake, and with some vague nightmare of sitting at
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Speaker 1: a common table with an unavoidable dustman in green and
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Speaker 1: gold called buffin footnote v Day William Morris's News from
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Speaker 1: nowhere end footnote Fading out of my mind, then I
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Speaker 1: should start up. You figure my apprehensive startled inspection of
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Speaker 1: my chamber. Where am I? That classic phrase recurs. Then
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Speaker 1: I perceive quite clearly that I am in bed in utopia. Utopia.
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Speaker 1: The word is enough to bring any one out of
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Speaker 1: bed to the nearest window. But thence I see no
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Speaker 1: more than the great mountain mass behind the inn, a
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Speaker 1: very terrestrial looking mountain mass. I return to the contrivances
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Speaker 1: about me and make my examination as I dress, pausing
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Speaker 1: garment in hand to hover over first this thing of interest,
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Speaker 1: and then that. The room is, of course very clear
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Speaker 1: and clean and simple, not by any means cheaply equipped,
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Speaker 1: but designed to economize the labor of redding and repair
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Speaker 1: just as much as is possible. It is beautifully proportioned,
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Speaker 1: and rather lower than most rooms I know on Earth.
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Speaker 1: There is no fireplace, and I am perplexed by that
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Speaker 1: until I find a thermometer beside six switches on the
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Speaker 1: wall above this switchboard is a brief instruction. One switch
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Speaker 1: warms the floor, which is not carpeted, but covered by
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Speaker 1: a substance like soft oilcloth. One warms the mattress, which
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Speaker 1: is of metal with resistance coils threaded to and fro
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Speaker 1: in it, and the others warm the wall in various degrees,
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Speaker 1: each directing current through a separate system of resistances. The
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Speaker 1: casement does not open, but above flush with the ceiling,
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Speaker 1: a noiseless rapid fan pumps air out of the room.
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Speaker 1: The air enters by a tobin shaft. There is a
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Speaker 1: recessed dressing room, equipped with a bath and all that
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Speaker 1: is necessary to one's toilet, and the water, one remarks,
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Speaker 1: is warmed if one desires it warm by passing it
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Speaker 1: through an electrically heated spiral of tubing. A cake of
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Speaker 1: soap drops out of a store machine on the turn
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Speaker 1: of a handle, and when you have done with it,
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Speaker 1: you drop that and your soiled towels and so forth,
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Speaker 1: which also are given you by machines into a little box,
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Speaker 1: through the bottom of which they drop at once and
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Speaker 1: sail down a smooth shaft. A little notice tells you
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Speaker 1: the price of your room, and you gather the prices
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Speaker 1: doubled if you do not leave the toilet as you
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Speaker 1: found it beside the bed, and to be lit at
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Speaker 1: night by a handy switch. Over the pillow is a
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Speaker 1: little clock, its face flush with the wall. The room
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Speaker 1: has no corners to gather dirt, wall meats floor with
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Speaker 1: a gentle curve, and the apartment could be swept out
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Speaker 1: effectually by a few strokes of a mechanical sweeper. The
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Speaker 1: door frames and window frames are of metal, rounded and impervious.
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Speaker 1: You are politely requested to turn a handle at the
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Speaker 1: foot of your bed before leaving the room, and forthwith
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Speaker 1: the frame turns up into a vertical position, and the
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Speaker 1: bedclothes hang airing. You stand at the doorway and realize
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Speaker 1: that there remains not a minute's work for anyone to do.
22:16
Speaker 1: Memories of the fetid disorder of many an earthly bedroom
22:19
Speaker 1: after a night's use float across your mind, and you
22:24
Speaker 1: must not imagine this dustless, spotless, sweet apartment as anything
22:28
Speaker 1: but beautiful. Its appearance is a little unfamiliar, of course,
22:31
Speaker 1: But all the muddle of dust collecting hangings and witless
22:35
Speaker 1: ornament that cover the earthly bedroom, The balances the curtains
22:38
Speaker 1: to check the draft from the ill fitting wood windows,
22:41
Speaker 1: the worthless irrelevant pictures usually a little askew, the dusty carpets,
22:46
Speaker 1: and all the paraphernalia about the dirty, black leaded fireplace
22:50
Speaker 1: are gone. But the faintly tinted walls are framed with
22:53
Speaker 1: just one clear colored line, as finely placed as the
22:57
Speaker 1: member of a Greek capital. The door handles in the
23:00
Speaker 1: lines of the panels of the door, the two chairs,
23:02
Speaker 1: the framework of the bed, the writing table have all
23:06
Speaker 1: that final simplicity, that exquisite finish of contour that is
23:10
Speaker 1: begotten of sustained artistic effort. The graciously shaped windows each
23:15
Speaker 1: frame a picture, since they are draftless. The window seats
23:18
Speaker 1: are no mere mockeries, as are the window seats of earth.
23:22
Speaker 1: And on the sill, the sole thing to need attention
23:24
Speaker 1: in the room is one little bowl of blue alpine flowers.
23:29
Speaker 1: The same exquisite simplicity meets one downstairs. Our landlord sits
23:35
Speaker 1: down at table with us for a moment, and, seeing
23:37
Speaker 1: we do not understand the electrically heated coffee pot before us,
23:41
Speaker 1: shows us what to do. Coffee and milk we have
23:44
Speaker 1: in the continental fashion, and some excellent rolls and butter.
23:50
Speaker 1: He is a swarthy little man, our landlord, and overnight
23:53
Speaker 1: we saw him preoccupied with other guests. But we have
23:56
Speaker 1: risen either late or early by utopian standards, we know
24:00
Speaker 1: not which. And this morning he has us to himself.
24:04
Speaker 1: His bearing is kindly and inoffensive, but he cannot conceal
24:08
Speaker 1: the curiosity that possesses him. His eye meets ours with
24:12
Speaker 1: a mute inquiry, and then as we fall to we
24:14
Speaker 1: catch him scrutinizing our cuffs, our garments, our boots, our faces,
24:19
Speaker 1: our table, manners. He asks nothing at first, but says
24:23
Speaker 1: a word or so about our night's comfort and the
24:26
Speaker 1: day's weather, phrases that have an air of being customary.
24:29
Speaker 1: Then comes a silence that is interrogative. Excellent coffee, I say,
24:34
Speaker 1: to fill the gap, and excellent rolls, says my botanist.
24:41
Speaker 1: Our landlord indicates his sense of our approval. A momentary
24:45
Speaker 1: diversion is caused by the entry of an elfant tressed
24:48
Speaker 1: little girl, who stares at us, half impudently, half shyly,
24:52
Speaker 1: with bright black eyes. Hesitates at the botanist's clumsy smile
24:56
Speaker 1: and nod, and then goes and stands by her father
24:59
Speaker 1: and surveys us deadfastly. You have come far, ventures our landlord,
25:04
Speaker 1: patting his daughter's shoulder. I glanced at the botanist. Yes,
25:09
Speaker 1: I say, we have. I expand we have come so
25:15
Speaker 1: far that this country of yours seems very strange. Indeed
25:17
Speaker 1: to us the mountains, not only the mountains. You came
25:22
Speaker 1: up out of the Ticino Valley. No, not that way
25:27
Speaker 1: by the ober Alp, No the Furka. No, not up
25:32
Speaker 1: from the lake. No. He looks puzzled. We came, I say,
25:37
Speaker 1: from another world. He seems trying to understand. Then a
25:42
Speaker 1: thought strikes him, and he sends away his little girl
25:45
Speaker 1: with a needless message to her mother. Ah, he says,
25:49
Speaker 1: another world, eh, meaning another world far in the deeps
25:55
Speaker 1: of space. Then, at the expression of his face, one
25:58
Speaker 1: realizes that a modern youth topia will probably keep its
26:01
Speaker 1: more intelligent citizens for better work than intending. He is
26:05
Speaker 1: evidently inaccessible to the idea we think of putting before him.
26:09
Speaker 1: He stares at us a moment and then remarks, there's
26:13
Speaker 1: the book to sign. We find ourselves confronted with a
26:17
Speaker 1: book a little after the fashion of the familiar hotel
26:20
Speaker 1: visitor's Book of Earth. He places this before us, and
26:23
Speaker 1: beside it puts pen and ink and a slab upon
26:26
Speaker 1: which ink has been freshly smeared thumb marks. Says my
26:31
Speaker 1: scientific friend hastily in English. You show me how to
26:35
Speaker 1: do it, I say as quickly. He signs first, and
26:38
Speaker 1: I look over his shoulder. He is displaying more readiness
26:43
Speaker 1: than I should have expected. The book is ruled in
26:45
Speaker 1: broad transverse lines, and has a space for a name,
26:48
Speaker 1: for a number, and a thumb mark. He puts his
26:50
Speaker 1: thumb upon the slab and makes the thumb mark first.
26:53
Speaker 1: With the utmost deliberation. Meanwhile, he studies the other two entries,
26:57
Speaker 1: the numbers of the previous guests. Above our complex muddles
27:01
Speaker 1: of letters and figures. He writes his name, then, with
27:04
Speaker 1: a calm assurance, writes down his number A M A
27:09
Speaker 1: sixteen O seven two A B plus. I am rung
27:14
Speaker 1: with momentary admiration. I follow his example and fabricate an
27:18
Speaker 1: equally imposing signature. We think ourselves very clever. The Landlord
27:23
Speaker 1: proffers finger bowls for our thumbs, and his eye goes
27:26
Speaker 1: just a little curiously to our entries. I decide it
27:30
Speaker 1: is advisable to pay and go before any conversation about
27:34
Speaker 1: our formulae arises. As we emerge into the corridor, and in
27:38
Speaker 1: the morning sunlight of the utopian world, I see the
27:41
Speaker 1: Landlord bending over the book. Come on, I say, the
27:46
Speaker 1: most tiresome thing in the world is explanations, and I
27:48
Speaker 1: perceive that if we do not get along, they will
27:51
Speaker 1: fall upon us. Now I glance back to discover the
27:55
Speaker 1: Landlord and a gracefully robed woman standing outside the pretty
27:58
Speaker 1: simplicity of the utope An inn, watching us doubtfully as
28:02
Speaker 1: we recede. Come on, I insist Section eight. We should
28:10
Speaker 1: go towards the Choellen Gorge, and as we went, our
28:13
Speaker 1: fresh morning senses would gather together a thousand factors for
28:16
Speaker 1: our impression of this more civilized world. A modern utopia
28:21
Speaker 1: will have done with yapping about nationality, and so the
28:24
Speaker 1: ugly fortifications, the barracks and military defilements of the earthly
28:28
Speaker 1: vale of Urserine will be wanting. Instead, there will be
28:31
Speaker 1: a great multitude of gracious little houses clustering in college
28:35
Speaker 1: like groups, no doubt about their common kitchens and halls
28:38
Speaker 1: down and about the valley slopes, and there will be
28:42
Speaker 1: many more trees, and a great variety of trees. All
28:45
Speaker 1: the world will have been ransacked for winter conifers. Despite
28:49
Speaker 1: the height of the valley. There will be a double
28:50
Speaker 1: avenue along the road. This high road, with its tramway
28:54
Speaker 1: would turn with us to descend the gorge, and we
28:57
Speaker 1: should hesitate upon the adventure of boarding the train. But
29:00
Speaker 1: now we should have the memory of our landlord's curious
29:03
Speaker 1: eye upon us, and we should decide at last to
29:06
Speaker 1: defer the risk of explanations such an enterprise might precipitate.
29:11
Speaker 1: We should go by the great road for a time,
29:13
Speaker 1: and note something of the difference between utopian and terrestrial engineering.
29:18
Speaker 1: The tramway, the train road, the culverts and bridges, the
29:22
Speaker 1: urner Lock tunnel into which the road plunges will all
29:25
Speaker 1: be beautiful things. There is nothing in machinery. There is
29:29
Speaker 1: nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering
29:33
Speaker 1: devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the
29:37
Speaker 1: measure of imperfection. A thing of human making is for
29:41
Speaker 1: the most part ugly in proportion to the poverty of
29:43
Speaker 1: its constructive thought, to the failure of its producer fully
29:47
Speaker 1: to grasp the purpose of its being. Everything to which
29:50
Speaker 1: men continue to give thought and attention, which they make
29:53
Speaker 1: and remake in the same direction, and with a continuing
29:56
Speaker 1: desire to do as well as they can, grows beautiful
29:59
Speaker 1: in Evaceatively, things made by mankind under modern conditions are ugly,
30:04
Speaker 1: primarily because our social organization is ugly, because we live
30:09
Speaker 1: in an atmosphere of snatch and uncertainty, and do everything
30:12
Speaker 1: in an underbred, strenuous manner. This is the misfortune of machinery,
30:17
Speaker 1: and not its fault. Art, like some beautiful plant, lives
30:21
Speaker 1: on its atmosphere, and when the atmosphere is good, it
30:24
Speaker 1: will grow everywhere, and when it is bad, nowhere. If
30:29
Speaker 1: we smashed and buried every machine, every furnace, every factory
30:33
Speaker 1: in the world, and without any further change, set ourselves
30:36
Speaker 1: to home industries, hand labor, spade husbandry, sheep folding, and
30:42
Speaker 1: pig minding, we should still do things in the same haste,
30:45
Speaker 1: and achieve nothing but dirtiness and convenience, bad air, and
30:48
Speaker 1: another gaunt and gauky reflection of our intellectual and moral disorder.
30:54
Speaker 1: We should mend nothing but in utopia. A man who
30:58
Speaker 1: designs a tram road will be a cultivated man, an
31:01
Speaker 1: artist craftsman. He will strive as a good writer or
31:05
Speaker 1: a painter, strives to achieve the simplicity of perfection. He
31:09
Speaker 1: will make his girders and rails and parts as gracious
31:12
Speaker 1: as that first engineer. Nature has made the stems of
31:16
Speaker 1: her plants and the joints and gestures of her animals,
31:19
Speaker 1: to esteem him a sort of anti artist. To count
31:23
Speaker 1: every man who makes things with his unaided thumbs and artists,
31:26
Speaker 1: and every man who uses machinery as a brute, is
31:29
Speaker 1: merely a passing phase of human stupidity. This tram road
31:33
Speaker 1: beside us will be a triumph of design. The idea
31:35
Speaker 1: will be so unfamiliar to us that for a time
31:38
Speaker 1: it will not occur to us that it is a
31:40
Speaker 1: system of beautiful objects at all. We shall admire its
31:44
Speaker 1: ingenious adaptation to the need of a district that is
31:47
Speaker 1: buried half the year in snow, the hard bed below,
31:51
Speaker 1: curved and guttered to do its own clearing, the great
31:53
Speaker 1: arched sleeper masses, raising the rails of good two yards
31:57
Speaker 1: above the ground, the easy, simple ste standards and insulators.
32:01
Speaker 1: Then it will creep in upon our minds. But by Joe,
32:04
Speaker 1: this is designed. Indeed, the whole thing will be designed.
32:10
Speaker 1: Later on. Perhaps we may find students in an art
32:13
Speaker 1: school working in competition to design an electric tram, students
32:17
Speaker 1: who know something of modern metallurgy and something of electrical engineering.
32:21
Speaker 1: And we shall find people as keenly critical of a
32:24
Speaker 1: signal box or an iron bridge as they are on Earth.
32:27
Speaker 1: Of heavens, what are they critical about on Earth the
32:33
Speaker 1: quality and condition of a dress tie. We should make
32:38
Speaker 1: some unpatriotic comparisons with our own planet, no doubt. End
32:43
Speaker 1: of Chapter three, Utopian Economics, Sections five through eight. Recording
32:48
Speaker 1: by Bill bourst