The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
property of the idle rich from the starving wretches whom they have robbed. There will be no unemployed and no overlapping of labour, which will be organised and concentrated for the accomplishment of the only rational object, the creation of the things we require. For every one labour-saving machine in use to-day, we will, if necessary, employ a thousand machines, and consequently there will be produced such a stupendous, enormous, prodigious, overwhelming abundance of everything, that soon the community will be faced once more with the serious problem of over-production.
'To deal with this, it will be necessary to reduce the hours of our workers to four or five hours a day. All young people will be allowed to continue at the public schools and universities and will not be required to take any part in the work of the nation until they are twenty-one years of age. At the age of forty-five everyone will be allowed to retire from the State service on full pay. All these will be able to spend the rest of their days according to their own inclinations. Some will settle down quietly at home, and amuse themselves in the same ways as people of wealth and leisure do at the present day. Some will prefer to continue in the service of the State. Actors, artists, sculptors, musicians and others will go on working for their own pleasure and honour. Some will devote their leisure to science, art, or literature. Others will prefer to travel on the State steamships to different parts of the world to see for themselves all those things of which most of us have now but a dim and vague conception. Thus, for the first time in the history of humanity, the benefits and pleasures conferred upon mankind by science and civilisation will be enjoyed equally by all, upon the one condition, that they shall do their share of the work in order to make all these things possible.
'These are the principles upon which the Co-Operative Commonwealth of the future will be organised: the State in which no one will be distinguished or honoured above his fellows except for Virtue or Talent; where no man will find his profit in another's loss, and we shall no longer be masters and servants, but brothers, free men, and friends; where there will be no weary, broken men and women passing their joyless lives in toil and want, and no little children crying because they are hungry or cold.'
As Owen descended from the pulpit and walked back to
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