Chapter 15 chapter Ten

happy labor I Socialists maintain that in a society freed from the control of capitalists, labor must be enjoyable, and there will be no more loathsome, unhygienic servitude; but they are laughed at by ordinary people.Even today we can see not a few marked advances in this direction; and where such advances have been made, employers have thereby been able to save a great deal of effort. It is also evidently possible to make a factory as sanitary and agreeable a place as a scientific laboratory.And it is also very beneficial to do this, and this level is also very obvious.In large and airy factories the result of the work is a little better, and it is easy to carry out small improvements, each resulting in a saving of hand and time.As for the factories we know today, most of them are filthy and unhygienic. This is because, first, the laborers are insignificant in the present factory organization, and second, the characteristics of the present industrial organization are precisely the most absurd waste. human energy.

However, we now often see well-equipped factories, and these factories are so well-equipped that if the daily working time is only four or five hours, and each person can choose according to his taste, and change the various jobs, then in Working in this factory is really very pleasant. As far as I know, certain large factories in the Midlands of England have unfortunately been devoted exclusively to military articles; but as far as the sanitary and intellectual organization of the factories is concerned, they are quite perfect.The grounds cover a total of fifty acres, of which fifteen acres are covered with glass roofs.The road is paved with refractory bricks and is very clean; the glass roof is also exceptionally clean; there is a group of workers who clean the glass every day.In these factories, twenty tons of steel can be cast; the flames of the great furnaces are more than a thousand degrees hot, and yet if you stand thirty feet away from the furnace, you will You wouldn't feel the heat; and you wouldn't even think you were standing next to a furnace if you didn't see it opening its mouth every now and then spitting out monstrous molten steel.As for the steel monster, there were only three or four workers to deal with it, and they walked around, turning on the water pressure of the spigot to turn the huge crane.

You go into these factories and think that you can hear the deafening sound of the refining machine, but you go in and see that there is no refining machine inside.Hundred-ton cannons and the crankshafts of ships on the Atlantic route are all cast with water pressure. Workers only twist the faucet next to them to make the steel block fit into the model and form various shapes; A piece of iron can become a pure metal with no gaps at all. I thought I would hear a nasty chugging sound, but I saw the machine cutting through thirty feet of steel, but it was as silent as cutting cheese.I can't help expressing my admiration to the technician who guides the tour.He replied:

"It's just a question of economy! This machine for planing steel has been in use for forty-two years. If the parts of the machine don't fit together well, the planer will jam and rattle every time it moves, and so It must be less than ten years! "As for the smelting furnace, it would be a waste to let the heat dissipate without using it. If the heat lost by radiation is equivalent to several tons of coal, wouldn't it be steaming to kill the workers? "The mill, which shakes the houses five miles in the vicinity, is also useless. Forging by pressure is better than hammering, and costs less--indeed, there is less loss.

"In these factories, it's just a matter of economy to get light, cleanliness, and ample space to sit. If you know what you're doing, and you have room to move freely, then Your job must be better than it was before." He added: "Honestly, before we came here, it was very difficult. Land in places near the metropolis is very expensive - because the landowners hold it as they please!" The same is true of mines.From Zola's description① and newspaper records, we can know what the situation in the mine is like today.In the mines of the future, the circulation of air and the proper temperature will be arranged exactly like a library; there, horses will no longer die in the ground; as for the transportation in the pit, it will depend on the automatic cables placed at the mouth of the pit.The ventilator is constantly moving, and there is no danger of a gas explosion.This is not a dream, such pits are already visible in England; I have been down to see them.This remarkable organization is also only a matter of economics.The mine of which I am speaking, although very deep (466 yards), could produce, with only two hundred miners, a thousand tons of coal a day—that is, each miner produces five tons of coal a day. tons, while at the same time (the beginning of the 1890s) in the other two thousand mines in England the average man produced less than three hundred tons of coal a year.

① Emile Zola (1840-1902), a French naturalistic novelist.This refers to his novel "Germinal" (Germinal, 1885), which describes the miserable life of miners. - translator Many more examples could be given, if necessary, to demonstrate the organization of matter.Fourier's dream is by no means "Utopia". However, this question has often been discussed in socialist newspapers and magazines, so that general public opinion is probably already quite aware of it.Factories, ironworks, and mines can all be made as hygienic and beautiful as the laboratories of modern universities. The more perfect the organization, the more human labor will produce.

Sure enough, in an equal society in the future, workers will no longer sell their labor to do hard work under any conditions. Can we still wonder if labor is not a kind of happiness and entertainment at that time?Irksome work will also be eliminated, for such unsanitary conditions are harmful to society as a whole.Only the slave can submit to the old environment, but the free man will create a new environment, and their labor will become pleasant, and the productivity will increase without limit.What is the exception today will be the rule tomorrow. The work in the home is now entirely placed on the women who today bear the servile servitude of mankind, but as with all things previously said, there should be new reforms in the future.

II A society transformed by revolution would also abolish domestic slavery—the last form of slavery, the oldest, and therefore perhaps the most stable.Yet this cannot be achieved in the way cohabitationists dreamed up or power communists repeatedly imagined. "Co-living" isn't to most people's liking.The deep-thinking man naturally feels the necessity of meeting his fellows for the purpose of his common enterprise; and the more he feels himself a part of a larger whole, the more interested he is in the common enterprise.Not so in the leisure time of rest and reunion. "Cohabitation" and "family cohabitation" do not think of this, or else they try to satisfy this need by artificial assembly.

The "Common Residence" is in fact nothing but a big hotel, which may please some, and even all at a certain period of their careers, while the majority of the people do not. Likes family life (naturally future family life).They liked separate rooms; the Anglo-Saxons even wanted houses of six or even eight rooms, in which a family or group of friends could live separately.Sometimes "cohabitation" is necessary, but when it becomes the general rule, it is a nuisance.After spending some time socially, it is a normal human desire to live a quiet life.One of the greatest pains in prison is therefore the inability to live in solitude, as is the case with permanent solitary confinement and the inability to lead a social life.

① That is, the British. - translator Some people think that "co-living" is an economical solution, but in fact it is a grocer's economical solution.The most important and only reasonable economy is to make everyone enjoy the joy of life, because after a person is satisfied in life, his productivity is far beyond those who curse the environment all day long. ① ① People in the communist society of the Young Icaria already know the importance of free choice in everyday relationships outside of work.The communists of the original religion often took the common eclipse as their ideal; the former Christians took the common eclipse as a sign of conversion to Christianity.The Eucharist is its vestiges.However, the people of Young Icaria have abandoned this religious custom; although they eat in the public dining hall, there are separate small tables in it, allowing them to choose where they like to sit.People in the communist society of Anama each had their own families, and they took food from the public warehouses and took it to their own homes to eat. - author

Icarie is the ideal society of the French writer E. Cabet (E. Cabet 1788-1856). For a detailed description of this society, see his famous book Voyage en Icarie (1845).The slogan of the ideal society is printed on the inside and cover of this book.Cabet established his ideal society (Youth Igaria) in Texas (Texas) in 1848, and then moved to Illinois.The communist society of Anamar was established in North America by farmers in Anamar, Germany.At that time, because America was cheap and relatively free, many utopian socialists went there to build a new society. - translator Other socialists also rejected co-living.But if you ask them how the house is run, they will answer: "Everyone does his own work. My wife tidies up the house; bourgeois wives should do the same." He is a bourgeois who is engaged in the socialist movement, so he will smile and say to his wife: "My love, isn't there no maid in a socialist society? Then, you have to be like our comrade Paul or the carpenter." Does Mr. John's wife work like that?" Women (maids or wives) are often called to run the house. However, women will finally come out to demand the right to human emancipation.She is no longer willing to be the cattle and horses of the family.She sacrificed many years to raise children, and she thought that was enough.She no longer wants to be a cook, a mender, or a house sweeper!Because American women want to implement their demands, as a result, the number of women in the United States stooping to handle housework has gradually decreased, and this has caused ordinary people to sigh.Today's wives all like art, politics, literature, or gambling; there are very few women workers, and those who are willing to be maids are even less common in the United States.The solution, it turns out, is remarkably simple and dictated by life itself.Three-quarters of household chores are done by machines. You shine your shoes, you know how stupid the job is.But wouldn't it be more stupid to brush a pair of leather shoes twenty or thirty times?One tenth of the European population had to sell their bodies for filthy quarters and inadequate food, and the women had to accept the conditions of slavery, so that millions of women had to do this kind of work every morning . However, barbers have already used machines to comb hair, whether it is soft or hard hair, it can be done very quickly.Why can't we apply the same principle to feet?This has been done now, and shoe shine machines are commonly used in large hotels in Europe and America.And gradually spread to outside the hotel.In England, where the pupils board at the teacher's house in large schools, it is very convenient to set up a shoe-shine station, as a thousand pairs of shoes are to be machine-polished every morning; A hundred slaves working stupidly.The shoe polisher takes the shoes to the machine every night to give them a good polish, and returns them the next morning. As for laundry?There is no place where women are not afraid of such time-consuming and dirty work.This kind of work is probably done with the hands, simply because it is the work of domestic slaves and is trivial. It is better in the United States now. In many cities in the United States, water pipes are already used to deliver hot water to every household, just like the supply of cold water in Europe.Under the circumstances, the problem is extremely simple, and has been solved by one woman—Mrs. Cochrane.Her machine cleaned and dried a dozen dishes and dishes in less than three minutes.A factory in Illinois made such a machine and sold it at a price that the average middle man could buy.In small families, why not send the utensils to the laundromat like sending shoes to the shoe shine?In fact, even these two duties—shine shoes and wash dishes—could be performed by the same group. Scrubbing the clothes peels off the skin of the hands; sweeping the floor and brushing the velvet makes the dust fly up like a cloud, and it is not easy to remove the dust by doing so:--these unhealthy jobs are still performed by men, because women They are still regarded as slaves; yet as this can be done by machines, and well done, the women have gradually ceased to do it.In the future, all the machines will be installed in the households. If the driving force is distributed to each household, the people will be able to use the machines to do various jobs without having to work hard. The cost of making such a machine is also very small.They are now sold at a high price because these machines cannot be used generally, and especially because extra taxes are imposed on machines of every kind by gentlemen, who always want to live in luxury , sales, patents, taxes, etc. to do speculation. But emancipation from domestic servitude cannot be achieved with mere small machines.Gradually the so-called families were withdrawn from their present isolation; families began to unite with each other to do in common what they had formerly done alone. In fact, in the future, it is not necessary for every household to have a shoe-shine machine, a utensil-washer machine, a laundry machine, and so on.On the contrary, in the future, there will be a common stove to send heat to each house in the whole area, so that each house does not have to start a fire separately.Several cities in the United States have already done this.Hot water is supplied from a central stove to each house, which is circulated by water pipes; to increase or decrease the temperature, just turn the tap to get the proper temperature.If one wanted to start a fire in a particular room, one had only to light the gas supplied for warmth from the central storage room.All the work of sweeping the chimneys and keeping the fires, which took so much of the women's time, is gradually dying out. Candles, lamps, and gas are all a thing of the past.In some cities, no matter where you go, you only need to press the button to get light, and getting enough electric lights is just a matter of economy and knowledge.In the United States, people have spoken of organizing groups to do the work of handling the household.Every street must have a treatment office.Every day a big cart goes to the houses to collect shoes to be polished, clothes to be washed, things to be mended (if it is worth mending), tapes to be brushed, and cleaned by the next morning sent back.In two or three hours, hot coffee and well-boiled eggs will be on your table.Between twelve o'clock and two o'clock, more than twenty million Americans, and a similar number in the United Kingdom, eat roast beef, mutton, pork, potatoes, and fresh vegetables of all kinds.In the interval of two or three hours at least eight million households were burning fires, roasting meat, cooking soup, and cooking vegetables; eight million women sacrificed their time to prepare a meal, counting the number of vegetables cooked by all households, at most There are only twelve different styles. An American woman once wrote: "While one fire would have been enough, now it's fifty." You can dine with your children in your own home if you like; Just think about it, to make several cups of coffee and one meal, why should we sacrifice the morning time of fifty women?One fire is enough for two people to cook all this meat and all these vegetables, but why use fifty fires?If you have special hobbies, you can roast beef and mutton at will, or cook all kinds of fresh vegetables at will.Yet you should only want a kitchen, and a fire, and try to make it as exquisitely complete as possible. Why are women's jobs so unworthy?Why does every family need a housewife and three or four servants to spend so much time on one meal?This is because those who sought to emancipate mankind did not include women in their dreams of emancipation, thinking that they were degrading masculinity at the thought of "this kitchen work" which they placed in the On the shoulders of the women who did the servitude. The so-called women's liberation is not just opening the doors of universities, courts, and parliaments, and inviting them in.Because those so-called "liberated" women now often put the family work on the shoulders of other women.The real emancipation of women lies in making women no longer do the torturous work of cooking, eating and washing clothes; it is in making her organize her family well so that she has time to raise children and participate in social activities . Such an era is approaching.As I said before, everything is moving forward.It’s just that we should fully understand that even if a revolution is obsessed with the reputation of freedom, equality, and solidarity, if it still maintains the slavery of the family, it cannot be called a revolution.If this half of humanity remained slaves to the stove, they would still rise up against the other half.