New worlds for old: A plain account of modern socialismWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
General
New worlds for old: A plain account of modern socialism
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Socialism
ten thousand undistinguished sorts of work for unambitious men....
If you are a farmer or any sort of horticulturist, a fruit or flower
grower, let us say, or a seedsman, you will probably find yourself
still farming under Socialism--that is to say, renting land and
getting what you can out of it. Your rent will be fixed just as it is
to-day by what people will give. But your landlord will be the
Municipality or the County, and the rent you pay will largely come
back to you in repairs, in the guiding reports and advice of the
Agricultural Department, in improved roads, in subventions to a good
electric car service to take your produce to market; in aids and
education for your children. You will probably have a greater fixity
of tenure and a clearer ownership in improvements than you have
to-day. I am inclined to think that your dairying and milking and so
forth will be done for you wholesale in big public dairies and mills
because of the economy of that; you will send up the crude produce and
sell it, perhaps, to the county association to brand and distribute.
It is probable you will sell your crops standing, and the public
authority will organize the harvesting and bring out an army of
workers from the towns to gather your fruit, hops and corn. You will
need, therefore, only a small permanent staff of labourers, and these
are much more likely to be partners with you in the enterprise than
wage workers needing to be watched and driven.
In your leisure you will shoot, perhaps, or hunt, if your tastes
incline that way--it is quite likely that scattered among the farms of
the future countryside will be the cottages and homes of all sorts of
people with open-air tastes who will share their sports with you. One
need not dread the disappearance of sport with the disappearance of
the great house.... In the dead winter-time you will probably like to
run into the nearest big town with your wife and family, stay in an
hotel for a few weeks to talk to people in your clubs, see what plays
there are in the municipal theatres and so forth. And you will no
doubt travel also in your holidays. All the world will know something
of the pleasures and freedom of travel, of wandering and the enjoyment
of unfamiliar atmospheres, of mountains and deserts and remote cities
and deep forests, and the customs of alien peoples.
§ 4.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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