What is certain is that with present machinery it is possible to manufacture an incredible amount of goods both cheaply and quickly. A few examples will suffice. Thus in the United States, in 751 cotton mills (for spinning and weaving), 175,000 men and women produce 2,033,000,000 yards of cotton goods, besides a great quantity of thread. On the average, more than 12,000 yards of cotton goods alone are obtained by a 300 days' work of nine and one-half hours each, say 40 yards of cotton in 10 hours. Admitting that a family needs 200 yards a year at most, this would be equivalent to 50 hours' work, say _10 half-days of 5 hours each_. And we should have thread besides; that is to say, cotton to sew with, and thread to weave cloth with, so as to manufacture woolen stuffs mixed with cotton. As to the results obtained by weaving alone, the official statistics of the United States teach us that in 1870, if workmen worked 13 or 14 hours a day, they made 10,000 yards of white cotton goods in a year; sixteen years later (1886) they wove 30,000 yards by working only 55 hours a week. Even in printed cotton goods they obtained, weaving and printing included, 32,000 yards in 2670 hours of work a year--say about 12 yards an hour. Thus to have your 200 yards of white and printed cotton goods _17 hours' work a year_ would suffice. It is necessary to remark that raw material reaches these factories in about the same state as it comes from the fields, and that the transformations gone through by the piece before it is converted into goods are completed in the course of these 17 hours. But to _buy_ these 200 yards from the tradesman, a well-paid workman must give _at the very least_ 10 to 15 days' work of 10 hours each, say 100 to 150 hours. And as to the English peasant, he would have to toil for a month, or a little more, to obtain this luxury. By this example we already see that by working _50 half-days per year_ in a well-organized society we could dress better than the lower middle classes do to-day. But with all this we have only required 60 half-days' work of 5 hours each to obtain the fruits of the earth, 40 for housing, and 50 for clothing, which only makes half a year's work, as the year consists of 300 working-days if we deduct holidays. There remain still 150 half-days' work which could be made use of for other necessaries of life--wine, sugar, coffee, tea, furniture, transport, etc., etc.