The chief difference between the individual utopias of the nineteenth century and the “collective representation” of Coketown is that these individual utopias were concerned to repair certain points where Manchester, Newark, Pittsburgh, and Elberfeld-Barmen fell short of the ideal. In repairing these points, Bellamy and Hertzka were ready to alter the conventional arrangements by which property and land were held, and capital was accumulated. The final end however was the same; and the differences are therefore more apparent than real. If the illustrative example of the Country House is in the Abbey of Theleme, that of Coketown is in the sharp picture of industrialism which Charles Dickens presents in Hard Times. Coketown, as Dickens sees it, is the quintessence of the industrial age. It is perhaps one of the few idola of the modern world which has no parallel in any earlier civilization that we have been able to explore. In order to understand what Coketown brought into the world, we must realize that before Coketown came into existence the center of every important European city consisted of a marketplace, shadowed over by a Cathedral, a Market Court, and a Guildhall; and frequently there would be an adjacent university. This was the typical formation. The various quarters of the city were subordinated to these central institutions, and the work which was carried on within the city’s walls was more or less concretely realized in the local community. Coketown, on the other hand, was the outcome of other conditions and necessities. The center of Coketown’s activity was the mill, set at first in the open country near falling water, and then as coal was applied to steam engines, removed to areas more accessible to the coal fields. The factory became the new social unity; in fact it became the only social unit; and, as Dickens sharply put it, “the jail looked like the town hall, and the town hall like the infirmary”--and all of them looked like the factory, a gaunt building of murky brick that once was red or yellow. The sole object of the factory is to produce goods for sale; and every other institution is encouraged in Coketown only to the extent that it does not seriously interfere with this aim.