While every man, woman, and child knows how to cultivate the soil, since each has learned partly in school and partly by practice, every person also has some “peculiar trade to which he applies himself, such as the manufacture of wool or flax, masonry, smith’s work or carpenter’s work”; and no trade is held in special esteem above the others. (That is a great jump from the Republic where the mechanic arts are considered base and servile in nature!) The same trade usually passes down from father to son, since each family follows its own special occupation; but a man whose genius lies another way may be adopted into a family which plies another trade; and if after he has learnt that trade, he wishes still to master another, this change is brought about in the same manner. “When he has learned both, he follows that which he likes best, unless the public has more occasion for the other.” The chief and almost the only business of the magistrates is to see that no one lives in idleness. This does not mean that the Utopians wear themselves out with “perpetual toil from morning to night, as if they were beasts of burden,” for they appoint eight hours for sleep and six for work, and the rest of the day is left to each man’s discretion. They are able to cut down the length of time needed for work, without our so-called labor saving machinery, by using the services of classes which in More’s time were given for the most part to idleness--princes, rich men, healthy beggars, and the like. The only exception to this rule of labor is with the magistrates--who are not in the habit of taking advantage of it--and the students, who upon proving their ability are released from mechanical operations. If there is too great a surplus of labor, men are sent out to repair the highways; but when no public undertaking is to be performed, the hours of work are lessened. 6 So much for the daily industrial life of the Utopians. How are the goods distributed? Between the city and the country there is a monthly exchange of goods. This occasion is made a festival, and the country people come into town and take back for themselves the goods which the townspeople have made; and the magistrates “take care to see it given to them.” In back of this direct interchange of goods between town and country, between household and household, there are doubtless regulations; and it is simply our misfortune that Raphael Hythloday did not think it necessary to go into them. Within the cities, we must add, there are storehouses where a daily market takes place.