The chief good that Freeland seems to offer is freedom in industrial
enterprise. An association of men can get land and capital on demand,
and devote themselves to either agriculture or manufacturing industry;
and the risk of failure is minimized by a complete knowledge of the
probable demand and probable supply calculated by the statistical
bureau. Failing an outlet for industry through association, there
remains the land itself, for individual cultivation. “Every family in
Freeland dwells in its own house, and every house is surrounded by its
great garden, a thousand square meters in extent. These houses are the
private property of the inhabitants, and serve, like the gardens, for
private use. The inhabitants of Freeland do not, as a rule, recognize
any kind of ownership of land; they rather go upon the principle that
the land must be put in everyone’s hands to do with what he chooses.
This, in the most literal and wide sense of the word, means that every
inhabitant of Freeland can cultivate every piece of land whenever he
pleases. But this only relates to the land which is set apart for
cultivation, and not that set apart for living upon.... The inhabitants
of Freeland have agreed, with regard to the size and disposition
of the land, serving for the creation of a dwelling house, to form
regulations, and a kind of building court ... which has to determine
what ground is and what is not to be built upon, parcels out the land
for building, sees to the laying out of streets, canals, and the like,
and especially takes care that not more than one building is erected
upon one building allotment.”
5
What sort of life arises out of this kind of industrial association,
these provisions for the common use of machinery and land? It is all
rather dry and colorless, a sort of picture postcard view of the
Promised Land.
We are told that there are a great number of public buildings in
Edendale--an administrative palace, the Central bank, the University,
the Academy of Arts, three Public Libraries, four Theaters, the grand
central goods warehouse, a great number of schools and other buildings.
In addition, extraordinary means are taken to provide for public
cleanliness, and the aqueducts in Edendale--we seem to be reading a
Chamber of Commerce report!--are “almost without any equal in the
world,” moreover, “they are being extended daily.” The refuse is
cleaned away by a system of pneumatic sucking apparatus. The streets
are entirely macadamized. Electric tramways cross them in every
direction and bind the suburbs to the town. Such glimpses as we get of
Edendale remind us, in fact, of a go-ahead city in California or South
Africa. The utopia of Freeland is progressive enough in all conscience;
for many of these mechanical devices were only vague anticipations in
1889; but it is progressive in a mechanical sense; and when we examine
it carefully, people seem to live the same sort of life here as they do
in a “modern” European or American city.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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