employment, to which the Government still gave the name of "ateliers nationaux," did in no manner please the men, for they expected each one of them to be employed in his own trade the watchmaker in making watches, the shoemaker in making shoes, the tailor in making garments; and feeling highly disappointed at the non-establishment of the real national workshops, and bitterly resenting the uncongenial character of common earthwork to highly skilled operations, they rose in insurrection against the Government of the Republic on the 21st of June, but were overpowered by General Cavaignac, who directed the so-called massacres of St. John.

CHAPTER XLV.-EQUITABLE EXCHANGE OF LABOUR.

RACTICAL but crude systems of exchanging labour for

PRACT

labour* were first inaugurated in 1832 by R. Owen in London, and in 1848 by Proudhon in Paris. The latter opened a bank, by the agency of which the exchange of labour was to be facilitated. It is, however, to be regretted that Proudhon's "Labour Exchange Bank" had not a fair trial, for no sooner was it opened, and ere any transaction of business had taken place therein, than the Government of the Republic became alarmed at the socialistic tendency of this scheme, and arbitrarily closed the establishment by the authority of the police. Enough is, however, known of this system to enable an impartial critic to arrive at the conviction that an equitable exchange of labour is an impossibility. It was proposed that time should be the standard of valuation. Nothing seems, at first, to be easier than the exchange of a day's labour of one working man with one day's labour of another. But the awkward question soon arises, Who is to be the time-keeper? Is the working man to be the valuer of his own time, or is another person to certify the number of days or hours he has spent at the production of a certain article, or in the perform

* "The equitable exchange of labour is based on the principle of labour for labour."-ROBERT OWEN.

ance of certain work? If it is left to the working man himself to state the length of time he has been at work, an untrue statement may occasionally be made, and the equitableness of exchange is thereby put in jeopardy; and if other persons have to count the hours, days, and weeks of his work, the number of time-keepers would have to be so enormously large that the whole system of supervision is at once to be dismissed as an absurdity. But even granting that the time is, on the one hand, honestly stated by the workman himself, or that, on the other, the valuation of his time were easily effected by some ingenious device, an exchange of labour on the principle of the valuation of time only would merely perpetuate the inequality of the remuneration of labour. In order to arrive at an equitable exchange, the nature of the work would have to be considered. A day's work of the shepherd in guarding his flock in the merry sunshine cannot be equitably exchanged with a day's perilous work of the sailor on the stormy sea. The time spent by the miner in the bowels of the earth is more valuable than that of the worker in the field. If this principle of justice is to be connected with the valuation of time, it is sure to introduce innumerable considerations and difficulties, without establishing a workable plan of an equitable exchange of labour. The perilous work of the sailor, the miner, the locomotive driver, and engine stoker, would have to be estimated a hundred times more precious than that of the tailor and watchmaker; and when this claim of compensation is once admitted, where is it to stop? Cannot the working men who risk their lives and injure their health in certain trades and employments raise their claims of compensation and extra reward to any extent? Is a man's life or health only worth the value of a hundred day's work of another of his fellow workmen? It is unnatural, nay, it is immoral, that a man's life and health should be risked for pecuniary compensation, or even for an advantageous gain in the exchange of labour with fellow workers. There can be only one equitable exchange of labour, and one just compensation for the risk of life and injury to health, if unavoidably connected with physical labour, and that is, if others incur the same danger, and are exposed to the same destructive influences, and have to bear the same hardships. The equitable exchange of labour, and

the final emancipation of the working classes, can only be effected by the equal distribution of labour of all kinds amongst all the members of the community.

ST1

CHAPTER XLVI.-MINIATURE MODEL COMMUNITIES.

(T. SIMON, Robert Owen, and Fourier, have each given detailed descriptions of isolated social communities, and Robert Owen even made a practical experiment of his plan by the settlement of a new social colony at New Lanark, in Scotland, which after a few years of successful and promising efforts began to decay, and was ultimately abandoned. In America various religious sects have, for many years past, been living in so-called social communities, the same as the Moravian Brethren, who have a similar settlement in the Black Forest, in Germany. Although the religious tenets of these sects may be different, they have, however, one institution common to them all, and this is the community of property, of land, houses, and pecuniary interest, etc.; and it is this most important of all social ties that alone can assure the happiness of a community and the success of a settlement.

All attempts at solving the social question by model communities based on the community of property, however successful they may be, will nevertheless remain powerless in exercising any great influence on the present state of society; for the rich will refuse to become members of similar social communities, well knowing that in the presence of and in close contact and intercourse with all the members of the community, they could no longer indulge in luxury, idleness, and dissipation; and the poor, as also the working classes, have not the means to raise the necessary funds for the purchase of land, cattle, agricultural implements, and other requisites, in order to found new and well organised social colonies; and the rudest settlement of this kind in the backwoods and prairies of America, if even the land were given gratuitously, could not be successful without the means of emigration to, and transit through the American continent. But, although all these material hindrances might be overcome by patience and perse

verance, there remain, however, other insurmountable obstacles which will never permit that the area of a country be parcelled out into miniature social establishments, presenting on a map a similar regularity of the divisions of the country as the wellknown square fields of the chess-board. The two great social reformers, Fourier and Robert Owen, in advocating the establishment of miniature social communities, overlooked two circumstances that are greatly adverse to the foundation of small and isolated social establishments, which should maintain themselves both by agriculture and manufactures, industry and handicrafts. The first is the impossibility of localising trades and occupations which, in their nature and mode of working and organisation, have a tendency to become nationalised,—such as the post business, telegraphs, railways, and especially the seafaring occupation, which scatters itself over the distant ocean. Trades and occupations like these cannot be directed and worked by innumerable isolated communities, but must stand under a central directory like that of a board of railway directors and managers, the postmaster-general, etc. The second circumstance which acts as an impediment to the division of the population into localised sections is to be found in the fact that certain occupations must, for ever, be confined to certain localities, as mining to the mines, quarrying to the quarries, dock labour to the seaports, etc. These occupations cannot be distributed all over the country in order to let every local community share and manage them, for they are more suitable for national organisation, which is already to some extent prepared by the great mining and dock and navigation companies. These are the true precursors of the national direction of all trades, manufactures, and occupations. Agriculture is likewise acquiring a semi-detached character, at least, in England; for certain counties are entirely laid out in grasslands, while in others cattle breeding is paramount; and this is done in order to adapt the best sort of agriculture to the nature of the soil. If miniature social communities were established, they would either have to break up the national character and counteract the success of many of the most important and numerous trades of the people, or they, themselves, would have to become communities in one district for grass growing, and in another for cattle breeding, for cotton.

spinning in one locality, and for coal mining in another; an absurdity that was certainly never dreamt of either by Fourier or Robert Owen. Miniature social communities may, moreover, be considered as great obstacles to the nationalisation of all trades; for instead of having, for instance, only one great shoe manufactory, in which all the shoes of the whole nation are made, the separate social communities would each have several shoemakers amongst their members, who would make shoes in the place where they dwell,-an arrangement that would not permit the great economy in the distribution of leather and other materials to be realized, which the one great national shoe manufacture can alone effect.

The Associated Home, as already described in this book, has nothing in common with the phalanstères of Charles Fourier or the parallelograms of Robert Owen. Both these socialist writers endeavoured to concentrate all manufacture, industry, and trades into each of their proposed communities; whilst the Associated Home, as explained in previous chapters, is merely an institution and an arrangement for saving domestic and distributive labour, and places all productive labour, manufactures, mining, all the skilled trades, etc., into other and often distant localities, and under the immediate direction and control of the state. The Associated Home will, therefore, have no workshops, factories, brick and stone yards, in its neighbourhood, and will, therefore, be greatly dissimilar to Fourier's phalanstère, which provides access to all manner of work, either under the roof of the social palace, or in its immediate vicinity.

CHAPTER XLVII.-ARGUMENTS WHICH RAISE THE QUESTIONS WHETHER THE PRECEPTS OF MORALITY, THE DICTATES OF RELIGION, AND THE ENACTMENTS OF CRIMINAL AND CIVIL LAW ARE SALUTARY AND EFFICACIOUS.

WH

HAT have moralists and apostles of religion been preaching for upwards of two thousand years? They have insisted upon the subjugation of the flesh and evil desires, the suppression of bad words, and the omission of evil deeds. Have they succeeded to any great extent? It is doubtful.