What does this all come to? Let Buckingham answer:
“They are, after all, mere palliatives, and do not reach the seat of the disease. … This can only be done by uniting the disjointed efforts of all these well-meaning but partially curative bodies into one, in order to achieve, by their union of means, influence, and example, the erection of a ‘Model Society,’ with its model farms, model pastures, model mines, model manufactures, model town, model schools, model workshops, model kitchens, model libraries, and places of recreation, enjoyment, and instruction; all of which could be united in one new Association.”
Without inquiring too closely into what a model pasture may be, we may admit that the notion behind Buckingham’s proposal was not unsound. The industrial society of his day was in an inchoate, indeed in a chaotic state. In order to sift out the necessary institutions and put them on a firm basis, it was the better part of wisdom to start anew on a fresh area of land and attempt to plan the development of the community as a whole. It is true that in this proposal of Buckingham’s there is none of Fourier’s brilliant intuitions of a true social order, and none of Ruskin’s critical inquiry into what composed a good life: Buckingham took contemporary values for granted. What he sought to do was to realize these values completely, and in orderly fashion. Here are the elements of his proposal.
There is to be formed a model town association, with a limited liability, for the purpose of building a new town called Victoria. The town is to contain every improvement in “position, plan, drainage, ventilation, architecture, supply of water, light, arid every other elegance and convenience.” Its size is to be about a mile square and the number of inhabitants is not to exceed 10,000. A suitable variety of manufactures and handicraft trades is to be established near the edge of the town; and the town itself is to be surrounded by farm land 10,000 acres broad. All of the lands, houses, factories, and materials are to be the property of the company, and not of any individual; and this property is to be held for the benefit of all in proportion as their shares entitle them. No person is to be a member of the company or an inhabitant of the town except one who is a bona fide shareholder to the extent of at least twenty pounds, and who is ready to subscribe to a drastic series of blue laws which, while permitting freedom in religious worship and preventing child labor, do away with liquor, drugs, and even tobacco.
In addition to these provisions there are to be common laundries, kitchens, refectories, and nurseries; and medical advice is to be given free, at home or in the hospital, as in the army and navy. Education is to be undertaken by the community. Justice, it should be noted by those who are acquainted with an experiment which has recently been started in New York, is to be administered by competent arbitrators under a written code of laws, without the expense, delay, and uncertainty of ordinary legal proceedings. All members are to sign declarations accepting arbitration and waiving other legal proceedings against members of the company.
All these affairs, especially the manner in which the town is to be built, are worked out in considerable detail; thus the size and character of the houses are set forth on the plan, and it is provided that each workingman is to occupy at least one entire and separate room for himself; whilst each married couple without children gets two rooms, and each family in which there are children is to occupy at least three rooms for domestic purposes. I have set down all these details baldly because the plan itself is a bald one; and no amount of fine writing will embellish it. Buckingham’s society is not based upon a thoroughgoing criticism of human institutions: the ends for which this society exists are doubtless those which were held good and proper by the Macaulays and the Martineaus. What is interesting in Buckingham’s utopia is the definite plans and specifications, accompanied by drawings; for this is surely one of the first attempts to put a problem in social engineering on a basis from which an engineer or an architect could work.
Buckingham thought that, given a successful model town, the rest of England might in time be colonized by the surplus population, and thus the old centers of black industry would he wiped out. Nor was Buckingham altogether deceived. His utopia was a limited one, but out of his limitations has come success. In 1848 this utopia was a chimera; in 1898, Mr. Ebenezer Howard reconstructed it and set it forth in a persuasive little book called Tomorrow, and as a direct result of the plans advocated by Mr. Howard, a flourishing Garden City called Letchworth has come into existence; which in turn has propagated another garden city, called Wellwyn; and at the same time has, by example, paved the way for numerous other garden cities and garden suburbs in various parts of Europe and in America.
With this mid-Victorian theorist, we pass over from a pre-scientific method of thinking to one which sacrifices the artistic imagination to a realistic grasp of the facts; and in this passage something is gained and something is lost. Buckingham gains by confining his proposals to what is immediately
