On all these heads the trained economist will doubtless have many points to contest; but in their broad outlines there is no abrupt departure from current practice in any of these items, and not much reason, perhaps, why they should not be more thoroughly instituted.
With the various ramifications of Edendale industry and corporate finance it is not my business to deal; we have gone far enough to see that very little indeed remains when the question of means has been gone into.
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.”
V
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.
There are differences, of course; and I do not seek to minimize their importance: the slum proletariat has been abolished; everyone belongs to the middle class and enjoys the felicities of a high-grade clerk or an engineer or minor official. This is the peculiarity of our nineteenth century utopians: they do not so much criticize the goods of their times as demand more of them! Buckingham and Hertzka, though they differ in details, wish to extend middle class values throughout society—comfort and security and a plenitude of soap and sanitation. Even when the means they propose are revolutionary, the institutions they would erect are conceived very much in the image of current use and wont, and are unspeakably tame.
As we pass from Hertzka to Bellamy these facts glare insistently at us. The slight air of tedium that I have not been able to disguise in dealing with these utopias arises, I believe, from our excessive familiarity with their contents. Our nineteenth century utopias, if we except those of Fourier and Spence and a few more distinguished ones which we shall presently come to, do not dream of a renovated world: they keep on adding inventions to the present one. These utopias become vast reticulations of steel and red tape, until we feel that we are caught in the Nightmare of the Age of Machinery; and shall never escape. If this characterization seem unjust, I beg the reader to compare the utopias before Bacon with the utopias after Fourier, and find out how little human significance remains in the post-eighteenth century utopia when the machinery for supporting the good life is blotted out. These utopias are all
