very least_ 10 to 15 days' work of 10 hours
each, say 100 to 150 hours. And as to the English peasant, he would
have to toil for a month, or a little more, to obtain this luxury.

By this example we already see that by working _50 half-days per year_
in a well-organized society we could dress better than the lower middle
classes do to-day.

But with all this we have only required 60 half-days' work of 5 hours
each to obtain the fruits of the earth, 40 for housing, and 50 for
clothing, which only makes half a year's work, as the year consists of
300 working-days if we deduct holidays.

There remain still 150 half-days' work which could be made use of for
other necessaries of life--wine, sugar, coffee, tea, furniture,
transport, etc., etc.

It is evident that these calculations are only approximative, but they
can also be proved in another way. When we take into account how many,
in the so-called civilized nations, produce nothing, how many work at
harmful trades, doomed to disappear, and lastly, how many are only
useless middlemen, we see that in each nation the number of real
producers could be doubled. And if, instead of every 10 men, 20 were
occupied in producing useful commodities, and if society took the
trouble to economize human energy, those 20 people would only have to
work 5 hours a day without production decreasing. And it would suffice
to reduce the waste of human energy which is going on in the rich
families with the scores of useless servants, or in the administrations
which occupy one official to every ten or even six inhabitants, and to
utilize those forces, to augment immensely the productivity of a nation.
In fact, work could be reduced to four or even three hours a day, to
produce all the goods that are produced now.

After studying all these facts together, we may arrive, then, at the
following conclusion: Imagine a society, comprising a few million
inhabitants, engaged in agriculture and a great variety of
industries--Paris, for example, with the Department of Seine-et-Oise.
Suppose that in this society all children learn to work with their hands
as well as with their brains. Admit that all adults, save women, engaged
in the education of their children, bind themselves to work _5 hours a
day_ from the age of twenty or twenty-two to forty-five or fifty, and
that they follow occupations they have chosen themselves in any one of
those branches of human work which in this city are considered
_neces