again the excellent
organization is simply a question of economy. The mine of which I speak,
in spite of its immense depth (466 yards), has an output of a thousand
tons of coal a day, with only two hundred miners--five tons a day per
each worker, whereas the average for the two thousand pits in England at
the time I visited this mine in the early 'nineties, was hardly three
hundred tons a year per man.

If necessary, it would be easy to multiply examples proving that as
regards the material organization Fourier's dream was not a Utopia.

This question has, however, been so frequently discussed in Socialist
newspapers that public opinion should already be educated on this point.
Factory, forge and mine _can_ be as healthy and magnificent as the
finest laboratories in modern universities, and the better the
organization the more will man's labour produce.

If it be so, can we doubt that work will become a pleasure and a
relaxation in a society of equals, in which "hands" will not be
compelled to sell themselves to toil, and to accept work under any
conditions? Repugnant tasks will disappear, because it is evident that
these unhealthy conditions are harmful to society as a whole. Slaves can
submit to them, but free men will create new conditions, and their work
will be pleasant and infinitely more productive. The exceptions of
to-day will be the rule of to-morrow.

The same will come to pass as regards domestic work, which to-day
society lays on the shoulders of that drudge of humanity--woman.

II

A society regenerated by the Revolution will make domestic slavery
disappear--this last form of slavery, perhaps the most tenacious,
because it is also the most ancient. Only it will not come about in the
way dreamt of by Phalansterians, nor in the manner often imagined by
authoritarian Communists.

Phalansteries are repugnant to millions of human beings. The most
reserved man certainly feels the necessity of meeting his fellows for
the purpose of common work, which becomes the more attractive the more
he feels himself a part of an immense whole. But it is not so for the
hours of leisure, reserved for rest and intimacy. The phalanstery and
the familystery do not take this into account, or else they endeavour to
supply this need by artificial groupings.

A phalanstery, which is in fact nothing but an immense hotel, can please
some, and even all at a certain period of their life, but the great mass
prefers family life