After serving the advantage of socializing the industries which
the Accumulation effected for its own purposes, we continued the work in
large mills and shops, in the interest of the workers, whom we wished to
guard against the evil effects of solitude. But our mills and shops are
beautiful as well as useful. They look like temples, and they are temples,
dedicated to that sympathy between the divine and human which expresses
itself in honest and exquisite workmanship. They rise amid leafy boscages
beside the streams, which form their only power; for we have disused steam
altogether, with all the offences to the eye and ear which its use brought
into the world. Our life is so simple and our needs are so few that the
hand-work of the primitive toilers could easily supply our wants; but
machinery works so much more thoroughly and beautifully that we have in
great measure retained it. Only, the machines that were once the workmen's
enemies and masters are now their friends and servants; and, if any man
chooses to work alone with his own hands, the state will buy what he makes
at the same price that it sells the wares made collectively.
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