A Modern Utopia

in a Mod

riety of men, their endless gradation of quality, over which the hand of selection plays, and to which we owe the unmanageable complication of real life, is tacitly set aside. The real world is a vast disorder of acciden

ld with only such moral and mental and physical improvements as lie within their inherent possibilities, and it is our business to ask what Utopia will do with its congenital invalids, its idiots and madmen, its drunkards and men of vicious mind, its cruel and furtive souls, its stupid people, too stupid to be of use to the community, its lumpish, unteachab

sely the people of exceptional quality must be ascendant. The better sort of people, so far as they can be distinguished, must have the fullest

and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him. He sees with a growing resentment the multitude of suffering ineffectual lives over which his species tramples in its ascent. In the Modern Utop

he reproduction of inferior types, there is no reason whatever why that should not be secured. But there must be a competition in life of some sort to determine who are to be pushed to the edge, and who are to prevail and multiply. Whatever we do, man will remain a competitive creature, and though moral and intellectual training

s and convenience, the Utopian State will incontinently pull down, and pile the material and charge the owner for the labour; any house unduly crowded or dirty, it must in some effectual manner, directly or indirectly, confiscate and clear and clean. And any citizen indecently dressed, or ragged and dirty, or publicly unhealthy, or sleeping abroad homeless, or in any way neglected or derelict, must come under its care. It will find him work if he can and will work, it will take him to it, it will register him and lend him the money wherewith to lead a comely life until work can be found or made for him, and it will give him credit and shelter him and strengthen him if he is ill. In default of private enterprises it will provide inns for him and food, and it will-by itself acting as the reserve employer-maintain a minimum wage which will cover the cost of a decent life. The State will stand at the back of the economic struggle as the reserve employer of labour. This

a relief of economic pressure, but it would not be considered a charity done to the individual, but a public service. It need not pay, any more than the police need pay, but it could probably be done at a small margin of loss. There is a number of durable things bound finally to be useful that could be made and stored whenever the tide of more highly paid employment ebbed and labour sank to its mini

blished in work at a rate above the minimum, and free of any debt he may have incurred. The State will never press for its debt, nor put a limit to its accumulation so long as a man or woman remains childless; it will not even grudge them temporary spells of good fortune when they may lift their earnings above the minimum wage. It will pension

s, and with most of them there is manifestly nothing to be done but to seclude them from the great body of the population. You must resort to a kind of social surgery. You cannot have social freedom in your public ways, your children cannot speak to whom they will, your girls and gentle women cannot go abroad while some sorts of people go free. And there are violent people, and those who will not respect the property of oth

a Utopia one assumes the best possible government, a government as merciful and deliberate as it is powerful and decisive. You must not too hastily imagine these things be

th less confidence and more restraint than the schools and colleges of the ordinary world. In remote and solitary regions these enclosures will lie, they will be fenced in and forbidden to the common run of men, and there, remote fro

at would a saner w

the outcast will go from among his fellow men. There will be no drumming of him out of the ranks, no tearing off of

o justice in Nature perhaps, but the idea of justice must be sacred in any good society. Lives that statesmanship has permitted, errors it has not foreseen and educated against, must not be punished by death. If

hanking Heaven, no doubt, to be quit of a world of prigs. The State will, of course, secure itself against any children from these people, that is the primary object in their seclusion, and perhaps it may even be necessary to make these island prisons a system of island monasteries

wish it to transfer themselves to other islands, and so to keep a check upon tyranny. The insane, of course, will demand care and control, but there is no reason why the islands of the hopeless drunkard, for example, should not each have a virtual autonomy, have at the most a Resident and a guard. I believe that a community of drunkards might be capable of organising even its own bad habit to the pitch of tolerabl

gnise the double of this great earthly magnate or that, Petticoat Lane and Park Lane cheek by jowl. The landing part of the jetty is clear of people, only a government man or so stands there to receive the boat and prevent a rush, but beyond the gates a number of engagingly smart-looking individuals loiter speculatively. One figures a remarkable building labelled Custom House, an interesting fiscal revival this population has made, and beyond, crowding up the hill, the painted walls of a number of comfortable inns clamour loudly. One or two inhabitant

of hilarious good fellowship that would throw a halo of genial noise about the Islands of Drink, it is doubtful if th

n, and back he comes again to a state more horrible even than destitution. There are no Alsatias left in the world. For my own part I can think of no crime, unless it is reckless begetting or the wilful transmission of contagious disease, for which the bleak terrors, the solitudes and ignominies of the modern

ian be free

ppiness. The permanent idleness of a human being is not only burthensome to the world, but his own secure misery. But unprofitable occupation is also intended by idleness, and it may be considered w

d is the root of all disease, because so many people suffer from excessive and unwise eating. The sane economic ideal is to make the possession of money the clear indication of public serviceableness, and the more nearly that ideal is attained, the smaller is the justification of poverty and the less the hardship of being poor. In barbaric and disorderly countries it is almost honourable to be indigent and unquestionably virtuous to give to a beggar, and even in the more or less civilised societies of earth, so many children come into

definite relation to the minimum permissible wage, that a man who has incurred no liabilities through marriage or the like relationship, will be able to live in comfort and decency upon that minimum wage, pay his small insurance

come to his assistance. One imagines him resorting to a neat and business-like post-office, and stating his case to a civil and intelligent official. In any sane State the economic conditions of every quarter of the earth will be watched as constantly as its meteorological phases, and a daily map of the country within a radius of three or four hundred miles showing all the places where labour is needed will hang upon the post-office wall

egion of restricted employment to a region of labour shortag

the world is there work within th

ates unless they are unteachable imbeciles, no rule-of-thumb toilers as inadaptable as trained beasts. The Utopian worker will be as versatile as any well-educated man is on earth to-day, and no Trade Union will impose a li

sproportion may be due to two causes: to an increase of population without a corresponding increase of enterprises, or to a diminution of employment throughout the world due to the completion of great enterprises, to

may insist that Utopia will control the increase of its population. Without the determination and ability to limit that increase

mulate new enterprises, and that in a State saturated with science and prolific in invention will stimulate new enterprises. An increasing surplus of available labour without an absolute increase of population, an increasing surplus of labour due to increasing economy and not to proliferation, and which, therefore, does not press on and disarrange the food supply, is surely the ideal condition for a progressive civilisation. I am inclined to think that, since labour will be regarded as a delocalised and fluid force, it will be the World State and not the big municipalities ruling the force areas that will be the reserve employer of labour. Very probably it will be convenient for the State to hand over the surplus labour for municip

ity may have brought upon him. The World State of the modern Utopist is no state of moral compulsions. If, for example, under the restricted Utopian scheme of inheritance, a man inherited sufficient money to release him from the need to toil, he would be free to go where he pleased and do what he liked. A certain proportion of men at e

idea that the vehement incessant fool is the only righteous man. Nothing done in a hurry, nothing done under strain, is really we

ting enterprises and assist and co-operate with interesting people, and indeed all the best things of life. The modern Utopia will give a universal security indeed, and exercise the minimum of compulsions to toil, but it will offer some acutely desirable prizes. The aim of all these devices, the minimum wage, the standard of life, provision for all the feeble and unemployed and so forth, is not to rob life of in

ur remaining change, copper coins of an appearance ornamental rather than reassuring, and we should decide that after what we had gathered from the man with the blond hair, it would, on the whole, be advisable to come to the point with the la

rom terrestrial England. You imagine us entering, the botanist lagging a little b

e woman of six and thirty perhaps, and she re

your papers

s of Salisbury, Earl of Salisbury, Viscount Cranborne, Baron Cecil, and so forth, to all whom it may concern, my Carte d'Identité (useful on minor occasions) of the Touring Club de France, my green ticket t

I say,

he asks, looki

," I

ow

f by the readine

slope and they cam

same thing happen

n." She raised her eyebrows. "His pocket

or her to follow that up. She

numbers?" she

es into my mind. "Let me see," I say, and pat my forehead and r

s?" she asks

wly, "little a, nine

t you

s the botanist, ve

now your own numbers?" says the litt

trying to keep up a good social tone. "It

king," she

" I te

you've got

d hesitate. "We've got

office and get your number from that. But are you sur

that it's queer, and ques

he does so, a man enters the office. At the sight of him sh

ights to curiosity at our dress. "What is the

expl

an's pose and regard a different quality, a quality altogether nearer that of the beautiful tramway and of the gracious order of the mountain houses. He is a well-built man of perhaps five and thirty, with the easy movement that comes with perfect physical condition, his face is clean shaven and shows the firm mouth of a disciplined man, and his grey eyes are clear and steady. His le

eal of embarrassment at the foolish position we have made for ourselves. I deter

ct is-"

ays, with a

Our position is so entirely exce

e you bee

cision; "it can't be

at his feet. "

ns, "we come from another world. Consequently, whatever thumb-mark registration or numbering you have in this planet does

world do

long way away. Practicall

the patient expression of a

cendro-the Passo Lucendro-yesterday afternoon, and I defy you to discover the faintest trace of us before that time. Down we marched

k, extract my passport,

ment and examines it, turns it over, looks at

say, and proffer t

n British Museum ticket, as tatter

s hand. "You've got your thumbs. You'll be measured. The

it," I say, "

joke for you two men to play," he d

" I say, replacing th

ervenes. "What would

ney?"

N

d from some island. How you got so far as here I can't imagine, or what

ing apparatus and turns to

and with sufficient money to pay our expenses until the morrow. We are to go to Lucerne because there there is a demand for comparativ

ing, to a people as fluid and tidal as the sea. It does not enter into the scheme of earthly statesmanship, but indeed all local establis

eryone, fail in the face of this liquefaction. If the modern Utopia is indeed to be a world of responsible citizens, it must have devised s

ections as that of the insects in Cromwell Road. Such an index could be housed quite comfortably on one side of Northumberland Avenue, for example. It is only a reasonable tribute to the distinctive lucidity of the French mind to suppose the central index housed in a vast series of buildings at or near Paris. The index would be classified primarily by some unchanging physical characteristic, such as we are told the thumb-mark and finger-mark afford, and to these would be added any other physical traits that were of material value. The classification of thumb-marks and of inalterable physical characteristics goes on steadily, and

would come, of births, of deaths, of arrivals at inns, of applications to post-offices for letters, of tickets taken for long journeys, of criminal convictions, marriages, applications for public doles and the like. A filter of offices would sort the stream, and all day and all night for ever a swarm of clerks would go to and fro correcting this central register, and photographing copies of its entries for transmission to the subordinate local stations, in

itable if a Modern Ut

ess and secrecy were, indeed, the natural refuges of liberty when every government had in it the near possibility of tyranny, and the Englishman or American looked at the papers of a Russian or a German as one might look at the chains of a slave. You imagine that father of the old Liberalism, Rousseau, slinking off from his offspring at the door of the Foundling Hospital, and you can understand what a crime against natural virtue this quiet eye of the State would have seemed to him. But suppose we do not assume that government is necessarily bad, and the individual necessarily good-and the hypothesis upon which we are working practically abolishes either alternative-then we alter the case altogether. The government of a modern Utopia will be no perfection of intentions ignorantly ruling the world.... [Footnote: In the typical modern State of our own world, with

es disturbing the fine order of its field of vision, the eye that will presently be focussing itself upon us with a grow

cus. I shall affect a certain spurious ease of c

erne, and have gone on thence to the headquarters of the index at Paris. There, after a rough preliminary classification, I imagine them photographed on glass, and flung by means of a lantern in co

lery, from bay to bay, from drawer to drawer, and from card to card. "Here he is!" he mu

an experiences as I must presently describe, to the cen

who has dealt with us before. "Well?"

tle. "We've heard," he says, a

n't find out about us

but that makes your freak

re! Well-tell us! We had an idea

icial, addressing t

ame. Then he turns to

nn in the Urserenthal, and then in a flash I have the truth. I rap the desk

n English. "They'v

fingers. "Of course!

is official, "telling us s

are a little difficult to understand. He says I am one of the samurai, which sounds Japanese, "but you will be degraded

rks, "is that you were in

u, but do you mind following up that last clue and inquiring if the

believe there are two of us with the same thumb-mark. I won't trouble you with any apparent nonsense about other planets and

e official is beginni

g. How did I get from Norway hither? Does my friend look like hopping from India to

nd waves what are no doubt photo

not those

those ind

ll see,

tatively upon the thumb-ma

son is there for us to remain casual workmen here, when you allege we are men of position in the world, if there isn't something wrong? We shal

the faintest of threatening notes in his tone. "But at the same time"-

ted every possibility of our immediate position, w

e the free carriage, the unaffected graciousness of even the common people, to understand how fine and complete the arrangements of this world must be. How are they made so? We of the twentieth century are not going to accept the sweetish, faintly nasty slops of Rousseauism that so gratified our great-great-grandparents in the eighteenth. We know that order and justice do not come by Nature-"if only the policeman would go away." These things mean intention, will, carried to a scale that our poor vacillating, hot and cold earth has never known. What I am really seeing more and more clearly is the will beneath this visible Utopia. Convenient houses, admirable engineering that is no offence amidst na

tions, perfected public services and economic organisations, there must be men and women willing these things. There must be a considerable number and a succession of these men and women of will. No single person, no transitory group of people, could order and sustain this vast complexity. They must have a collective if not a common width of aim, and that involves a spoken or written literature, a living literature to sustain the harmony of their general activity. In some way they must have put the more immediate objects of desire

ould nod an ab

officials and so on, there will be a great multitude of other impressions. There will be many bright snapshots of little children, for example, of girls and women and men, seen in shops and offices and streets, on quays, at windows and by the wayside, people riding

ception of a Knight Templar, and with him come momentary impressions of other lithe and serious-looking people dressed after the same manner, words and phr