What is true of agriculture is said by Anarchists
to be equally true of industry. They maintain
that if the great economic organizations which
are now managed by capitalists, without consideration
for the lives of the wage-earners beyond
what Trade Unions are able to exact, were turned
gradually into self-governing communities, in which
the producers could decide all questions of methods,
conditions, hours of work, and so forth, there would
be an almost boundless change for the better: grime
and noise might be nearly eliminated, the hideousness
of industrial regions might be turned into beauty, the
interest in the scientific aspects of production might
become diffused among all producers with any native
intelligence, and something of the artist's joy in creation
might inspire the whole of the work. All this,
which is at present utterly remote from the reality,
might be produced by economic self-government.
We may concede that by such means a very large
proportion of the necessary work of the world could
ultimately be made sufficiently agreeable to be preferred
before idleness even by men whose bare livelihood
would be assured whether they worked or not.
As to the residue let us admit that special rewards,
whether in goods or honors or privileges, would have
to be given to those who undertook it.
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