The great state : essays in construction / by H.G. Wells [and others].

Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The great state : essays in construction / by H.G. Wells [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    47/396 (page 35)
    proportion of farm work is seasonal, and that a migration to and iro between rural and urban con- ditions would be entirely practicable in a largely planned community. The agricultural population could move out of town into an open-air life as the spring approached, and return for spending, pleasure, and education as the days shortened. Already something of this sort occurs under extremely un- favourable conditions in the movement of the fruit and hop pickers from the east end of London into Kent, but that is a mere hint of the extended picnic which a broadly planned cultivation might afford. A fully developed civilisation employing machines in the hands of highly skilled men will minimise toil to the very utmost, no man will shove where a machine can shove, or carry where a machine can carry; but there will remain, more particularly in the summer, a vast amount of hand operations, invigorating and even attractive to the urban popu- lation. Given short hours, good pay, and all the jolly amusement in the evening camp that a free, happy, and intelligent people will develop for them- selves, and there will be little difficulty about this particular class of work to differentiate it from any other sort of necessary labour. One passes, therefore, with no definite transition from the root problem of agricultural production in the Great State to the wider problem of labour in general. _ A glance at the country-side conjures up a picture of extensive tracts being cultivated on a wholesale