V
The economic base of this commonwealth is agriculture, and no one is ignorant of the art. Here and there over the countryside are great farmhouses, equipped for carrying on agricultural operations. While those who are well-adapted for rural life are free to live in the open country the whole year round, other workers are sent by turns from the city to take part in the farm-labor. Every farmstead or “family” holds no less than forty men and women. Each year twenty of this family come hack to town after two years in the country; and in their place another twenty is sent out from the town, so that they may learn the country work from those who have had at least a year’s experience.
Agricultural economics is so well advanced that the countryside knows exactly how much food is needed by the whole city-region; but the Utopians sow and breed more abundantly than they need, in order that their neighbors may have the overplus. Poultry-raising is also highly advanced. The Utopians “breed an infinite multitude of chickens in a very curious manner; for the hens do not sit and hatch them, but vast numbers of eggs are laid in a gentle and equal heat, in order to be hatched”—in short, they have discovered the incubator!
During the harvest season the country magistrates inform the city magistrates how many extra hands are needed for reaping; a draft of city workers is made, and the work is commonly done in short order.
While every man, woman, and child knows how to cultivate the soil, since each has learned partly in school and partly by practice, every person also has some “peculiar trade to which he applies himself, such as the manufacture of wool or flax, masonry, smith’s work or carpenter’s work”; and no trade is held in special esteem above the others. (That is a great jump from The Republic where the mechanic arts are considered base and servile in nature!) The same trade usually passes down from father to son, since each family follows its own special occupation; but a man whose genius lies another way may be adopted into a family which plies another trade; and if after he has learnt that trade, he wishes still to master another, this change is brought about in the same manner. “When he has learned both, he follows that which he likes best, unless the public has more occasion for the other.”
The chief and almost the only business of the magistrates is to see that no one lives in idleness. This does not mean that the Utopians wear themselves out with “perpetual toil from morning to night, as if they were beasts of burden,” for they appoint eight hours for sleep and six for work, and the rest of the day is left to each man’s discretion. They are able to cut down the length of time needed for work, without our so-called labor saving machinery, by using the services of classes which in More’s time were given for the most part to idleness—princes, rich men, healthy beggars, and the like. The only exception to this rule of labor is with the magistrates—who are not in the habit of taking advantage of it—and the students, who upon proving their ability are released from mechanical operations. If there is too great a surplus of labor, men are sent out to repair the highways; but when no public undertaking is to be performed, the hours of work are lessened.