486 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



agricultural processes, as weeding, fruit gathering, &c., 

 and besides this each person would learn at least two 

 trades or occupations, more or less contrasted ; one being 

 light and sedentary, the other more active and laborious, 

 and involving more or less out-door work. By this means 

 not only would a pleasant and healthful variety of occu- 

 pation be rendered possible for each worker, but the 

 community would derive the benefit of being able to 

 concentrate a large amount of skilled labour on any 

 pressing work, such as buildings or machinery. 



But perhaps the greatest economy of all would arise 

 from such a community being almost wholly free from 

 costs of transit, profits of the middleman, and need for 

 advertising. The total amount of this kind of waste, on 

 the present system, is something appalling, and can be 

 best realised by considering the difference between the 

 cost of manufacture and the retail price of a few typical 

 articles. Wheat now varies from 22s. to 30s. a quarter, 

 which quantity yields nearly six hundred pounds of bread. 

 In our proposed community the labour of making the 

 flour would be repaid by the value of the pollard and 

 bran, while the bread-making would emplo}' two or three 

 men and women. The actual cost of their four-pound 

 loaf, reckoning the labourers to receive present wages, 

 would be about 2d., while it now costs 3kl. or 4d. a 

 saving of at least 40 or 50 per cent. Again, the'-best 

 Cork butter sells wholesale at 8d. a pound, the actual 

 maker probably getting no more than 7d., while the retail 

 consumer has to pay double — here would be a saving of at 

 least 50 per cent. Milk is sold wholesale by the farmers 

 at about 7d. a gallon, while it is retailed at 16d. a gallon — 

 a saving of more than 60 per cent. In meat there would 

 be, prol3abl3^, about the same saving as in bread ; in 

 vegetables and fruit ver}^ much more ; in coals bought 

 wholesale from the pit, as compared with the rate at which 

 it is sold by the hundredweight or the pennyworth to the 

 poor in great cities, an equally large saving. And in 

 addition to all this, there would be the economy in the 

 cooking for a large community ; in the freshness and good 

 quality of all food and manufactured products ; and, 



