2l8 FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



required to satisfy the infinite diversity of tastes among 

 civilised men. Not those factories in which children 

 lose all the appearance of children in the atmosphere of 

 an industrial hell, but those airy and hygienic, and 

 consequently economical, factories in which human life 

 is of more account than machinery and the making of 

 extra profits, of which we already find a few samples 

 here and there ; factories and workshops into which men, 

 women and children will not be driven by hunger, but 

 will be attracted by the desire of finding an activity 

 suited to their tastes, and where, aided by the motor 

 and the machine, they will choose the branch of activity 

 which best suits their inclinations.] 



Let those factories and workshops be erected, not 

 for making profits by selling shoddy or useless and 

 noxious things to enslaved Africans, but to satisfy the 

 unsatisfied needs of millions of Europeans. And again, 

 you will be struck to see with what facility and in how 

 short a time your needs of dress and of thousands of 

 articles of luxury can be satisfied, when production is 

 carried on for satisfying real needs rather than for 

 satisfying shareholders by high profits or for pouring 

 gold into the pockets of promoters and bogus directors. 

 Very soon you will yourselves feel interested in that 

 work, and you will have occasion to admire in your 

 children their eager desire to become acquainted with 

 Nature and its forces, their inquisitive inquiries as to 

 the powers of machinery, and their rapidly developing 

 inventive genius. 



Such is the future already possible, already realis- 

 able ; such is the present already condemned and about 

 to disappear. And what prevents us from turning our 

 backs to this present and from marching towards that 

 future; or, at least, making the first steps towards it, is 

 not the " failure of science," but first of all our crass 

 cupidity the cupidity of the man who killed theTieirr 



it was laying golden eggs and then our^ laziness 



