Work will be made as agreeable as possible. To accomplish this, the places where production is carried on will be furnished practically and tastily, every means will be resorted to that danger may be eliminated, and that evil smells, smoke, etc., and all unpleasant and harmful factors will be done away with. At first the new society will produce with the means of production taken over from the old society. But these are insufficient. The workshops are scattered and are not properly constructed or furnished, and tools and machinery do not come up to the demands of the great number of persons employed and their desire for safety and comfort. To create a great many large, light, airy, well-equipped workshops becomes an imminent necessity. The arts and crafts, genius and skill, are immediately given a vast realm of activity. All branches of machine manufacture and the manufacture of tools, the building trades and the trades of interior decoration find ample opportunity for occupation. Whatever the human mind is able to invent in the way of convenient and agreeable buildings, appropriate ventilation, lighting and heating, and technical and mechanical improvements, will be instituted. To save motor-power, light and heat, as well as time and labor, and to insure the comfort of the workers, it will become desirable to concentrate the workshops in definite places. The dwellings will be separated from the workshops and freed from the unpleasantness of industrial activity; and the unpleasantness will be diminished and finally abolished by all sorts of institutions and appliances. Even the present status of technical knowledge gives us sufficient means to deprive the dangerous occupations, like mining, the chemical trades, etc., of their dangers entirely. But these means are not applied in bourgeois society, because they entail a heavy expense and because no one is duty bound to do more for the protection of the workingman than is absolutely necessary. The dangers of mining, for instance, could be removed by working the mine in a different manner, by a thorough system of ventilation, by the installation of electric light, by a considerable shortening of the hours of work, and by a frequent change of shifts. It does not require special ingenuity to find safety appliances that will make accidents in the building trade next to impossible and to make this sort of work particularly agreeable. For instance, ample contrivances might be made to shield the workers at large buildings and at all out-of-door work from the sun and the rain. In socialistic society, which will control an abundance of labor power, it will also be a simple matter to have frequent relays of new workers and to concentrate certain tasks upon definite seasons or definite hours of the day.
The problem of abolishing dust, smoke, grime and unpleasant odors, can also be solved entirely even to-day by chemistry and mechanics. But it is not done, or insufficiently done, because the private employers do not care to meet the heavy expense. The future places of production, wherever they may be, below the earth or above, will differ most favorably from the present ones. In private industry improved appliances are mainly a question of money. If they pay they will be established. If they do not pay, the health and life of the workingman are of no concern.[216]
In socialistic society the question of profits will have ceased to exist. This society will recognize no other consideration but the welfare of its members. What is to their advantage must be established. What is likely to harm them must be refrained from. No one will be compelled to enter into dangerous undertakings. If tasks are undertaken that entail dangers one may be assured that there will be many volunteers, all the more so because the undertakings will not serve destruction but the advancement of civilization.
[216] “Capital,” says the “Quarterly Reviewer,” “flees tumult and quarrel and is of a timid nature. That is true, but it is not the whole truth. Capital abhors the absence of profits or very small profits as nature abhors empty space. With appropriate profits, capital becomes bold. If ten percent. are insured, it can be applied everywhere; 20 percent., and it becomes aggressive; 50 percent., positively reckless; for 100 percent. it tramples all human laws under foot; 300 percent., and there is no crime it will not risk even at the peril of the gallows. If tumult and quarrel bring profit, it will encourage both.” Karl Marx—Capital.
[4.—The Growth of the Productivity of Labor.]
A far-reaching appliance of motor-power, and of the most perfect machines and tools, a detailed division of labor and a skillful combination of the various forces, will so heighten the productivity of labor that the necessary quantities of all commodities can be produced, notwithstanding a considerable shortening of the hours of work. Increased production will be to the common advantage of all. The share of each individual increases with the productivity of labor, and the increased productivity of labor again makes it possible to reduce the time required for the performance of socially necessary labor.
Among the motor powers that will be applied, electricity will most likely hold the foremost place. Bourgeois society everywhere presses it into service, and the more this is done the better it is for general progress. The revolutionizing effect of the most powerful of all natural forces will only hasten the overthrow of the bourgeois world and help to usher in Socialism. But only in socialistic society will the force be generally applied and turned to the best advantage. Both as a motor-power and as a source of light and heat it will contribute largely to the improved standard of living of society. Electricity is distinguished from every other force by the fact that it exists in nature in abundance. Our streams, high and low tide of the sea, wind and sunlight will furnish countless horse-powers when we shall thoroughly understand how to apply them.
“A wealth of energy that by far exceeds all demands is furnished by those parts of the surface of the earth that are so regularly subjected to the heat of the sun that it might be applied to regular technical operations. Perhaps it would not be an exaggerated precaution if a nation would even now secure a share in such places. The required areas need not even be very large; a few square miles in Northern Africa would suffice for the requirements of a country like the German Empire. By concentrating the heat of the sun a high temperature can be produced, and thereby everything else—portable mechanical work, charging of batteries, light and heat, and, by electrolysis, even fuel.”[217] The man who opens up these vistas is not a dreamer, but an appointed professor at the Berlin University and president of the Royal Physical and Technical Institute, a man who ranks high in the scientific world. At the 79th congress of the British Association in Winnipeg (during August, 1909), the famous English physicist, Sir S. Thompson, said: “The day is not too far distant when our life will be revolutionized by applying the rays of the sun. Man will liberate himself from his dependence upon coal-and-water power, and all large cities will be surrounded by immense apparatus, real sunbeam traps, into which the heat of the sun will be gathered, and the obtained energy will be stored away in tremendous reservoirs. It is the force of the sun, stored away in coal, in waterfalls, in nourishment, that performs all the world’s work. How great is this tribute of force that the sun pours down upon us becomes evident when we consider the fact that the warmth received by the earth when the sun is high and the sky is clear, according to the researches of Langley, equals an energy of 7000 horse-powers per acre. Although our engineers have not yet found the way to apply this gigantic source of power, I do not doubt that they will ultimately succeed in finding it. When the supply of coal in the bowels of the earth has been exhausted, when the water-powers will no longer suffice to meet our requirements, then we will obtain from this source all the energy needed to complete the work of the world. Then the centers of industry will be removed to the glowing deserts of Sahara, and the value of the land will be measured by how well it is suited to the erection of the great ‘sunbeam traps.’”[218] According to this, our anxiety that we might at some time lack fuel, is removed. The inventions of the accumulators would make it possible to store a large quantity of force away for future use at any time and place; so that, besides the power furnished by sun and tide, the power furnished by the wind and by mountain torrents, which can be obtained only periodically, might be stored and applied. So there may finally be no human task for which motor power cannot be supplied if necessary. Only by the assistance of electricity has it become possible to employ water-power on a large scale. According to T. Koehn, eight European states have the following supply of water-power at their disposal.