Coöperative Ownership of Farm Tools.
Well managed coöperation will also find another field in Roadtown agriculture in the form of coöperatively owned tools. I fully believe in the electric plow, for instance; an invention which the writer worked out some years ago in the form of a flexible cable which would unwind from a cylinder on the plow as the plow moves out from the electric plug, and will rewind as it returns. Such a device as I propose is entirely practicable and has simply failed to be developed because of lack of cheap electric power near the land to be cultivated; however, the old reliable horse will be used back from the Roadtown line and as near to it as he proves economical and desirable.
The use of electricity for agricultural power, is a part of the future programme of the world as the land becomes more thickly settled and as land to raise horse food gradually diminishes. How fast the change will come will depend upon how rapidly the storage battery and the means of conducting electric power are cheapened through invention. At present the electrical truck competes successfully with the gasoline truck, and Edison storage batteries are now replacing the horse cars in New York streets where the traffic does not warrant the regular electric car. I believe the most economical agricultural conveyances in Roadtown will in a short time, if not from the outset, be light electrical storage wagons and that the use of such vehicles as well as electrical cultivating instruments will gradually extend back from the Roadtown as intensive agriculture develops and electric power is cheapened.
CHAPTER IX
INDUSTRY RETURNS TO THE HOME
AN influential factor in the development of manufacturing was the invention of steam power. The industries that use machines were forced out of the homes and into the factories. There was no alternative. The steam driven machines produced goods so cheaply that the hand power, or home machine could not earn its owner a livelihood. Thus the factory system developed, partly because of the mechanical necessity of concentration where the power from one engine could by the use of shafts and belts be made to run a great number of machines, and partly because of the natural tendency of the man with the most money to acquire possession of the factory and have others work for him.
Later the invention and perfection of the electric generator and motor made possible the distribution of power and the machine, with its motor attached, again became feasible for individual ownership. Difficulties, however, exist. These difficulties are the present capitalistic ownership of the material and machines, a lack of properly organized coöperatively conducted sources of power, present land ownership, house arrangement, and of getting this power to the worker; and what is of much more moment, the complete possession by capitalistic interests of the entire system of trade or distribution from the great railway combination to the retail shop, through which the individual worker must market his products.
Wage-slavery Doomed.
The ideal—and as I believe—an attainable ideal in a large number of Roadtown manufacturing industries is coöperation in the use of land, machines, power supply and transportation of products, and individualism in the actual operation of the machines and working the land. This will forever solve the labor question by abolishing the wage-system. Let us look at the details as they will be worked out in the Roadtown.
The first essential in such a system of coöperative individual producers is power. For this the Roadtown will have to compete in the markets of the world.