Second, it is to be inferred that the ten crops for which the 13th Annual Report furnishes the time value were produced under unusually favorable conditions, if not actually on "bonanza" farms. It is true that the introduction (p. 12) affirms, in a blanket clause, "that the effort was made to ascertain, not the quantity of work that could be done under the most favorable conditions, but what was being accomplished steadily in everyday work"; nevertheless, in the absence of more specific information as to the actual conditions under which the units under discussion were farmed, we cannot ignore the doubt that arises in our minds. We may, however, offset this by two other factors which were quite conservative in our estimate: (1) In adopting the sum of $800 as a measure of the necessaries of existence, we have, as already shown, allowed nearly a third over and above the sum ($617.80) actually ascertained to be requisite in the years 1900-1901. (2) The figures in the 13th Annual Report are based upon investigations made from fifteen to twenty years ago, between 1890-95. The steady improvement in agricultural machinery which has been made since then would undoubtedly reduce the present time cost of these commodities very materially. It is not unreasonable, then, to urge that these factors counterbalance each other; but in order to be on the safe side let us add another quarter of an hour, thus making the probable work-day consist of a round four hours.
We seem, then, to have warrant for believing that if agricultural production were socialized to-day a 1200-hour work-year would suffice to produce the necessaries, and an 1800-hour year, many of the luxuries, of existence for the community. This, arranged to suit the exigencies of agricultural production, might mean a twelve-hour workday for four or six summer months, as the case may be.
Does this seem Utopian? Granted: all speculations of this sort must seem Utopian. And yet, if we look back a few centuries, we shall find, according to no less an authority than Thorold Rogers ("Six Centuries of Work and Wages"), that the English workman, during the fifteenth century and the first part of the sixteenth, lived, and lived well, on the product of an eight-hour-day. Is it, then, so fantastic to suppose that modern machinery, under a socialized system of production, could cut this day in two?
The objection may be raised that this estimate is one-sided because it is based on figures for agricultural production only, whereas industrial production is really the more important half of the modern economic process; and that therefore the generalization could not apply to the whole economic process in a coöperative commonwealth.
It is true, as already pointed out, that we do not have comprehensive data for all, or nearly all, the industrial products in actual use in the average household. But we have posited, hypothetically, a socialized agricultural community producing a quantity of goods which it can sell at the farm for an average $800 per family; this $800 sufficing, when brought to the village store or forwarded to the city, to buy the necessaries of existence for the family at retail. Now it is well known that under present conditions the retail price of any manufactured article comprises about one-third for actual cost of production, one-third for manufacturer's profits and accounting costs, and one-third for selling costs. In other words, every such article, when it reaches the ultimate consumer, is weighted down with a load of barnacles of trade-profits of innumerable middlemen, rents, dividends, cost of advertising, and other trade-getting devices, etc., etc. Part of this cost of distribution is undoubtedly legitimate and could not be dispensed with under any organization of society, no matter how scientific. The man engaged in producing the necessaries of life will always have to support the man engaged in transporting and distributing them, and the man engaged in manufacturing and repairing the machinery and other instruments of production necessary thereto. But it is impossible to believe that this auxiliary corps will ever, in a rational system of production, consume two-thirds of the ultimate retail value of most goods, as it does to-day.
It would seem, therefore, that if the industrial community organized itself in the same fashion as our hypothetical agricultural community, the exchange value of its products, whether stated in terms of social labor, time, or money, or any other standard of value, would actually be lower than our estimate assumes. By how much our four-hour work-day would be reduced we have no means of determining, but it could hardly be increased.
Probably, therefore, four hours will constitute the average daily labor in a coöperative commonwealth, and these ought to be sufficient to give to every citizen not only the necessaries and comforts now enjoyed by the middle class, but some of the luxuries enjoyed only by the millionaire.
FOOTNOTES:
[133] Report of the Industrial Commission, Vol. I, p. 829.