by Tony Moilin
As the Administration is constantly constructing model houses, and puts new apartments at the disposal of the public on a daily basis, competition between Parisians is not very intense; save for the plushest quarters, the cost of accommodation remain low. In spite of these low returns, however, the construction of model houses is so economical that the State not only covers its expenses but makes a considerable profit every year, which constitutes an important resource for the Treasury.
Apart from paying the rent, the City does not impose any obligation or regulation on its tenants. Provided that the latter do not damage the building or inconvenience their neighbors, they can do as they wish, go in any out at any hour of the night, receive whatever visitors they please, and have children or pets. The manager of a house is never the first to complain about anything whatsoever, and if an observation sometimes has to be made to a tenant it is always at the request of the other inhabitants.
Thanks to the entire liberty granted to citizens, nothing is more varied and mixed than the population of model houses. All conditions, all professions, all fortunes, all ranks and all ways of life are thrown together pell-mell, next door to one another, living in peace under the shelter of the same roof. Unless you harm your neighbors, no one has any observation to make on your account. There are not, as there once were, several categories of habitations in which the different classes of society resided: large town houses, rich houses, nice houses and utterly wretched houses. Everywhere, there are only Government-owned houses inhabited by citizens, all of whom exercise some profession or other and all of whom are subject to the sacred equality of work.
Remarkably, the result of that absolute liberty has been to group inhabitants quite naturally according to their way of life. Thus, without anything being done to obtain that end, there are streets that are only occupied by tranquil married people, in which everyone is in bed by nine o’clock. Other houses, on the other hand, are devoted to the unmarried, to pleasure and noise, where entire nights are often spent singing and drinking, without the neighbors making the slightest complaint because they are all guilty of the same faults in their turn.
It is rare for Parisians to exercise their profession in the same building in which they live, even if they are self-employed, preferring to go to a workshop, where they are always more comfortable accommodated and can work alongside others, which is always pleasanter and more economical. Many of them also do not cook and eat at home, and their rooms, solely employed for sleeping and serving as a retreat, are not only furnished very comfortably but even with a veritable luxury.
Nothing is more commonplace that seeing simple workers inhabiting apartments furnished with silk or velvet wall-hangings, paintings and works of art. Thanks to the prodigious development of industry, all that beautiful furniture is relatively cheap, and is easy to procure with the aid of a little thrift.
The Republican women of the year 2000 are enormously devoted to that interior luxury. After clothing, it is their favorite expense, and, as they are generally the ones in charge of their husbands’ purse, and who organize the expenditure of the household, it is rare for them not to achieve their objectives and not to be able to lodge and dress themselves like princesses.
5. Domestic Service
Among the Socialists of the year 2000 there are no domestic servants. No one, however highly-placed he might be, has the right to hire another citizen, to take him into his service, to give him orders and be his master. Considering domesticity as a last vestige of slavery and a grave attack on Equality, the Government abolished it explicitly by means of a memorable decree in the first days of its advent.
It must not be thought, however, that the citizens of the Social Republic do all their own housework. On the contrary; few things are more disagreeable to them, and even the poorest accord themselves the luxury of other people’s services. That service is, however, carried out by free employees and not by domestic servants, which is quite different. Indeed, those employees do not belong to anyone in particular; they take responsibility for household chores as they would accomplish any other social function, and although they serve everyone, they are, in reality, their own masters.
Thus, a certain number of people are professional bed-makers, room-cleaners, floor-polishers, chamber-pot-emptiers, furniture polishers, shoe-waxers, clothing-cleaners, etc. As soon as inhabitants have left for work, these employees come into the rooms confided to their cares and, thanks to their number and the manner in which they divide up the work, an apartment is done in the blink of an eye, everything put back in its place, and the most scrupulous cleanliness evident everywhere.
Other individuals have chosen the profession of everyday cooking, quite different from that of restaurants. To that effect they have a kitchen in the vicinity of their practice and they take responsibility for buying and preparing the desired foodstuffs, transporting them to the relevant domiciles setting the table and washing up. Aided by waiters and chambermaids unoccupied in the evenings, a suitably-equipped cook can provide good for twenty or thirty families, and earn a reasonable living by hiring out their services at a modest rate.
Nothing is more agreeable for a working man and woman, on returning home in the evening, to find their rooms completely made up and their meal on the table, ready to be served. That pleasure, far from being expensive, is, on the contrary, an economy, for a woman earns much more by working in her profession than she pays to her cook and those who make up the rooms.
It is the same for the bleaching and washing of linen, and the making and mending of clothing. All that is done externally by manufacturers, who do the jobs much better and more cheaply than if they were to be done at home. Finally, it will be seen in due course how mothers are discharged of the cares given to their children, and can thus absent themselves all day and go to work without the infants suffering in consequence.
Some critics thundered against this new organization of domestic life. They prophesied that the family would be done for once women were no longer riveted to their cooking-pot and their brats. Experience has proved, however, that under the new system, the housework is better done, the food better cooked, the children healthier and better-educated, the husband more content and the family more firmly bonded.
Furthermore, this kind of life had already been in practice for a long time and much appreciated under the old regime, except that, in that epoch, it was only within the range of a small number of people rich enough to be provided with domestic servants. Under the Social Republic, that privilege has been extended to everyone. Simple working women can have their housework done, their food prepared and their children brought up by others, exactly as if they were duchesses or empresses. If that is a bad thing, those who regret the time of dukes and emperors can hardly complain about it, and it is inappropriate for them to complain about the abandonment of the old mores.
Besides, no decree of the Republic has expelled women from their households. They all retain the right to go to the market, to do the cooking, to wax shoes and empty the chamber-pots—but it is a right they scarcely use, and generally, after dinner, they prefer to dress up and go out on their husband’s arm rather than remaining virtuously at home scouring pots and pans and washing the crockery.
6. Marriage
Among the Republicans of the year 2000, as among all other peoples, the institution of marriage is the very foundation of Society.
Young Socialists do not have permission to contract any conjugal bond before the age of majority, which is eighteen for both sexes. As soon as they each that age, however, they can marry without their parents’ consent, and even without consulting them. In a matter of such importance, the Government desires that the interested parties should make their own decision, and that they should not be subjected to any pressure or constraint, even exercised with the best of intentions.
In general, young men do not marry until much later, between the ages of thirty and forty, when they have acquired a position in accord with their abilities,
they have experience of life, and, turning away from the pleasures and follies of youth, they ask no more than to settle down and find the tranquil happiness of the conjugal hearth in the intimacy of an affectionate wife.
Young women, by contrast, marry as soon as they can, often the day after reaching their majority. If they reach the age of twenty-five without having found a husband, they are desolate and think themselves condemned to perpetual spinsterhood. When they reach thirty, however, they lose their heads completely, wishing to marry at any price, and throw themselves into the arms of any man who comes along. However, it is very rare for young women to arrive at that extremity, and they are usually established in good time, between the ages of eighteen and twenty.
Socialists of both sexes marry very hastily, often at first sight, without studying one another or getting to know one another, and, in consequence, without knowing whether they have a sincere sympathy for one another.
Men only ask of their future wife that she be young and pretty, well-dressed, and will do honor to the cavalier who gives her is arm. Young women, for their part, want their husband to be well turned-out and to occupy a certain rank in society. At that price, they forgive him for being a trifle mature, a trifle weary, for having a few white hairs, and even for balding slightly.
When the French of the year 2000 are reproached for the truly incredible insouciance with which they marry, they reply that it is an imperious necessity of marriage, and that if one had to be thoroughly acquainted with the person whom they were to marry, no one would any longer want to, and everyone would remain unmarried.
Naturally, unions contracted so lightly can neither be very happy nor very durable. Thus, it very often happens that the spouses cannot live with one another and demanded their separation. That is obtained with the greatest ease. It is sufficient for one of the couple to write a letter to a magistrate, in which they request a separation on the grounds of temperamental incompatibility, and the marriage is immediately dissolved, even if the other spouse is opposed to it and wants to remain united.
The Socialist Government has even been obliging enough to make available pre-printed requests for separation, on which it is only necessary to fill in the names, the date and a signature. One then puts it in the post, and without further need for disturbance, one receives the desired authorization in the following day’s mail. Furthermore, quite often, no sooner have the spouses been separated for a few days than they resume living together, and then constitute an excellent household that only death can sever.
The Government has been asked to reestablish divorce on many occasions, but it has consistently refused. In its considered opinion, there is no point in people who treat marriage so lightly remarrying, and if the levity of the French character does not permit them to render conjugal bonds indissoluble, that is all the more reason for not making such bonds the banal accompaniment of fleeting relationships and legitimating the deregulation of mores by giving it the approval of the Republic’s magistrates.
On the other hand, in every separated household, one spouse at least, if not both, is absolutely unsociable and will always be the other’s torturer. Now, to divorce these torturers, to permit them to marry again and to torture further victims, would be to unleash on the nation the worst of scourges and to work determinedly to create misfortune.
In any case, the separated individuals, although not being able to remarry, have no reason to complain. Society treats them with the greatest indulgence and closes its eyes to their conduct. In fact, they are considered as perfectly free widowers and widows, and if they subsequently take up residence with someone, everyone treats them as if they were legitimately married.
In the Republic of the year 2000, children born during a marriage belong to the mother alone, who gives them her name and sees to their needs. The husband, however, if he so desires can obtain permission to adopt his wife’s children, to give them his name and consider them as his own. That is what always happens in practice—but the adoption by the father of the family is entirely honorific; it does not give him any real rights over his wife’s children. She always remains the mistress of her progeny, and invariably takes them with her in case of separation.
This consecration of the rights of the mother to the detriment of those of the father was not established without violent protests on the part of husbands, who complained about having the guardianship of their children removed from them. The Government simply replied to them that they had to furnish authentic proof of the paternity whose rights they were claiming, and, as that proof was impossible to provide, they were obliged to content themselves with the honorary guardianship that was offered to them.
In Socialist society, mothers only occupy themselves with their children to embrace them, dress them, take them for walks, lavish treats upon them and spoil them horribly by giving in to all their caprices. Fathers act in exactly the same way, and are, if possible, even weaker and more easy-going. As for educating children, directing their studies or the choice of a profession, neither the father nor the mother gives any thought to that, and that concern is entirely left to the teachers and directors of the establishments of public education.
In the Republic of the year 2000, prostitution does not exist, every woman finding a lucrative occupation if she can work and assistance if she is incapable of earning a living. If, however, in Socialist society one cannot encounter a single prostitute, strictly speaking, one does, on the other hand see numerous so called “loose women,” who are possessed or neither virtue nor constancy, and who are as easy to seduce as they are hard to maintain in fidelity.
Women of that sort seem to have taken on the task of competing in immortality and knavery with the men who court them, and one must do them the justice of admitting that, in that kind of contest, their superiority is striking. After a certain time, however, they get tired of that disorderly life; they then apply themselves to living with their latest lover, to whom they are quite faithful, and when those irregular unions have lasted for a number of years, society, full of indulgence, forgets the past of such unfortunate women and treats them as if they had always kept narrowly to the path of virtue.
IV. EDUCATION
1. Early Infancy
In the Republic of the year 2000, bringing up and educating children is confided to the responsibility of the State and is completely free. The Socialist Republic operates on the principle that children are perfectly free and independent individuals whose guardianship is the responsibility of Society, and over whom the parents have only one right, which is that of loving them.
The education provided is essentially free and involves no cost to the parents. It is paid for by the children themselves—not directly, of course, but indirectly, with the intermediary of the Administration, which advances the funds necessary and is reimbursed later by their work of adults. When fathers and bachelors pay taxes destined for public education, they are not giving anything for their own children or those of others, but are paying for their own education, and merely making restitution to the State of what has previously been spent on them. As the tax is proportional to income, income to ability, and ability to education, everyone pays more if they are drawing greater profited from the lessons they have received, and no one has any right to complain.
The Parisians of the year 2000 are not very fecund. They only have one child, or two at the most, and also become very ill in bringing them to term and delivering them. Among them, the civilized woman has killed the nurse. The majority lack milk and the others, apparently more favored, perish along with their nurslings when they attempt to breast-feed them.
For a long time, Parisian women, who love their children to the point of adoration and want to bring them up at any cost, gave their babies to country-dwelling wet-nurses, but, either because the latter were as etiolated as the inhabitants of the capital, or because they did not take god enough care of the delicate nurslings confided to their care, they returned very few of them, and all the little Parisians
went to populate the cemeteries of the provinces.
That went on for a long time, and the women of Paris were despairing of being able to conserve their children when the Government came to their aid. It knew that in Normandy mothers rarely breast-feed, but almost all their bottle-fed babies drink the milk of their cows, which is excellent. Far from perishing on that regime, young Normans are all the more vigorous for it, and form the magnificent race that everyone knows.
The Administration thought that what succeeded elsewhere would not fail in Paris. In consequence, it brought the finest Norman cows to the villages surrounding the capital, along with women from the same region accustomed to bottle-feeding. Both were accommodated comfortably and healthily, and Parisian mothers were then invited to bring their babies to them. That first trial having been a great success, the number of “nurseries” around the city was increased, and Parisian women had the double joy of having all their infants removed and seeing them grow, so to speak, before their eyes.
When young Parisians have renounced the feeding-bottle, can walk by themselves and have begun to talk, the mothers bring them back to the city, but as the mothers all have jobs and work outside the home, it is impossible for them to keep their children with them during the day, so they confide them to “governesses.”
The latter have nothing in common with the governesses of the old regime, poor decrepit old women only earning a few sous for watching over miserable runts. They are, on the contrary, active and intelligent young women carefully chosen and well paid by the Administration, and they fulfill the important functions confided to them with an entirely maternal solicitude. Mothers themselves—for in crèches, as in schools, no employment is given to unmarried women—and fond of caring for small children, they watch over other people’s babies as assiduously as if were their own.