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<h3>OF THEIR TRADES, AND MANNER OF LIFE</h3>
<p>“Agriculture is that which is so universally understood among
them that no person, either man or woman, is ignorant of it; they are
instructed in it from their childhood, partly by what they learn at
school, and partly by practice, they being led out often into the fields
about the town, where they not only see others at work but are likewise
exercised in it themselves. Besides agriculture, which is so common
to them all, every man has some peculiar trade to which he applies himself;
such as the manufacture of wool or flax, masonry, smith’s work,
or carpenter’s work; for there is no sort of trade that is in
great esteem among them. Throughout the island they wear the same
sort of clothes, without any other distinction except what is necessary
to distinguish the two sexes and the married and unmarried. The
fashion never alters, and as it is neither disagreeable nor uneasy,
so it is suited to the climate, and calculated both for their summers
and winters. Every family makes their own clothes; but all among
them, women as well as men, learn one or other of the trades formerly
mentioned. Women, for the most part, deal in wool and flax, which
suit best with their weakness, leaving the ruder trades to the men.
The same trade generally passes down from father to son, inclinations
often following descent: but if any man’s genius lies another
way he is, by adoption, translated into a family that deals in the trade
to which he is inclined; and when that is to be done, care is taken,
not only by his father, but by the magistrate, that he may be put to
a discreet and good man: and if, after a person has learned one trade,
he desires to acquire another, that is also allowed, and is managed
in the same manner as the former. When he has learned both, he
follows that which he likes best, unless the public has more occasion
for the other.</p>
<p>The chief, and almost the only, business of the Syphogrants is to
take care that no man may live idle, but that every one may follow his
trade diligently; yet they do not wear themselves out with perpetual
toil from morning to night, as if they were beasts of burden, which
as it is indeed a heavy slavery, so it is everywhere the common course
of life amongst all mechanics except the Utopians: but they, dividing
the day and night into twenty-four hours, appoint six of these for work,
three of which are before dinner and three after; they then sup, and
at eight o’clock, counting from noon, go to bed and sleep eight
hours: the rest of their time, besides that taken up in work, eating,
and sleeping, is left to every man’s discretion; yet they are
not to abuse that interval to luxury and idleness, but must employ it
in some proper exercise, according to their various inclinations, which
is, for the most part, reading. It is ordinary to have public
lectures every morning before daybreak, at which none are obliged to
appear but those who are marked out for literature; yet a great many,
both men and women, of all ranks, go to hear lectures of one sort or
other, according to their inclinations: but if others that are not made
for contemplation, choose rather to employ themselves at that time in
their trades, as many of them do, they are not hindered, but are rather
commended, as men that take care to serve their country. After
supper they spend an hour in some diversion, in summer in their gardens,
and in winter in the halls where they eat, where they entertain each
other either with music or discourse. They do not so much as know
dice, or any such foolish and mischievous games. They have, however,
two sorts of games not unlike our chess; the one is between several
numbers, in which one number, as it were, consumes another; the other
resembles a battle between the virtues and the vices, in which the enmity
in the vices among themselves, and their agreement against virtue, is
not unpleasantly represented; together with the special opposition between
the particular virtues and vices; as also the methods by which vice
either openly assaults or secretly undermines virtue; and virtue, on
the other hand, resists it. But the time appointed for labour
is to be narrowly examined, otherwise you may imagine that since there
are only six hours appointed for work, they may fall under a scarcity
of necessary provisions: but it is so far from being true that this
time is not sufficient for supplying them with plenty of all things,
either necessary or convenient, that it is rather too much; and this
you will easily apprehend if you consider how great a part of all other
nations is quite idle. First, women generally do little, who are
the half of mankind; and if some few women are diligent, their husbands
are idle: then consider the great company of idle priests, and of those
that are called religious men; add to these all rich men, chiefly those
that have estates in land, who are called noblemen and gentlemen, together
with their families, made up of idle persons, that are kept more for
show than use; add to these all those strong and lusty beggars that
go about pretending some disease in excuse for their begging; and upon
the whole account you will find that the number of those by whose labours
mankind is supplied is much less than you perhaps imagined: then consider
how few of those that work are employed in labours that are of real
service, for we, who measure all things by money, give rise to many
trades that are both vain and superfluous, and serve only to support
riot and luxury: for if those who work were employed only in such things
as the conveniences of life require, there would be such an abundance
of them that the prices of them would so sink that tradesmen could not
be maintained by their gains; if all those who labour about useless
things were set to more profitable employments, and if all they that
languish out their lives in sloth and idleness (every one of whom consumes
as much as any two of the men that are at work) were forced to labour,
you may easily imagine that a small proportion of time would serve for
doing all that is either necessary, profitable, or pleasant to mankind,
especially while pleasure is kept within its due bounds: this appears
very plainly in Utopia; for there, in a great city, and in all the territory
that lies round it, you can scarce find five hundred, either men or
women, by their age and strength capable of labour, that are not engaged
in it. Even the Syphogrants, though excused by the law, yet do
not excuse themselves, but work, that by their examples they may excite
the industry of the rest of the people; the like exemption is allowed
to those who, being recommended to the people by the priests, are, by
the secret suffrages of the Syphogrants, privileged from labour, that
they may apply themselves wholly to study; and if any of these fall
short of those hopes that they seemed at first to give, they are obliged
to return to work; and sometimes a mechanic that so employs his leisure
hours as to make a considerable advancement in learning is eased from
being a tradesman and ranked among their learned men. Out of these
they choose their ambassadors, their priests, their Tranibors, and the
Prince himself, anciently called their Barzenes, but is called of late
their Ademus.</p>
<p>“And thus from the great numbers among them that are neither
suffered to be idle nor to be employed in any fruitless labour, you
may easily make the estimate how much may be done in those few hours
in which they are obliged to labour. But, besides all that has
been already said, it is to be considered that the needful arts among
them are managed with less labour than anywhere else. The building
or the repairing of houses among us employ many hands, because often
a thriftless heir suffers a house that his father built to fall into
decay, so that his successor must, at a great cost, repair that which
he might have kept up with a small charge; it frequently happens that
the same house which one person built at a vast expense is neglected
by another, who thinks he has a more delicate sense of the beauties
of architecture, and he, suffering it to fall to ruin, builds another
at no less charge. But among the Utopians all things are so regulated
that men very seldom build upon a new piece of ground, and are not only
very quick in repairing their houses, but show their foresight in preventing
their decay, so that their buildings are preserved very long with but
very little labour, and thus the builders, to whom that care belongs,
are often without employment, except the hewing of timber and the squaring
of stones, that the materials may be in readiness for raising a building
very suddenly when there is any occasion for it. As to their clothes,
observe how little work is spent in them; while they are at labour they
are clothed with leather and skins, cut carelessly about them, which
will last seven years, and when they appear in public they put on an
upper garment which hides the other; and these are all of one colour,
and that is the natural colour of the wool. As they need less
woollen cloth than is used anywhere else, so that which they make use
of is much less costly; they use linen cloth more, but that is prepared
with less labour, and they value cloth only by the whiteness of the
linen or the cleanness of the wool, without much regard to the fineness
of the thread. While in other places four or five upper garments
of woollen cloth of different colours, and as many vests of silk, will
scarce serve one man, and while those that are nicer think ten too few,
every man there is content with one, which very often serves him two
years; nor is there anything that can tempt a man to desire more, for
if he had them he would neither be the, warmer nor would he make one
jot the better appearance for it. And thus, since they are all
employed in some useful labour, and since they content themselves with
fewer things, it falls out that there is a great abundance of all things
among them; so that it frequently happens that, for want of other work,
vast numbers are sent out to mend the highways; but when no public undertaking
is to be performed, the hours of working are lessened. The magistrates
never engage the people in unnecessary labour, since the chief end of
the constitution is to regulate labour by the necessities of the public,
and to allow the people as much time as is necessary for the improvement
of their minds, in which they think the happiness of life consists.</p>
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