It was all very well so long as they had not been taught to
read and write, but--There, no doubt, is the root of the mischief. Had
the governing classes not forced those accomplishments on them in
1872-- But there is no use in repining. What's done can't be undone.
On the other hand, what must be done can't be left undone. Housework,
for example. What concessions by the governing classes, what bribes,
will be big enough hereafter to get that done?
Perhaps the governing classes will do it for themselves, eventually,
and their ceilings not fall. Or perhaps there will be no more
governing classes--merely the State and its swarms of neat little
overseers, male and female. I know not whether in this case the sum of
human happiness will be greater, but it will certainly--it and the sum
of human dullness--be more evenly distributed. I take it that under
any scheme of industrial compulsion for the young a certain number of
the conscripts would be told off for domestic service. To every family
in every flat (houses not legal) would be assigned one female member
of the community. She would be twenty years old, having just finished
her course of general education at a municipal college. Three years
would be her term of industrial (sub-sect. domestic) service. Her
diet, her costume, her hours of work and leisure, would be
standardised, but the lenses of her pince-nez would be in strict
accordance to her own eyesight.
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