Page:The Conquest of Bread (1906).djvu/151

 bread, meat, vegetables, and even luxurious fruit for a whole family.

And again, if we study the cost of workmen's dwellings, built in large towns to-day, we can ascertain that to obtain, in a large English city, a detached little house, as they are built for workmen, from 1400 to 1800 half-days' work of 5 hours would be sufficient. As a house of that kind lasts 50 years at least, it follows that 28 to 36 half-days' work a year would provide well-furnished, healthy quarters, with all necessary comfort for a family. Whereas when hiring the same apartment from an employer, a workman pays 75 to 100 days' work per year.

Mark that these figures represent the maximum of what a house costs in England to-day, being given the defective organization of our societies. In Belgium, workmen's cities have been built far cheaper. Taking everything into consideration, we are justified in affirming that in a well-organized society 30 or 40 half-days' work a year will suffice to guarantee a perfectly comfortable home.

There now remains clothing, the exact value of which is almost impossible to fix, because the profits realized by a swarm of middlemen cannot be estimated. Let us take cloth, for example, and add up all the deductions made by landowners, sheep owners, wool merchants, and all their intermediate agents, then by railway companies, mill-owners, weavers, dealers in ready-made clothes, sellers and commission agents, and you will get