§ 33

Home life is but a little picture of the extended scene outside. Disorder in smaller matters leads to disorder in greater. While the Commune is responsible for order on a large scale, every citizen is responsible on a smaller scale. The half is greater than the whole! Order must be a first principle of the home, as it must be of the Commune, which is but an extended home. The new city being small compared to the monstrous, heterogeneous places of muddle in the past, and leisure greater, there is less call for swift locomotion. The new people walk more, and are, consequently, more healthy. So the streets are not congested by traffic, and people are not all in the muddle-minding strain of “hurry.” Where order is, leisure is certain. Busy, or rather, industrious people always find time, it is only an ill-regulated day that produces “hurry-scurry.” Outside my dream, I never knew an industrious man complain of want of time. William Morris, as industrious a man as ever breathed, never complained of interrupters. After a visit from a friend, and none took greater pleasure than he in giving him welcome, Morris was at his work again in a “twinkling.” The man who orders his day wisely is alert, ready at any moment to concentrate his energy. The idle, not the industrious, grumble about want of time. The real question, and one that is serious, is the use to which leisure is subjected. The so-called working class (by the way, every man worth his salt is a working man) is coming to know that, and that ill-used leisure is a sin against order, and here in the new life he has set his mind against it. From what has been recounted of my dream the reader already knows that, but as it proceeds, my dream will show how order, punctuality, and reverence for the uses which leisure should breed is permeating the entire community and becoming a habit, hence idle folk are in the minority, indeed, they are despised.