—from Utopia(Book II)
Thomas More
[1]All the Utopians, men and women alike, work at agriculture, and no one is inexperienced in it.They are trained in it from their childhood, partly by school instruction and partly by practice.School children are often taken into the nearby fields as though for play, where they not only see men and women working, but get exercise by working themselves.
[2]Besides agriculture, which is so common to them all, every man has some peculiar trade of his own, such as the manufacture of wool, or linen, masonry, smith’s work, or carpentry.There is no other craft which is practiced by any considerable number of them.People wear the same sort of clothes throughout the island, except for the distinctions which mark the differences between the married and unmarried.The fashion of clothing never changes.Their clothing looks well, does not hinder their movements, and is suitable both for summer and winter.Every household makes its own clothes; but each man and woman also learn one of the other trades formerly mentioned.Women, for the most part, deal in wool and linen, which suit best with their weakness, leaving the ruder trades to the men.The same trade generally passes down from father to son, often by natural inclination.But if any man’s genius lies elsewhere, he is adopted into a family that deals in the trade he prefers.When anyone makes such a change, both his father and the magistrate see to it that he is transferred to a responsible and upright householder.After a man has learned one trade, if he desires to acquire another, it is managed in the same manner.When he has learned both, he follows whichever he likes better, unless the public has special need for the other.
[3]The chief, and almost the only business of the syphogrants, is to take care that no man sits around in idleness, and everyone follows his trade diligently.But no one has to wear himself out with perpetual toil, from morning to night, as if he were a beast of burden.Such a life, though it is the common life of workmen in all other countries, is no better than a slave’s.The Utopians, 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, they go to bed and sleep eight hours.