isappear."[970] "Instead of a hundred kitchens and fires
and cooks, we shall have one. Instead of a hundred meals to prepare,
we shall have one. Instead of a hundred homes being made to reek of
unsavoury dishes, or the detestable odour of bad cooking, the
offensive effluvia will be confined to one building. Under Socialism
domestic duties will be reduced to a minimum."[971] "We set up one
great kitchen, one general dining-hall, and one pleasant
tea-garden."[972] Only a few Socialists are in favour of individual
houses, believing that "Each house should be self-contained."[973]

The proposals of British Socialists regarding woman, the family, the
home, and marriage are not new. They were tried in the French
Revolution, and the consequences of the experiments recommended by the
philosophers of the Revolution were as follows:

"The legislation of the Revolution diminished the paternal authority
and converted the family into a republic. Marriage became a contract
which could be broken at will by either party, a contract which
allowed of short notice and which could be concluded for any space of
time. People married for a year, sometimes only for a month. They
married for fun or for profit, and marriages were dissolved and others
contracted if it paid to do so."[974] The French police reports tell
us: "The depravity of morals is extremely great, and the new
generation is growing up in a state of disorder which promises to have
the most unfortunate and most far-reaching consequences to future
generations. Sodomy and Sapphic love flourish with the same
shamelessness as prostitution, and the progress of all these vices is
terrifying."[975] From another source we learn: "Society has become
terribly depraved; fornication, adultery, incest, and murder by poison
or violence are the fruits of philosophism. Things are as bad in the
villages as in Paris. Justices of the peace report that immorality has
spread to such an extent that many communes will soon no longer be
inhabitable by decent people."[976] This is the new and the better
world towards which Socialism is steering.

FOOTNOTES:

[896] Aristotle, _Politics_, Book ii. Chapter v.

[897] Blatchford, _What is this Socialism?_ p. 2.

[898] Russell Williams, _The Difficulties of Socialism_, p. 13.

[899] Kautsky, _The Socialist Republic_, p. 23.

[900] Marx and Engels, _Manifesto of the Communist Party_, pp. 19, 20.

[901] Morris and Bax, _Socialism: Its Growth and Outcom