“I have pointed out some of the negative wastes of competition,” answered the other. “I have hardly mentioned the positive economies of cooperation. Allowing five to a family, there are fifteen million families in this country; and at least ten million of these live separately, the domestic drudge being either the wife or a wage-slave. Now set aside the modern system of pneumatic housecleaning, and the economies of cooperative cooking; and consider one single item, the washing of dishes. Surely it is moderate to say that the dish-washing for a family of five takes half an hour a day; with ten hours as a day’s work, it takes, therefore, half a million able bodied persons⁠—mostly women⁠—to do the dish-washing of the country. And note that this is most filthy and deadening and brutalizing work; that it is a cause of anemia, nervousness, ugliness, and ill-temper; of prostitution, suicide, and insanity; of drunken husbands and degenerate children⁠—for all of which things the community has naturally to pay. And now consider that in each of my little free communities there would be a machine which would wash and dry the dishes, and do it, not merely to the eye and the touch, but scientifically⁠—sterilizing them⁠—and do it at a saving of all of the drudgery and nine-tenths of the time! All of these things you may find in the books of