Utopian Economics

Section 1.

These modern Utopians with the universally diffused good manners,
the universal education, the fine freedoms we shall ascribe to them,
their world unity, world language, world-wide travellings,
world-wide freedom of sale and purchase, will remain mere
dreamstuff, incredible even by twilight, until we have shown that at
that level the community will still sustain itself. At any rate, the
common liberty of the Utopians will not embrace the common liberty
to be unserviceable, the most perfect economy of organisation still
leaves the fact untouched that all order and security in a State
rests on the certainty of getting work done. How will the work of
this planet be done? What will be the economics of a modern
Utopia?

Now in the first place, a state so vast and complex as this world
Utopia, and with so migratory a people, will need some handy symbol
to check the distribution of services and commodities. Almost
certainly they will need to have money. They will have money, and
it is not inconceivable that, for all his sorrowful thoughts, our
botanist, with his trained observation, his habit of looking at
little things upon the ground, would be the one to see and pick up
the coin that has fallen from some wayfarer's pocket. (This, in our
first hour or so before we reach the inn in the Urseren Thal.) You
figure us upon the high Gotthard road, heads together over the
little disk that contrives to tell us so much of this strange
world.

It is, I imagine, of gold, and it will be a convenient accident if
it is sufficient to make us solvent for a day or so, until we are a
little more informed of the economic system into which we have come.
It is, moreover, of a fair round size, and the inscription declares
it one Lion, equal to "twaindy" bronze Crosses. Unless the ratio of
metals is very different here, this latter must be a token coin, and
therefore legal tender for but a small amount. (That would be pain
and pleasure to Mr. Wordsworth Donisthorpe if he were to chance to
join us, for once he planned a Utopian coinage, [Footnote: A System
of Measures, by Wordsworth Donisthorpe.] and the words Lion and
Cross are his. But a token coinage and "legal tender" he cannot
abide. They make him argue.) And being in Utopia, that unfamiliar
"twaindy" suggests at once we have come upon that most Utopian of
all things, a duodecimal system of counting.

My author's privilege of details serves me here. This Lion is
distinctly a beautiful coin, admirably made, with its value in fine,
clear letters circling the obverse side, and a head thereon--of
Newton, as I live! One detects American influence here. Each
year, as we shall find, each denomination of coins