I think I know what you mean. You think that I have done you a service; so you feel yourself bound to give me something which I am not to give to a neighbour, unless he has done something special for me. I have heard of this kind of thing; but pardon me for saying, that it seems to us a troublesome and roundabout custom; and we don't know how to manage it. And you see this ferrying and giving people casts about the water is my BUSINESS, which I would do for anybody; so to take gifts in connection with it would look very queer. Besides, if one person gave me something, then another might, and another, and so on; and I hope you won't think me rude if I say that I shouldn't know where to stow away so many mementos of friendship.
This quote shows the response of someone the first time that William brings up the concept of money. Not only is the quote somewhat humorous, it also shows just how far socialism has taken society. Money is clearly not used in any form, and bartering does not seem to be used either; people merely do their jobs and provide services for one another for their own pleasure and sense of duty. Dick’s utter confusion shows that it has been a long time, perhaps multiple generations, since the socialist revolution, which we find to be true later when Dick’s great-great-grandfather tells William that his own grandfather lived in the late 19th century, when the revolution occurred.
I only do the most mechanical kind of weaving, and am in fact but a poor craftsman, unlike Dick here. Then besides the weaving, I do a little with machine printing and composing, though I am little use at the finer kinds of printing; and moreover machine printing is beginning to die out, along with the waning of the plague of book-making, so I have had to turn to other things that I have a taste for, and have taken to mathematics; and also I am writing a sort of antiquarian book about the peaceable and private history, so to say, of the end of the nineteenth century...
This quote, said by a minor character with whom William and Dick eat in Hammersmith, shows another tenet of Morris's proposed socialist utopia - choice of work and study. In 21st-century England, in News from Nowhere, children are not forced to go to school or become educated on any particular topic. People also do not seem to specialize in one specific job forever, but rather have interests that they pursue in different fields; usually they seem to do a mix of mental and physical labor, with physical labor actually being more respected, as the readers will see later with the Obstinate Refusers.
I can assure you our children learn, whether they go through a "system of teaching" or not. Why, you will not find one of these children about here, boy or girl, who cannot swim; and every one of them has been used to tumbling about the little forest ponies - there's one of them now! They all of them know how to cook; the bigger lads can mow; many can thatch and do odd jobs at carpentering; or they know how to keep shop. I can tell you they know plenty of things.
Dick is clear in his belief that the education system in 21st-century England is better than that of 19th-century England wherein all children are educated on certain topics. In this quote, Dick describes the things that children learn to do by watching and doing, rather than sitting in classrooms. When William questions him on the children's mental learning, Dick counters by adding that children often learn to read, write, speak other languages, and learn history simply through interest and exposure.
It is said that in the early days of our epoch there were a good many people who were hereditarily afflicted with a disease called Idleness, because they were the direct descendants of those who in the bad times used to force other people to work for them—the people, you know, who are called slave-holders or employers of labour in the history books. Well, these Idleness-stricken people used to serve booths ALL their time, because they were fit for so little. Indeed, I believe that at one time they were actually COMPELLED to do some such work, because they, especially the women, got so ugly and produced such ugly children if their disease was not treated sharply, that the neighbours couldn't stand it. However, I'm happy to say that all that is gone by now; the disease is either extinct, or exists in such a mild form that a short course of aperient medicine carries it off.
Many themes are touched are in this one quote, spoken by Old Hammond during his afternoon discussion with William. On the surface, he is discussing one of the main tenets of socialism which is personal choice, especially about one's work. However, he also links this idea to other aspects of life in the socialist utopia of the 21st century; people are supposedly born more beautiful and stay more beautiful and happy throughout their lives because of the choices that they and their parents have. As with many concepts from the 1800s, Old Hammond seems to find the idea of idleness baffling and almost humorous, since it is so clear to him that their way of life in the 21st century is superior.
Haven't you specially called me to notice that the people about the roads and streets look happy? and how could they look happy if they knew that their neighbours were shut up in prison, while they bore such things quietly? And if there were people in prison, you couldn't hide it from folk, like you may an occasional man-slaying; because that isn't done of set purpose, with a lot of people backing up the slayer in cold blood, as this prison business is. Prisons, indeed! O no, no, no!
William Morris did not mean only to put himself in the story through the character William Guest, but also to speak his opinions through the characters that William Guest purposefully or accidentally leads into conversation on a variety of topics; in this quote, for example, he speaks through the character of Dick, calling the reader to think about the prison system as it stood in the 19th century. Dick asserts that people in a society could not be happy while their fellow citizens were subjected to life in prison or perhaps the 19th-century criminal justice system as a whole. William does not challenge this assertion, though we know from the first chapter of the book that the lives of prisoners was not of much interest to William when he was back in the 19th century. Morris, who lived in the late 19th century himself, would have known that people were quite able to experience happiness while their fellow peers were kept in prison, and this clearly troubled him about society.
It is pleasant enough to see these youngsters moving about and playing together so seriously, as if the whole world depended on their kisses (as indeed it does somewhat).
This quote showcases Morris’s tone, which, though didactic through much of the book, can be quite beautiful and nostalgic at other times. This quote acknowledges the triviality of life, especially the dramas of young love, but supports their importance in keeping the human race moving forward. This is especially true in 21st-century England in News from Nowhere, in which marriage and parenthood are not taken as seriously as in the past.
I do not say that people don't judge their neighbours' conduct, sometimes, doubtless, unfairly. But I do say that there is no unvarying conventional set of rules by which people are judged; no bed of Procrustes to stretch or cramp their minds and lives; no hypocritical excommunication which people are FORCED to pronounce, either by unconsidered habit, or by the unexpressed threat of the lesser interdict if they are lax in their hypocrisy.
Old Hammond takes back up the topic of the prison system, introduced with passion by his kinsman Dick earlier in the novel. He further explains the system of justice that exists in place of the prior system, which the characters see as less moral and less effective. In Morris’s socialist utopia, there is no centralized system of justice or punishment, but rather people are judged and shunned by their neighbors as people see fit. This way, people can experience true regret and reform, and nobody is forced to jail or shame anyone they don’t wish to. William is not completely convinced that this system will work, and it is challenged later when the characters meet a Walter, a friend of Dick’s who is greatly worried about a man who committed murder for love.
The men have no longer any opportunity of tyrannising over the women, or the women over the men; both of which things took place in those old times. The women do what they can do best, and what they like best, and the men are neither jealous of it or injured by it. This is such a commonplace that I am almost ashamed to state it.
In this quote, Old Hammond asserts that there is no gender inequality in Morris’s imagined socialist utopia because all people, of any gender, are able to make choices absolutely freely. William cleverly pushes back by saying that he has seen women in many of the same serving roles as in the 19th century; for example, many of the women he has interacted with have been in roles of serving and cleaning. Old Hammond responds to this by saying that people in the 19th century may merely have not respected these jobs as much as people in the 21st century. However, it is clear from this scene and many others that Morris’s view of feminism and gender equality was quite limited, as women are often talked about as objects. Old Hammond himself shows this just a few lines later when he, in further support of his claims about the jobs of women being respected in the 21st century, tells William, “You know, everybody likes to be ordered about by a pretty woman: why, it is one of the pleasantest forms of flirtation” (58).
You expected to see children thrust into schools when they had reached an age conventionally supposed to be the due age, whatever their varying faculties and dispositions might be, and when there, with like disregard to facts to be subjected to a certain conventional course of "learning." My friend, can't you see that such a proceeding means ignoring the fact of GROWTH, bodily and mental? No one could come out of such a mill uninjured; and those only would avoid being crushed by it who would have the spirit of rebellion strong in them... In the nineteenth century, society was so miserably poor, owing to the systematised robbery on which it was founded, that real education was impossible for anybody. The whole theory of their so-called education was that it was necessary to shove a little information into a child, even if it were by means of torture, and accompanied by twaddle which it was well known was of no use, or else he would lack information lifelong: the hurry of poverty forbade anything else. All that is past; we are no longer hurried, and the information lies ready to each one's hand when his own inclinations impel him to seek it. In this as in other matters we have become wealthy: we can afford to give ourselves time to grow.
William has already discussed the system of education in 21st-century England with Dick by this point in the novel. In this quote, Old Hammond fleshes out William Morris’s views on 19th-century education’s failings passionately and eloquently, linking the problems in the education system to capitalism itself. Morris accuses 19th-century education of not taking into account individual growth and interests, but utilizing the same one-size-fits-all model used for the production of goods at the time to create a burnt-out, poorly-educated populace prepared only to perpetuate the economic and societal status quo.
Dear me! thought I, how apt history is to reverse contemporary judgments. Surely only the worst of them were as bad as that. But I must admit that they were mostly prigs, and that they WERE commercial. I said aloud, though more to myself than to Hammond, "Well, how could they be better than the age that made them?"
In this quote, Morris speaks through William Guest to narrate what readers, especially those from the 19th century, might be thinking while reading the novel. William questions the way that past societies are harshly judged by those of the future, especially when they are judged as a whole when many important decisions in society are made by only a few people, with the rest following along with the norms of the day. Old Hammond does not have much of a reply for this, but seems amused by William’s discomfort.
