| Chapter 12
| 0 | |
| The questions which I needed to ask before I could acquire
even an outline acquaintance with the institutions of the twentieth
century being endless, and Dr. Leete's good-nature appearing
equally so, we sat up talking for several hours after the ladies
left us. Reminding my host of the point at which our talk had
broken off that morning, I expressed my curiosity to learn how
the organization of the industrial army was made to afford a
sufficient stimulus to diligence in the lack of any anxiety on the
worker's part as to his livelihood.
| 1 | |
| "You must understand in the first place," replied the doctor,
"that the supply of incentives to effort is but one of the objects
sought in the organization we have adopted for the army. The
other, and equally important, is to secure for the file-leaders and
captains of the force, and the great officers of the nation, men of
proven abilities, who are pledged by their own careers to hold
their followers up to their highest standard of performance and
permit no lagging. With a view to these two ends the industrial
army is organized. First comes the unclassified grade of common
laborers, men of all work, to which all recruits during their first
three years belong. This grade is a sort of school, and a very strict
one, in which the young men are taught habits of obedience,
subordination, and devotion to duty. While the miscellaneous
nature of the work done by this force prevents the systematic
grading of the workers which is afterwards possible, yet individual
records are kept, and excellence receives distinction corresponding
with the penalties that negligence incurs. It is not,
however, policy with us to permit youthful recklessness or
indiscretion, when not deeply culpable, to handicap the future
careers of young men, and all who have passed through the
unclassified grade without serious disgrace have an equal opportunity
to choose the life employment they have most liking for.
Having selected this, they enter upon it as apprentices. The
length of the apprenticeship naturally differs in different occupations.
At the end of it the apprentice becomes a full workman,
and a member of his trade or guild. Now not only are the
individual records of the apprentices for ability and industry
strictly kept, and excellence distinguished by suitable distinctions,
but upon the average of his record during apprenticeship
the standing given the apprentice among the full workmen
depends.
| 2 | |
| "While the internal organizations of different industries,
mechanical and agricultural, differ according to their peculiar
conditions, they agree in a general division of their workers into
first, second, and third grades, according to ability, and these
grades are in many cases subdivided into first and second classes.
According to his standing as an apprentice a young man is
assigned his place as a first, second, or third grade worker. Of
course only men of unusual ability pass directly from apprenticeship
into the first grade of the workers. The most fall into the
lower grades, working up as they grow more experienced, at the
--periodical regradings. These regradings take place in each industry
at intervals corresponding with the length of the apprenticeship
to that industry, so that merit never need wait long to rise,
nor can any rest on past achievements unless they would drop
into a lower rank. One of the notable advantages of a high
grading is the privilege it gives the worker in electing which of
the various branches or processes of his industry he will follow as
his specialty. Of course it is not intended that any of these
processes shall be disproportionately arduous, but there is often
much difference between them, and the privilege of election is
accordingly highly prized. So far as possible, indeed, the preferences
even of the poorest workmen are considered in assigning
them their line of work, because not only their happiness but
their usefulness is thus enhanced. While, however, the wish of
the lower grade man is consulted so far as the exigencies of the
service permit, he is considered only after the upper grade men
have been provided for, and often he has to put up with second
or third choice, or even with an arbitrary assignment when help
is needed. This privilege of election attends every regrading, and
when a man loses his grade he also risks having to exchange the
sort of work he likes for some other less to his taste. The results
of each regrading, giving the standing of every man in his
industry, are gazetted in the public prints, and those who have
won promotion since the last regrading receive the nation's
thanks and are publicly invested with the badge of their new
rank."
| 3 | |
| "What may this badge be?" I asked.
| 4 | |
| "Every industry has its emblematic device," replied Dr. Leete,
"and this, in the shape of a metallic badge so small that you
might not see it unless you knew where to look, is all the insignia
which the men of the army wear, except where public convenience
demands a distinctive uniform. This badge is the same in
form for all grades of industry, but while the badge of the third
grade is iron, that of the second grade is silver, and that of
the first is gilt.
| 5 | |
| "Apart from the grand incentive to endeavor afforded by the
fact that the high places in the nation are open only to the
highest class men, and that rank in the army constitutes the only
mode of social distinction for the vast majority who are not
aspirants in art, literature, and the professions, various incitements
of a minor, but perhaps equally effective, sort are provided
in the form of special privileges and immunities in the way of
discipline, which the superior class men enjoy. These, while
intended to be as little as possible invidious to the less successful,
have the effect of keeping constantly before every man's
mind the great desirability of attaining the grade next above his
own.
| 6 | |
| "It is obviously important that not only the good but also the
indifferent and poor workmen should be able to cherish the
ambition of rising. Indeed, the number of the latter being so
much greater, it is even more essential that the ranking system
should not operate to discourage them than that it should
stimulate the others. It is to this end that the grades are divided
into classes. The grades as well as the classes being made
numerically equal at each regrading, there is not at any time,
counting out the officers and the unclassified and apprentice
grades, over one-ninth of the industrial army in the lowest class,
and most of this number are recent apprentices, all of whom
expect to rise. Those who remain during the entire term of
service in the lowest class are but a trifling fraction of the
industrial army, and likely to be as deficient in sensibility to their
position as in ability to better it.
| 7 | |
| "It is not even necessary that a worker should win promotion
to a higher grade to have at least a taste of glory. While
promotion requires a general excellence of record as a worker,
honorable mention and various sorts of prizes are awarded for
excellence less than sufficient for promotion, and also for special
feats and single performances in the various industries. There are
many minor distinctions of standing, not only within the grades
but within the classes, each of which acts as a spur to the efforts
of a group. It is intended that no form of merit shall wholly fail
of recognition.
| 8 | |
| "As for actual neglect of work positively bad work, or other
overt remissness on the part of men incapable of generous
motives, the discipline of the industrial army is far too strict to
allow anything whatever of the sort. A man able to do duty, and
persistently refusing, is sentenced to solitary imprisonment on
bread and water till he consents.
| 9 | |
| "The lowest grade of the officers of the industrial army, that
of assistant foremen or lieutenants, is appointed out of men who
have held their place for two years in the first class of the first
grade. Where this leaves too large a range of choice, only the
first group of this class are eligible. No one thus comes to the
point of commanding men until he is about thirty years old.
After a man becomes an officer, his rating of course no longer
depends on the efficiency of his own work, but on that of his
men. The foremen are appointed from among the assistant
foremen, by the same exercise of discretion limited to a small
eligible class. In the appointments to the still higher grades
another principle is introduced, which it would take too much
time to explain now.
| 10 | |
| "Of course such a system of grading as I have described would
have been impracticable applied to the small industrial concerns
of your day, in some of which there were hardly enough
employees to have left one apiece for the classes. You must
remember that, under the national organization of labor, all
industries are carried on by great bodies of men, many of your
farms or shops being combined as one. It is also owing solely to
the vast scale on which each industry is organized, with co-ordinate
establishments in every part of the country, that we are able
by exchanges and transfers to fit every man so nearly with the
sort of work he can do best.
| 11 | |
| "And now, Mr. West, I will leave it to you, on the bare
outline of its features which I have given, if those who need
special incentives to do their best are likely to lack them under
our system. Does it not seem to you that men who found
themselves obliged, whether they wished or not, to work, would
under such a system be strongly impelled to do their best?"
| 12 | |
| I replied that it seemed to me the incentives offered were, if
any objection were to be made, too strong; that the pace set for
the young men was too hot; and such, indeed, I would add with
deference, still remains my opinion, now that by longer residence
among you I become better acquainted with the whole
subject.
| 13 | |
| Dr. Leete, however, desired me to reflect, and I am ready to
say that it is perhaps a sufficient reply to my objection, that the
worker's livelihood is in no way dependent on his ranking, and
anxiety for that never embitters his disappointments; that the
working hours are short, the vacations regular, and that all
emulation ceases at forty-five, with the attainment of middle
life.
| 14 | |
| "There are two or three other points I ought to refer to," he
added, "to prevent your getting mistaken impressions. In the
first place, you must understand that this system of preferment
given the more efficient workers over the less so, in no way
contravenes the fundamental idea of our social system, that all
who do their best are equally deserving, whether that best be
great or small. I have shown that the system is arranged to
encourage the weaker as well as the stronger with the hope of
rising, while the fact that the stronger are selected for the leaders
is in no way a reflection upon the weaker, but in the interest of
the common weal.
| 15 | |
| "Do not imagine, either, because emulation is given free play
as an incentive under our system, that we deem it a motive likely
to appeal to the nobler sort of men, or worthy of them. Such as
these find their motives within, not without, and measure their
duty by their own endowments, not by those of others. So long
as their achievement is proportioned to their powers, they would
consider it preposterous to expect praise or blame because it
chanced to be great or small. To such natures emulation appears
philosophically absurd, and despicable in a moral aspect by its
substitution of envy for admiration, and exultation for regret, in
one's attitude toward the successes and the failures of others.
| 16 | |
| "But all men, even in the last year of the twentieth century,
are not of this high order, and the incentives to endeavor
requisite for those who are not must be of a sort adapted to their
inferior natures. For these, then, emulation of the keenest edge
is provided as a constant spur. Those who need this motive will
feel it. Those who are above its influence do not need it.
| 17 | |
| "I should not fail to mention," resumed the doctor, "that for
those too deficient in mental or bodily strength to be fairly
graded with the main body of workers, we have a separate grade,
unconnected with the others,--a sort of invalid corps, the
members of which are provided with a light class of tasks fitted
to their strength. All our sick in mind and body, all our deaf and
dumb, and lame and blind and crippled, and even our insane,
belong to this invalid corps, and bear its insignia. The strongest
often do nearly a man's work, the feeblest, of course, nothing;
but none who can do anything are willing quite to give up. In
their lucid intervals, even our insane are eager to do what they
can."
| 18 | |
| "That is a pretty idea of the invalid corps," I said. "Even a
barbarian from the nineteenth century can appreciate that. It is
a very graceful way of disguising charity, and must be grateful to
the feelings of its recipients."
| 19 | |
| "Charity!" repeated Dr. Leete. "Did you suppose that we
consider the incapable class we are talking of objects of charity?"
| 20 | |
| "Why, naturally," I said, "inasmuch as they are incapable of
self-support."
| 21 | |
| But here the doctor took me up quickly.
| 22 | |
| "Who is capable of self-support?" he demanded. "There is no
such thing in a civilized society as self-support. In a state of
society so barbarous as not even to know family cooperation,
each individual may possibly support himself, though even then
for a part of his life only; but from the moment that men begin
to live together, and constitute even the rudest sort of society,
self-support becomes impossible. As men grow more civilized,
and the subdivision of occupations and services is carried out, a
complex mutual dependence becomes the universal rule. Every
man, however solitary may seem his occupation, is a member of
a vast industrial partnership, as large as the nation, as large as
humanity. The necessity of mutual dependence should imply
the duty and guarantee of mutual support; and that it did not in
your day constituted the essential cruelty and unreason of your
system."
| 23 | |
| "That may all be so," I replied, "but it does not touch the case
of those who are unable to contribute anything to the product
of industry."
| 24 | |
| "Surely I told you this morning, at least I thought I did,"
replied Dr. Leete, "that the right of a man to maintenance at
the nation's table depends on the fact that he is a man, and not
on the amount of health and strength he may have, so long as he
does his best."
| 25 | |
| "You said so," I answered, "but I supposed the rule applied
only to the workers of different ability. Does it also hold of those
who can do nothing at all?"
| 26 | |
| "Are they not also men?"
| 27 | |
| "I am to understand, then, that the lame, the blind, the sick,
and the impotent, are as well off as the most efficient and have
the same income?"
| 28 | |
| "Certainly," was the reply.
| 29 | |
| "The idea of charity on such a scale," I answered, "would have
made our most enthusiastic philanthropists gasp."
| 30 | |
| "If you had a sick brother at home," replied Dr. Leete,
"unable to work, would you feed him on less dainty food, and
lodge and clothe him more poorly, than yourself? More likely
far, you would give him the preference; nor would you think of
calling it charity. Would not the word, in that connection, fill
you with indignation?"
| 31 | |
| "Of course," I replied; "but the cases are not parallel. There is
a sense, no doubt, in which all men are brothers; but this general
sort of brotherhood is not to be compared, except for rhetorical
purposes, to the brotherhood of blood, either as to its sentiment
or its obligations."
| 32 | |
| "There speaks the nineteenth century!" exclaimed Dr. Leete.
"Ah, Mr. West, there is no doubt as to the length of time that
you slept. If I were to give you, in one sentence, a key to what
may seem the mysteries of our civilization as compared with that
of your age, I should say that it is the fact that the solidarity of
the race and the brotherhood of man, which to you were but fine
phrases, are, to our thinking and feeling, ties as real and as vital
as physical fraternity.
| 33 | |
| "But even setting that consideration aside, I do not see why it
so surprises you that those who cannot work are conceded the
full right to live on the produce of those who can. Even in your
day, the duty of military service for the protection of the nation,
to which our industrial service corresponds, while obligatory on
those able to discharge it, did not operate to deprive of the
privileges of citizenship those who were unable. They stayed at
home, and were protected by those who fought, and nobody
questioned their right to be, or thought less of them. So, now,
the requirement of industrial service from those able to render
it does not operate to deprive of the privileges of citizenship,
which now implies the citizen's maintenance, him who cannot
work. The worker is not a citizen because he works, but works
because he is a citizen. As you recognize the duty of the strong
to fight for the weak, we, now that fighting is gone by, recognize
his duty to work for him.
| 34 | |
| "A solution which leaves an unaccounted-for residuum is no
solution at all; and our solution of the problem of human society
would have been none at all had it left the lame, the sick, and
the blind outside with the beasts, to fare as they might. Better
far have left the strong and well unprovided for than these
burdened ones, toward whom every heart must yearn, and for
whom ease of mind and body should be provided, if for no
others. Therefore it is, as I told you this morning, that the title
of every man, woman, and child to the means of existence rests
on no basis less plain, broad, and simple than the fact that they
are fellows of one race-members of one human family. The
only coin current is the image of God, and that is good for all
we have.
| 35 | |
| "I think there is no feature of the civilization of your epoch so
repugnant to modern ideas as the neglect with which you treated
your dependent classes. Even if you had no pity, no feeling of
brotherhood, how was it that you did not see that you were
robbing the incapable class of their plain right in leaving them
unprovided for?"
| 36 | |
| "I don't quite follow you there," I said. "I admit the claim of
this class to our pity, but how could they who produced nothing
claim a share of the product as a right?"
| 37 | |
| "How happened it," was Dr. Leete's reply, "that your workers
were able to produce more than so many savages would have
done? Was it not wholly on account of the heritage of the past
knowledge and achievements of the race, the machinery of
society, thousands of years in contriving, found by you ready-
made to your hand? How did you come to be possessors of this
knowledge and this machinery, which represent nine parts to
one contributed by yourself in the value of your product? You
inherited it, did you not? And were not these others, these
unfortunate and crippled brothers whom you cast out, joint
inheritors, co-heirs with you? What did you do with their share?
Did you not rob them when you put them off with crusts, who
were entitled to sit with the heirs, and did you not add insult to
robbery when you called the crusts charity?
| 38 | |
| "Ah, Mr. West," Dr. Leete continued, as I did not respond,
"what I do not understand is, setting aside all considerations
either of justice or brotherly feeling toward the crippled and
defective, how the workers of your day could have had any heart
for their work, knowing that their children, or grand-children, if
unfortunate, would be deprived of the comforts and even
necessities of life. It is a mystery how men with children could
favor a system under which they were rewarded beyond those
less endowed with bodily strength or mental power. For, by the
same discrimination by which the father profited, the son, for
whom he would give his life, being perchance weaker than
others, might be reduced to crusts and beggary. How men dared
leave children behind them, I have never been able to understand."
| 39 | |
| Note.--Although in his talk on the previous evening Dr. Leete
had emphasized the pains taken to enable every man to ascertain
and follow his natural bent in choosing an occupation, it was not
till I learned that the worker's income is the same in all occupations
that I realized how absolutely he may be counted on to do so, and
thus, by selecting the harness which sets most lightly on himself,
find that in which he can pull best. The failure of my age in any
systematic or effective way to develop and utilize the natural
aptitudes of men for the industries and intellectual avocations was
one of the great wastes, as well as one of the most common causes
of unhappiness in that time. The vast majority of my contemporaries,
though nominally free to do so, never really chose their
occupations at all, but were forced by circumstances into work for
which they were relatively inefficient, because not naturally fitted
for it. The rich, in this respect, had little advantage over the poor.
The latter, indeed, being generally deprived of education, had no
opportunity even to ascertain the natural aptitudes they might
have, and on account of their poverty were unable to develop them
by cultivation even when ascertained. The liberal and technical
professions, except by favorable accident, were shut to them, to
their own great loss and that of the nation. On the other hand, the
well-to-do, although they could command education and opportunity,
were scarcely less hampered by social prejudice, which forbade
them to pursue manual avocations, even when adapted to
them, and destined them, whether fit or unfit, to the professions,
thus wasting many an excellent handicraftsman. Mercenary
considerations, tempting men to pursue money-making occupations
for which they were unfit, instead of less remunerative employments
for which they were fit, were responsible for another vast
perversion of talent. All these things now are changed. Equal
education and opportunity must needs bring to light whatever
aptitudes a man has, and neither social prejudices nor mercenary
considerations hamper him in the choice of his life work.
| 40 | |
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