| Chapter 7
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| "It is after you have mustered your industrial army into
service," I said, "that I should expect the chief difficulty to arise,
for there its analogy with a military army must cease. Soldiers
have all the same thing, and a very simple thing, to do, namely,
to practice the manual of arms, to march and stand guard. But
the industrial army must learn and follow two or three hundred
diverse trades and avocations. What administrative talent can be
equal to determining wisely what trade or business every individual
in a great nation shall pursue?"
| 1 | |
| "The administration has nothing to do with determining that
point."
| 2 | |
| "Who does determine it, then?" I asked.
| 3 | |
| "Every man for himself in accordance with his natural aptitude,
the utmost pains being taken to enable him to find out
what his natural aptitude really is. The principle on which our
industrial army is organized is that a man's natural endowments,
mental and physical, determine what he can work at most
profitably to the nation and most satisfactorily to himself. While
the obligation of service in some form is not to be evaded,
voluntary election, subject only to necessary regulation, is
depended on to determine the particular sort of service every
man is to render. As an individual's satisfaction during his term
of service depends on his having an occupation to his taste,
parents and teachers watch from early years for indications of
special aptitudes in children. A thorough study of the National
industrial system, with the history and rudiments of all the great
trades, is an essential part of our educational system. While
manual training is not allowed to encroach on the general
intellectual culture to which our schools are devoted, it is carried
far enough to give our youth, in addition to their theoretical
knowledge of the national industries, mechanical and agricultural,
a certain familiarity with their tools and methods. Our
schools are constantly visiting our workshops, and often are
taken on long excursions to inspect particular industrial enterprises.
In your day a man was not ashamed to be grossly ignorant
of all trades except his own, but such ignorance would not be
consistent with our idea of placing every one in a position to
select intelligently the occupation for which he has most taste.
Usually long before he is mustered into service a young man has
found out the pursuit he wants to follow, has acquired a great
deal of knowledge about it, and is waiting impatiently the time
when he can enlist in its ranks."
| 4 | |
| "Surely," I said, "it can hardly be that the number of
volunteers for any trade is exactly the number needed in that
trade. It must be generally either under or over the demand."
| 5 | |
| "The supply of volunteers is always expected to fully equal the
demand," replied Dr. Leete. "It is the business of the administration
to see that this is the case. The rate of volunteering for
each trade is closely watched. If there be a noticeably greater
excess of volunteers over men needed in any trade, it is inferred
that the trade offers greater attractions than others. On the other
hand, if the number of volunteers for a trade tends to drop
below the demand, it is inferred that it is thought more arduous.
It is the business of the administration to seek constantly to
equalize the attractions of the trades, so far as the conditions of
labor in them are concerned, so that all trades shall be equally
attractive to persons having natural tastes for them. This is done
by making the hours of labor in different trades to differ
according to their arduousness. The lighter trades, prosecuted
under the most agreeable circumstances, have in this way the
longest hours, while an arduous trade, such as mining, has very
short hours. There is no theory, no a priori rule, by which the
respective attractiveness of industries is determined. The
administration, in taking burdens off one class of workers and adding
them to other classes, simply follows the fluctuations of opinion
among the workers themselves as indicated by the rate of
volunteering. The principle is that no man's work ought to be,
on the whole, harder for him than any other man's for him, the
workers themselves to be the judges. There are no limits to the
application of this rule. If any particular occupation is in itself so
arduous or so oppressive that, in order to induce volunteers, the
day's work in it had to be reduced to ten minutes, it would be
done. If, even then, no man was willing to do it, it would remain
undone. But of course, in point of fact, a moderate reduction in
the hours of labor, or addition of other privileges, suffices to
secure all needed volunteers for any occupation necessary to
men. If, indeed, the unavoidable difficulties and dangers of such
a necessary pursuit were so great that no inducement of compensating
advantages would overcome men's repugnance to it, the
administration would only need to take it out of the common
order of occupations by declaring it `extra hazardous,' and those
who pursued it especially worthy of the national gratitude, to be
overrun with volunteers. Our young men are very greedy of
honor, and do not let slip such opportunities. Of course you will
see that dependence on the purely voluntary choice of avocations
involves the abolition in all of anything like unhygienic conditions
or special peril to life and limb. Health and safety are
conditions common to all industries. The nation does not maim
and slaughter its workmen by thousands, as did the private
capitalists and corporations of your day."
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| "When there are more who want to enter a particular trade
than there is room for, how do you decide between the applicants?"
I inquired.
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| "Preference is given to those who have acquired the most
knowledge of the trade they wish to follow. No man, however,
who through successive years remains persistent in his desire to
show what he can do at any particular trade, is in the end denied
an opportunity. Meanwhile, if a man cannot at first win entrance
into the business he prefers, he has usually one or more alternative
preferences, pursuits for which he has some degree of
aptitude, although not the highest. Every one, indeed, is
expected to study his aptitudes so as to have not only a first
choice as to occupation, but a second or third, so that if, either
at the outset of his career or subsequently, owing to the progress
of invention or changes in demand, he is unable to follow his
first vocation, he can still find reasonably congenial employment.
This principle of secondary choices as to occupation is quite
important in our system. I should add, in reference to the
counter-possibility of some sudden failure of volunteers in a
particular trade, or some sudden necessity of an increased force,
that the administration, while depending on the voluntary
system for filling up the trades as a rule, holds always in reserve
the power to call for special volunteers, or draft any force needed
from any quarter. Generally, however, all needs of this sort can
be met by details from the class of unskilled or common
laborers."
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| "How is this class of common laborers recruited?" I asked.
"Surely nobody voluntarily enters that."
| 9 | |
| "It is the grade to which all new recruits belong for the first
three years of their service. It is not till after this period, during
which he is assignable to any work at the discretion of his
superiors, that the young man is allowed to elect a special
avocation. These three years of stringent discipline none are
exempt from, and very glad our young men are to pass from this
severe school into the comparative liberty of the trades. If a man
were so stupid as to have no choice as to occupation, he would
simply remain a common laborer; but such cases, as you may
suppose, are not common."
| 10 | |
| "Having once elected and entered on a trade or occupation," I
remarked, "I suppose he has to stick to it the rest of his life."
| 11 | |
| "Not necessarily," replied Dr. Leete; "while frequent and
merely capricious changes of occupation are not encouraged or
even permitted, every worker is allowed, of course, under certain
regulations and in accordance with the exigencies of the service,
to volunteer for another industry which he thinks would suit
him better than his first choice. In this case his application is
received just as if he were volunteering for the first time, and on
the same terms. Not only this, but a worker may likewise, under
suitable regulations and not too frequently, obtain a transfer to
an establishment of the same industry in another part of the
country which for any reason he may prefer. Under your system
a discontented man could indeed leave his work at will, but he
left his means of support at the same time, and took his chances
as to future livelihood. We find that the number of men who
wish to abandon an accustomed occupation for a new one, and
old friends and associations for strange ones, is small. It is only
the poorer sort of workmen who desire to change even as
frequently as our regulations permit. Of course transfers or
discharges, when health demands them, are always given."
| 12 | |
| "As an industrial system, I should think this might be
extremely efficient," I said, "but I don't see that it makes any
provision for the professional classes, the men who serve the
nation with brains instead of hands. Of course you can't get
along without the brain-workers. How, then, are they selected
from those who are to serve as farmers and mechanics? That
must require a very delicate sort of sifting process, I should say."
| 13 | |
| "So it does," replied Dr. Leete; "the most delicate possible
test is needed here, and so we leave the question whether a man
shall be a brain or hand worker entirely to him to settle. At the
end of the term of three years as a common laborer, which every
man must serve, it is for him to choose, in accordance to his
natural tastes, whether he will fit himself for an art or profession,
or be a farmer or mechanic. If he feels that he can do better
work with his brains than his muscles, he finds every facility
provided for testing the reality of his supposed bent, of cultivating
it, and if fit of pursuing it as his avocation. The schools of
technology, of medicine, of art, of music, of histrionics, and of
higher liberal learning are always open to aspirants without
condition."
| 14 | |
| "Are not the schools flooded with young men whose only
motive is to avoid work?"
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| Dr. Leete smiled a little grimly.
| 16 | |
| "No one is at all likely to enter the professional schools for the
purpose of avoiding work, I assure you," he said. "They are
intended for those with special aptitude for the branches they
teach, and any one without it would find it easier to do double
hours at his trade than try to keep up with the classes. Of course
many honestly mistake their vocation, and, finding themselves
unequal to the requirements of the schools, drop out and return
to the industrial service; no discredit attaches to such persons,
for the public policy is to encourage all to develop suspected
talents which only actual tests can prove the reality of. The
professional and scientific schools of your day depended on the
patronage of their pupils for support, and the practice appears to
have been common of giving diplomas to unfit persons, who
afterwards found their way into the professions. Our schools are
national institutions, and to have passed their tests is a proof of
special abilities not to be questioned.
| 17 | |
| "This opportunity for a professional training," the doctor
continued, "remains open to every man till the age of thirty is
reached, after which students are not received, as there would
remain too brief a period before the age of discharge in which to
serve the nation in their professions. In your day young men had
to choose their professions very young, and therefore, in a large
proportion of instances, wholly mistook their vocations. It is
recognized nowadays that the natural aptitudes of some are later
than those of others in developing, and therefore, while the
choice of profession may be made as early as twenty-four, it
remains open for six years longer."
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| A question which had a dozen times before been on my lips
now found utterance, a question which touched upon what, in
my time, had been regarded the most vital difficulty in the way
of any final settlement of the industrial problem. "It is an
extraordinary thing," I said, "that you should not yet have said a
word about the method of adjusting wages. Since the nation is
the sole employer, the government must fix the rate of wages
and determine just how much everybody shall earn, from the
doctors to the diggers. All I can say is, that this plan would never
have worked with us, and I don't see how it can now unless
human nature has changed. In my day, nobody was satisfied with
his wages or salary. Even if he felt he received enough, he was
sure his neighbor had too much, which was as bad. If the
universal discontent on this subject, instead of being dissipated
in curses and strikes directed against innumerable employers,
could have been concentrated upon one, and that the government,
the strongest ever devised would not have seen two pay
days."
| 19 | |
| Dr. Leete laughed heartily.
| 20 | |
| "Very true, very true," he said, "a general strike would most
probably have followed the first pay day, and a strike directed
against a government is a revolution."
| 21 | |
| "How, then, do you avoid a revolution every pay day?" if
demanded. "Has some prodigious philosopher devised a new
system of calculus satisfactory to all for determining the exact
and comparative value of all sorts of service, whether by brawn
or brain, by hand or voice, by ear or eye? Or has human nature
itself changed, so that no man looks upon his own things but
`every man on the things of his neighbor'? One or the other of
these events must be the explanation."
| 22 | |
| "Neither one nor the other, however, is," was my host's
laughing response. "And now, Mr. West," he continued, "you
must remember that you are my patient as well as my guest, and
permit me to prescribe sleep for you before we have any more
conversation. It is after three o'clock."
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| "The prescription is, no doubt, a wise one," I said; "I only
hope it can be filled."
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| "I will see to that," the doctor replied, and he did, for he gave
me a wineglass of something or other which sent me to sleep as
soon as my head touched the pillow.
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