I EXPERIENCE A NEW SENSATION.
"Doctor," said I as we came out of the bank, "I have a most extraordinary
feeling."
"What sort of a feeling?"
"It is a sensation which I never had anything like before," I said, "and
never expected to have. I feel as if I wanted to go to work. Yes, Julian
West, millionaire, loafer by profession, who never did anything useful in
his life and never wanted to, finds himself seized with an overmastering
desire to roll up his sleeves and do something toward rendering an
equivalent for his living."
"But," said the doctor, "Congress has declared you the guest of the
nation, and expressly exempted you from the duty of rendering any sort of
public service."
"That is all very well, and I take it kindly, but I begin to feel that I
should not enjoy knowing that I was living on other people."
"What do you suppose it is," said the doctor, smiling, "that has given
you this sensitiveness about living on others which, as you say, you
never felt before?"
"I have never been much given to self-analysis," I replied, "but the
change of feeling is very easily explained in this case. I find myself
surrounded by a community every member of which not physically
disqualified is doing his or her own part toward providing the material
prosperity which I share. A person must be of remarkably tough
sensibilities who would not feel ashamed under such circumstances if he
did not take hold with the rest and do his part. Why didn't I feel that
way about the duty of working in the nineteenth century? Why, simply
because there was no such system then for sharing work, or indeed any
system at all. For the reason that there was no fair play or suggestion
of justice in the distribution of work, everybody shirked it who could,
and those who could not shirk it cursed the luckier ones and got even by
doing as bad work as they could. Suppose a rich young fellow like myself
had a feeling that he would like to do his part. How was he going to go
about it? There was absolutely no social organization by which labor
could be shared on any principle of justice. There was no possibility of
co-operation. We had to choose between taking advantage of the economic
system to live on other people or have them take advantage of it to live
on us. We had to climb on their backs as the only way of preventing them
from climbing on our backs. We had the alternative of profiting by an
unjust system or being its victims. There being no more moral
satisfaction in the one alternative than the other, we naturally
preferred the first. By glimpses all the more decent of us realized the
ineffable meanness of sponging our living out of the toilers, but our
consciences were completely bedeviled by an economic system which seemed
a hopeless muddle that nobody could see through or set right or do right
under. I will undertake to say that there was not a man of my set,
certainly not of my friends, who, placed just as I am this morning in
presence of an absolutely simple, just, and equal system for distributing
the industrial burden, would not feel just as I do the impulse to roll up
his sleeves and take hold."
"I am quite sure of it," said the doctor. "Your experience strikingly
confirms the chapter of revolutionary history which tells us that when
the present economic order was established those who had been under the
old system the most irreclaimable loafers and vagabonds, responding to
the absolute justice and fairness of the new arrangements, rallied to the
service of the state with enthusiasm. But talking of what you are to do,
why was not my former suggestion a good one, that you should tell our
people in lectures about the nineteenth century?"
"I thought at first that it would be a good idea," I replied, "but our
talk in the garden this morning has about convinced me that the very last
people who had any intelligent idea of the nineteenth century, what it
meant, and what it was leading to, were just myself and my contemporaries
of that time. After I have been with you a few years I may learn enough
about my own period to discuss it intelligently."
"There is something in that," replied the doctor. "Meanwhile, you see
that great building with the dome just across the square? That is our
local Industrial Exchange. Perhaps, seeing that we are talking of what
you are to do to make yourself useful, you may be interested in learning
a little of the method by which our people choose their occupations."
I readily assented, and we crossed the square to the exchange.
"I have given you thus far," said the doctor, "only a general outline of
our system of universal industrial service. You know that every one of
either sex, unless for some reason temporarily or permanently exempt,
enters the public industrial service in the twenty-first year, and after
three years of a sort of general apprenticeship in the unclassified
grades elects a special occupation, unless he prefers to study further
for one of the scientific professions. As there are a million youth, more
or less, who thus annually elect their occupations, you may imagine that
it must be a complex task to find a place for each in which his or her
own taste shall be suited as well as the needs of the public service."
I assured the doctor that I had indeed made this reflection.
"A very few moments will suffice," he said, "to disabuse your mind of
that notion and to show you how wonderfully a little rational system has
simplified the task of finding a fitting vocation in life which used to
be so difficult a matter in your day and so rarely was accomplished in a
satisfactory manner."
Finding a comfortable corner for us near one of the windows of the
central hall, the doctor presently brought a lot of sample blanks and
schedules and proceeded to explain them to me. First he showed me the
annual statement of exigencies by the General Government, specifying in
what proportion the force of workers that was to become available that
year ought to be distributed among the several occupations in order to
carry on the industrial service. That was the side of the subject which
represented the necessities of the public service that must be met. Next
he showed me the volunteering or preference blank, on which every youth
that year graduating from the unclassified service indicated, if he chose
to, the order of his preference as to the various occupations making up
the public service, it being inferred, if he did not fill out the blank,
that he or she was willing to be assigned for the convenience of the
service.
"But," said I, "locality of residence is often quite as important as the
kind of one's occupation. For example, one might not wish to be separated
from parents, and certainly would not wish to be from a sweetheart,
however agreeable the occupation assigned might be in other respects."
"Very true," said the doctor. "If, indeed, our industrial system
undertook to separate lovers and friends, husbands and wives, parents and
children, without regard to their wishes, it certainly would not last
long. You see this column of localities. If you make your cross against
Boston in that column, it becomes imperative upon the administration to
provide you employment somewhere in this district. It is one of the
rights of every citizen to demand employment within his home district.
Otherwise, as you say, ties of love and friendship might be rudely
broken. But, of course, one can not have his cake and eat it too; if you
make work in the home district imperative, you may have to take an
occupation to which you would have preferred some other that might have
been open to you had you been willing to leave home. However, it is not
common that one needs to sacrifice a chosen career to the ties of
affection. The country is divided into industrial districts or circles,
in each of which there is intended to be as nearly as possible a complete
system of industry, wherein all the important arts and occupations are
represented. It is in this way made possible for most of us to find an
opportunity in a chosen occupation without separation from friends. This
is the more simply done, as the modern means of communication have so far
abolished distance that the man who lives in Boston and works in
Springfield, one hundred miles away, is quite as near his place of
business as was the average workingman of your day. One who, living in
Boston, should work two hundred miles away (in Albany), would be far
better situated than the average suburbanite doing business in Boston a
century ago. But while a great number desire to find occupations at home,
there are also many who from love of change much prefer to leave the
scenes of their childhood. These, too, indicate their preferences by
marking the number of the district to which they prefer to be assigned.
Second or third preferences may likewise be indicated, so that it would
go hard indeed if one could not obtain a location in at least the part of
the country he desired, though the locality preference is imperative only
when the person desires to stay in the home district. Otherwise it is
consulted so far as consistent with conflicting claims. The volunteer
having thus filled out his preference blank, takes it to the proper
registrar and has his ranking officially stamped upon it."
"What is the ranking?" I asked.
"It is the figure which indicates his previous standing in the schools
and during his service as an unclassified worker, and is supposed to give
the best attainable criterion thus far of his relative intelligence,
efficiency, and devotion to duty. Where there are more volunteers for
particular occupations than there is room for, the lowest in ranking have
to be content with a second or third preference. The preference blanks
are finally handed in at the local exchange, and are collated at the
central office of the industrial district. All who have made home work
imperative are first provided for in accordance with rank. The blanks of
those preferring work in other districts are forwarded to the national
bureau and there collated with those from other districts, so that the
volunteers may be provided for as nearly as may be according to their
wishes, subject, where conflict of claim arises, to their relative
ranking right. It has always been observed that the personal
eccentricities of individuals in great bodies have a wonderful tendency
to balance and mutually complement one another, and this principle is
strikingly illustrated in our system of choice of occupation and
locality. The preference blanks are filled out in June, and by the first
of August everybody knows just where he or she is to report for service
in October.
"However, if any one has received an assignment which is decidedly
unwelcome either as to location or occupation, it is not even then, or
indeed at any time, too late to endeavor to find another. The
administration has done its best to adjust the individual aptitude and
wishes of each worker to the needs of the public service, but its
machinery is at his service for any further attempts he may wish to make
to suit himself better."
And then the doctor took me to the Transfer Department and showed me how
persons who were dissatisfied either with their assignment of occupation
or locality could put themselves in communication with all others in any
part of the country who were similarly dissatisfied, and arrange, subject
to liberal regulations, such exchanges as might be mutually agreeable.
"If a person is not absolutely unwilling to do anything at all," he said,
"and does not object to all parts of the country equally, he ought to be
able sooner or later to provide himself both with pretty nearly the
occupation and locality he desires. And if, after all, there should be
any one so dull that he can not hope to succeed in his occupation or make
a better exchange with another, yet there is no occupation now tolerated
by the state which would not have been as to its conditions a godsend to
the most fortunately situated workman of your day. There is none in which
peril to life or health is not reduced to a minimum, and the dignity and
rights of the worker absolutely guaranteed. It is a constant study of the
administration so to bait the less attractive occupations with special
advantages as to leisure and otherwise always to keep the balance of
preference between them as nearly true as possible; and if, finally,
there were any occupation which, after all, remained so distasteful as to
attract no volunteers, and yet was necessary, its duties would be
performed by all in rotation."
"As, for example," I said, "the work of repairing and cleansing the
sewers."
"If that sort of work were as offensive as it must have been in your day,
I dare say it might have to be done by a rotation in which all would take
their turn," replied the doctor, "but our sewers are as clean as our
streets. They convey only water which has been chemically purified and
deodorized before it enters them by an apparatus connected with every
dwelling. By the same apparatus all solid sewage is electrically
cremated, and removed in the form of ashes. This improvement in the sewer
system, which followed the great Revolution very closely, might have
waited a hundred years before introduction but for the Revolution,
although the necessary scientific knowledge and appliances had long been
available. The case furnishes merely one instance out of a thousand of
the devices for avoiding repulsive and perilous sorts of work which,
while simple enough, the world would never have troubled itself to adopt
so long as the rich had in the poor a race of uncomplaining economic
serfs on which to lay all their burdens. The effect of economic equality
was to make it equally the interest of all to avoid, so far as possible,
the more unpleasant tasks, since henceforth they must be shared by all.
In this way, wholly apart from the moral aspects of the matter, the
progress of chemical, sanitary, and mechanical science owes an
incalculable debt to the Revolution."
"Probably," I said, "you have sometimes eccentric persons--'crooked
sticks' we used to call them--who refuse to adapt themselves to the
social order on any terms or admit any such thing as social duty. If such
a person should flatly refuse to render any sort of industrial or useful
service on any terms, what would be done with him? No doubt there is a
compulsory side to your system for dealing with such persons?"
"Not at all," replied the doctor. "If our system can not stand on its
merits as the best possible arrangement for promoting the highest welfare
of all, let it fall. As to the matter of industrial service, the law is
simply that if any one shall refuse to do his or her part toward the
maintenance of the social order he shall not be allowed to partake of its
benefits. It would obviously not be fair to the rest that he should do
so. But as to compelling him to work against his will by force, such an
idea would be abhorrent to our people. The service of society is, above
all, a service of honor, and all its associations are what you used to
call chivalrous. Even as in your day soldiers would not serve with
skulkers, but drummed cowards out of the camp, so would our workers
refuse the companionship of persons openly seeking to evade their civic
duty."
"But what do you do with such persons?"
"If an adult, being neither criminal nor insane, should deliberately and
fixedly refuse to render his quota of service in any way, either in a
chosen occupation or, on failure to choose, in an assigned one, he would
be furnished with such a collection of seeds and tools as he might choose
and turned loose on a reservation expressly prepared for such persons,
corresponding a little perhaps with the reservations set apart for such
Indians in your day as were unwilling to accept civilization. There he
would be left to work out a better solution of the problem of existence
than our society offers, if he could do so. We think we have the best
possible social system, but if there is a better we want to know it, so
that we may adopt it. We encourage the spirit of experiment."
"And are there really cases," I said, "of individuals who thus
voluntarily abandon society in preference to fulfilling their social
duty?"
"There have been such cases, though I do not know that there are any at
the present time. But the provision for them exists."