"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?"
"The administration has nothing to do with determining that point."
"Who does determine it, then?" I asked.
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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.
"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."
"How is this class of common laborers recruited?" I asked. "Surely
nobody voluntarily enters that."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Are not the schools flooded with young men whose only motive is to
avoid work?"
Dr. Leete smiled a little grimly.
"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.
"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."
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."
Dr. Leete laughed heartily.
"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."
"How, then, do you avoid a revolution every pay day?" I 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."
"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."
"The prescription is, no doubt, a wise one," I said; "I only hope it
can be filled."
"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.