# Looking Backward, 2000-1887/Chapter 7

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CHAPTER VII.
"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. Manual industrial training is no part of our educational system, which is directed to general culture and the humanities, but a theoretical knowledge of the processes of the various industries is given, and our youth are constantly encouraged to visit the workshops, and are frequently taken on long excursions to acquire ​familiarity with special industries. Usually, long before he is mustered into service, a young man, if he has a taste for any special pursuit, has found it out and probably acquired a great deal of information about it. If, however, he has no special taste, and makes no election when opportunity is offered, he is assigned to any avocation among ong those of an unskilled character which may be in need of men."
"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. 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. 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 ​Page:Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (Bellamy).pdf/100 ​Page:Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (Bellamy).pdf/101 ​Page:Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (Bellamy).pdf/102 ​Page:Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (Bellamy).pdf/103 ​Page:Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (Bellamy).pdf/104 ​Page:Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (Bellamy).pdf/105 ​Page:Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (Bellamy).pdf/106 ​Page:Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (Bellamy).pdf/107 ​"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 wine glass of something or other which sent me to sleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.