"Edward Bellamy. Lookimg Backward From 2000 to 1887" - читать интересную книгу автора

citizens were able to render this sort of service with any pretense
either of universality or equity. No organization of labor was
possible when the employing power was divided among hundreds
or thousands of individuals and corporations, between
which concert of any kind was neither desired, nor indeed
feasible. It constantly happened then that vast numbers who
desired to labor could find no opportunity, and on the other
hand, those who desired to evade a part or all of their debt could
easily do so."

"Service, now, I suppose, is compulsory upon all," I suggested.

"It is rather a matter of course than of compulsion," replied
Dr. Leete. "It is regarded as so absolutely natural and reasonable
that the idea of its being compulsory has ceased to be thought
of. He would be thought to be an incredibly contemptible
person who should need compulsion in such a case. Nevertheless,
to speak of service being compulsory would be a weak way
to state its absolute inevitableness. Our entire social order is so
wholly based upon and deduced from it that if it were conceivable
that a man could escape it, he would be left with no
possible way to provide for his existence. He would have
excluded himself from the world, cut himself off from his kind,
in a word, committed suicide."

"Is the term of service in this industrial army for life?"

"Oh, no; it both begins later and ends earlier than the average
working period in your day. Your workshops were filled with
children and old men, but we hold the period of youth sacred to
education, and the period of maturity, when the physical forces
begin to flag, equally sacred to ease and agreeable relaxation. The
period of industrial service is twenty-four years, beginning at the
close of the course of education at twenty-one and terminating
at forty-five. After forty-five, while discharged from labor, the
citizen still remains liable to special calls, in case of emergencies
causing a sudden great increase in the demand for labor, till he
reaches the age of fifty-five, but such calls are rarely, in fact
almost never, made. The fifteenth day of October of every year is
what we call Muster Day, because those who have reached the
age of twenty-one are then mustered into the industrial service,
and at the same time those who, after twenty-four years' service,
have reached the age of forty-five, are honorably mustered out. It
is the great day of the year with us, whence we reckon all other
events, our Olympiad, save that it is annual."



Chapter 7