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

"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."