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

"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