Equality

by Edward Bellamy

  CHAPTER V.

  I EXPERIENCE A NEW SENSATION.

  "Doctor," said I as we came out of the bank, "I have a most extraordinaryfeeling."

  "What sort of a feeling?"

  "It is a sensation which I never had anything like before," I said, "andnever expected to have. I feel as if I wanted to go to work. Yes, JulianWest, millionaire, loafer by profession, who never did anything useful inhis life and never wanted to, finds himself seized with an overmasteringdesire to roll up his sleeves and do something toward rendering anequivalent for his living."

  "But," said the doctor, "Congress has declared you the guest of thenation, and expressly exempted you from the duty of rendering any sort ofpublic service."

  "That is all very well, and I take it kindly, but I begin to feel that Ishould not enjoy knowing that I was living on other people."

  "What do you suppose it is," said the doctor, smiling, "that has givenyou this sensitiveness about living on others which, as you say, younever felt before?"

  "I have never been much given to self-analysis," I replied, "but thechange of feeling is very easily explained in this case. I find myselfsurrounded by a community every member of which not physicallydisqualified is doing his or her own part toward providing the materialprosperity which I share. A person must be of remarkably toughsensibilities who would not feel ashamed under such circumstances if hedid not take hold with the rest and do his part. Why didn't I feel thatway about the duty of working in the nineteenth century? Why, simplybecause there was no such system then for sharing work, or indeed anysystem at all. For the reason that there was no fair play or suggestionof justice in the distribution of work, everybody shirked it who could,and those who could not shirk it cursed the luckier ones and got even bydoing as bad work as they could. Suppose a rich young fellow like myselfhad a feeling that he would like to do his part. How was he going to goabout it? There was absolutely no social organization by which laborcould be shared on any principle of justice. There was no possibility ofco-operation. We had to choose between taking advantage of the economicsystem to live on other people or have them take advantage of it to liveon us. We had to climb on their backs as the only way of preventing themfrom climbing on our backs. We had the alternative of profiting by anunjust system or being its victims. There being no more moralsatisfaction in the one alternative than the other, we naturallypreferred the first. By glimpses all the more decent of us realized theineffable meanness of sponging our living out of the toilers, but ourconsciences were completely bedeviled by an economic system which seemeda hopeless muddle that nobody could see through or set right or do rightunder. I will undertake to say that there was not a man of my set,certainly not of my friends, who, placed just as I am this morning inpresence of an absolutely simple, just, and equal system for distributingthe industrial burden, would not feel just as I do the impulse to roll uphis sleeves and take hold."

  "I am quite sure of it," said the doctor. "Your experience strikinglyconfirms the chapter of revolutionary history which tells us that whenthe present economic order was established those who had been under theold system the most irreclaimable loafers and vagabonds, responding tothe absolute justice and fairness of the new arrangements, rallied to theservice of the state with enthusiasm. But talking of what you are to do,why was not my former suggestion a good one, that you should tell ourpeople in lectures about the nineteenth century?"

  "I thought at first that it would be a good idea," I replied, "but ourtalk in the garden this morning has about convinced me that the very lastpeople who had any intelligent idea of the nineteenth century, what itmeant, and what it was leading to, were just myself and my contemporariesof that time. After I have been with you a few years I may learn enoughabout my own period to discuss it intelligently."

  "There is something in that," replied the doctor. "Meanwhile, you seethat great building with the dome just across the square? That is ourlocal Industrial Exchange. Perhaps, seeing that we are talking of whatyou are to do to make yourself useful, you may be interested in learninga little of the method by which our people choose their occupations."

  I readily assented, and we crossed the square to the exchange.

  "I have given you thus far," said the doctor, "only a general outline ofour system of universal industrial service. You know that every one ofeither sex, unless for some reason temporarily or permanently exempt,enters the public industrial service in the twenty-first year, and afterthree years of a sort of general apprenticeship in the unclassifiedgrades elects a special occupation, unless he prefers to study furtherfor one of the scientific professions. As there are a million youth, moreor less, who thus annually elect their occupations, you may imagine thatit must be a complex task to find a place for each in which his or herown taste shall be suited as well as the needs of the public service."

  I assured the doctor that I had indeed made this reflection.

  "A very few moments will suffice," he said, "to disabuse your mind ofthat notion and to show you how wonderfully a little rational system hassimplified the task of finding a fitting vocation in life which used tobe so difficult a matter in your day and so rarely was accomplished in asatisfactory manner."

  Finding a comfortable corner for us near one of the windows of thecentral hall, the doctor presently brought a lot of sample blanks andschedules and proceeded to explain them to me. First he showed me theannual statement of exigencies by the General Government, specifying inwhat proportion the force of workers that was to become available thatyear ought to be distributed among the several occupations in order tocarry on the industrial service. That was the side of the subject whichrepresented the necessities of the public service that must be met. Nexthe showed me the volunteering or preference blank, on which every youththat year graduating from the unclassified service indicated, if he choseto, the order of his preference as to the various occupations making upthe public service, it being inferred, if he did not fill out the blank,that he or she was willing to be assigned for the convenience of theservice.

  "But," said I, "locality of residence is often quite as important as thekind of one's occupation. For example, one might not wish to be separatedfrom parents, and certainly would not wish to be from a sweetheart,however agreeable the occupation assigned might be in other respects."

  "Very true," said the doctor. "If, indeed, our industrial systemundertook to separate lovers and friends, husbands and wives, parents andchildren, without regard to their wishes, it certainly would not lastlong. You see this column of localities. If you make your cross againstBoston in that column, it becomes imperative upon the administration toprovide you employment somewhere in this district. It is one of therights of every citizen to demand employment within his home district.Otherwise, as you say, ties of love and friendship might be rudelybroken. But, of course, one can not have his cake and eat it too; if youmake work in the home district imperative, you may have to take anoccupation to which you would have preferred some other that might havebeen open to you had you been willing to leave home. However, it is notcommon that one needs to sacrifice a chosen career to the ties ofaffection. The country is divided into industrial districts or circles,in each of which there is intended to be as nearly as possible a completesystem of industry, wherein all the important arts and occupations arerepresented. It is in this way made possible for most of us to find anopportunity in a chosen occupation without separation from friends. Thisis the more simply done, as the modern means of communication have so farabolished distance that the man who lives in Boston and works inSpringfield, one hundred miles away, is quite as near his place ofbusiness as was the average workingman of your day. One who, living inBoston, should work two hundred miles away (in Albany), would be farbetter situated than the average suburbanite doing business in Boston acentury ago. But while a great number desire to find occupations at home,there are also many who from love of change much prefer to leave thescenes of their childhood. These, too, indicate their preferences bymarking the number of the distr
ict to which they prefer to be assigned.Second or third preferences may likewise be indicated, so that it wouldgo hard indeed if one could not obtain a location in at least the part ofthe country he desired, though the locality preference is imperative onlywhen the person desires to stay in the home district. Otherwise it isconsulted so far as consistent with conflicting claims. The volunteerhaving thus filled out his preference blank, takes it to the properregistrar and has his ranking officially stamped upon it."

  "What is the ranking?" I asked.

  "It is the figure which indicates his previous standing in the schoolsand during his service as an unclassified worker, and is supposed to givethe best attainable criterion thus far of his relative intelligence,efficiency, and devotion to duty. Where there are more volunteers forparticular occupations than there is room for, the lowest in ranking haveto be content with a second or third preference. The preference blanksare finally handed in at the local exchange, and are collated at thecentral office of the industrial district. All who have made home workimperative are first provided for in accordance with rank. The blanks ofthose preferring work in other districts are forwarded to the nationalbureau and there collated with those from other districts, so that thevolunteers may be provided for as nearly as may be according to theirwishes, subject, where conflict of claim arises, to their relativeranking right. It has always been observed that the personaleccentricities of individuals in great bodies have a wonderful tendencyto balance and mutually complement one another, and this principle isstrikingly illustrated in our system of choice of occupation andlocality. The preference blanks are filled out in June, and by the firstof August everybody knows just where he or she is to report for servicein October.

  "However, if any one has received an assignment which is decidedlyunwelcome either as to location or occupation, it is not even then, orindeed at any time, too late to endeavor to find another. Theadministration has done its best to adjust the individual aptitude andwishes of each worker to the needs of the public service, but itsmachinery is at his service for any further attempts he may wish to maketo suit himself better."

  And then the doctor took me to the Transfer Department and showed me howpersons who were dissatisfied either with their assignment of occupationor locality could put themselves in communication with all others in anypart of the country who were similarly dissatisfied, and arrange, subjectto liberal regulations, such exchanges as might be mutually agreeable.

  "If a person is not absolutely unwilling to do anything at all," he said,"and does not object to all parts of the country equally, he ought to beable sooner or later to provide himself both with pretty nearly theoccupation and locality he desires. And if, after all, there should beany one so dull that he can not hope to succeed in his occupation or makea better exchange with another, yet there is no occupation now toleratedby the state which would not have been as to its conditions a godsend tothe most fortunately situated workman of your day. There is none in whichperil to life or health is not reduced to a minimum, and the dignity andrights of the worker absolutely guaranteed. It is a constant study of theadministration so to bait the less attractive occupations with specialadvantages as to leisure and otherwise always to keep the balance ofpreference between them as nearly true as possible; and if, finally,there were any occupation which, after all, remained so distasteful as toattract no volunteers, and yet was necessary, its duties would beperformed by all in rotation."

  "As, for example," I said, "the work of repairing and cleansing thesewers."

  "If that sort of work were as offensive as it must have been in your day,I dare say it might have to be done by a rotation in which all would taketheir turn," replied the doctor, "but our sewers are as clean as ourstreets. They convey only water which has been chemically purified anddeodorized before it enters them by an apparatus connected with everydwelling. By the same apparatus all solid sewage is electricallycremated, and removed in the form of ashes. This improvement in the sewersystem, which followed the great Revolution very closely, might havewaited a hundred years before introduction but for the Revolution,although the necessary scientific knowledge and appliances had long beenavailable. The case furnishes merely one instance out of a thousand ofthe devices for avoiding repulsive and perilous sorts of work which,while simple enough, the world would never have troubled itself to adoptso long as the rich had in the poor a race of uncomplaining economicserfs on which to lay all their burdens. The effect of economic equalitywas to make it equally the interest of all to avoid, so far as possible,the more unpleasant tasks, since henceforth they must be shared by all.In this way, wholly apart from the moral aspects of the matter, theprogress of chemical, sanitary, and mechanical science owes anincalculable debt to the Revolution."

  "Probably," I said, "you have sometimes eccentric persons--'crookedsticks' we used to call them--who refuse to adapt themselves to thesocial order on any terms or admit any such thing as social duty. If sucha person should flatly refuse to render any sort of industrial or usefulservice on any terms, what would be done with him? No doubt there is acompulsory side to your system for dealing with such persons?"

  "Not at all," replied the doctor. "If our system can not stand on itsmerits as the best possible arrangement for promoting the highest welfareof all, let it fall. As to the matter of industrial service, the law issimply that if any one shall refuse to do his or her part toward themaintenance of the social order he shall not be allowed to partake of itsbenefits. It would obviously not be fair to the rest that he should doso. But as to compelling him to work against his will by force, such anidea would be abhorrent to our people. The service of society is, aboveall, a service of honor, and all its associations are what you used tocall chivalrous. Even as in your day soldiers would not serve withskulkers, but drummed cowards out of the camp, so would our workersrefuse the companionship of persons openly seeking to evade their civicduty."

  "But what do you do with such persons?"

  "If an adult, being neither criminal nor insane, should deliberately andfixedly refuse to render his quota of service in any way, either in achosen occupation or, on failure to choose, in an assigned one, he wouldbe furnished with such a collection of seeds and tools as he might chooseand turned loose on a reservation expressly prepared for such persons,corresponding a little perhaps with the reservations set apart for suchIndians in your day as were unwilling to accept civilization. There hewould be left to work out a better solution of the problem of existencethan our society offers, if he could do so. We think we have the bestpossible social system, but if there is a better we want to know it, sothat we may adopt it. We encourage the spirit of experiment."

  "And are there really cases," I said, "of individuals who thusvoluntarily abandon society in preference to fulfilling their socialduty?"

  "There have been such cases, though I do not know that there are any atthe present time. But the provision for them exists."