 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,
