[Looking Backwards from 2000 to 1887 by Edward Bellamy]@TWC D-Link book
Looking Backwards from 2000 to 1887

CHAPTER 17
17/18

"The members of the technical professions, such as engineers and architects, have a ranking with the constructive guilds; but the members of the liberal professions, the doctors and teachers, as well as the artists and men of letters who obtain remissions of industrial service, do not belong to the industrial army.

On this ground they vote for the President, but are not eligible to his office.

One of its main duties being the control and discipline of the industrial army, it is essential that the President should have passed through all its grades to understand his business." "That is reasonable," I said; "but if the doctors and teachers do not know enough of industry to be President, neither, I should think, can the President know enough of medicine and education to control those departments." "No more does he," was the reply.

"Except in the general way that he is responsible for the enforcement of the laws as to all classes, the President has nothing to do with the faculties of medicine and education, which are controlled by boards of regents of their own, in which the President is ex-officio chairman, and has the casting vote.
These regents, who, of course, are responsible to Congress, are chosen by the honorary members of the guilds of education and medicine, the retired teachers and doctors of the country." "Do you know," I said, "the method of electing officials by votes of the retired members of the guilds is nothing more than the application on a national scale of the plan of government by alumni, which we used to a slight extent occasionally in the management of our higher educational institutions." "Did you, indeed ?" exclaimed Dr.Leete, with animation.

"That is quite new to me, and I fancy will be to most of us, and of much interest as well.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books