"As an industrial system, I should think this might be
extremely efficient," I said, "but I don't see that it makes any
provision for the professional classes, the men who serve the
nation with brains instead of hands. Of course you can't get
along without the brain-workers. How, then, are they selected
from those who are to serve as farmers and mechanics? That
must require a very delicate sort of sifting process, I should say."

"So it does," replied Dr. Leete; "the most delicate possible
test is needed here, and so we leave the question whether a man
shall be a brain or hand worker entirely to him to settle. At the
end of the term of three years as a common laborer, which every
man must serve, it is for him to choose, in accordance to his
natural tastes, whether he will fit himself for an art or profession,
or be a farmer or mechanic. If he feels that he can do better
work with his brains than his muscles, he finds every facility
provided for testing the reality of his supposed bent, of cultivating
it, and if fit of pursuing it as his avocation. The schools of
technology, of medicine, of art, of music, of histrionics, and of
higher liberal learning are always open to aspirants without
condition."

"Are not the schools flooded with young men whose only
motive is to avoid work?"

Dr. Leete smiled a little grimly.

"No one is at all likely to enter the professional schools for the
purpose of avoiding work, I assure you," he said. "They are