141. Guaranteed Customers: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

 

141. Guaranteed Customers: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

 

 

Guaranteed Customers  

 

     Prior to 1860 Americans didn't demand a high level of national solidarity — a loose sort  of catch-as-catch-can unity satisfied the nation in spite of the existence even then of  patriotic special interest groups like Know-Nothings. Neither by geography, culture,  common experience, or preference was the United States naturally a single country  although it did possess a common language. But conformity had been ordered by  corporate and banking interests from the Northeast, so one country it would become.  

 

      Stupendous profits accrued to these interests from the Civil War, and its great lesson of  national regimentation into squads, platoons, brigades, companies, regiments, and army  corps was not lost on the winners. Warfare by its nature forces men to wear "value-ranks"  openly for all to see, forces everyone to subordinate themselves to higher ranks, and  higher ranks to subordinate themselves to invisible orders. War conditions men to rule  and to be ruled. Modern war creates a society far

different in type and scale from the  ragged and bizarre individuality which emerged out of the American Revolution. With  everyone dressing alike, eating alike, and doing everything else alike, maximum profit  can be derived from the use of mass-production machinery in an ideal environment where     the goods of production are swiftly wasted, and military "consumers" are literally  forbidden the right to refuse to consume! A soldier must wear his uniform, eat his food,  fire his rifle. To guaranteed customers through psychological drills is the very essence of  the corporate world about to come into being.