The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1885-01-31 00:00:00

LIFE- ON "A STRAW A DAY."

A poor lad, apparently of the humbler clerk class,
killed himself a fortnight ago in London from dread
of poverty. He was not starving, and had no especial
suffering; but he was out of work, foresaw a term of
privation, and could not bring himself to face it.
Courage had gone out of him, and its equivalent,
resignation, had not ceme. He blamed nobody but
himself, and himself only for weakness, but wrote
quietly to his friends that he had miscalculated his
strength, that he found himself unable to face
" hardship " and privation, and so made a summary
end. It was a melancholy case, the lad, to all appear-
ance, having needed human sympathy more than
direct aid ; but it makes us wonder, the Spectator
says, whether, with the increase of education there
is not an increase of softness among the young which
is not altogether healthy. Society is so vast and so
various that it is difficult to know accurately; but it
seems to us this is the case more especially in Eng-
land. The east wind, or something else, still keeps
the Scotch hard; and an American may always die
President. The English young of to-day are better
and better educated, and more lovable than they
were, and indefinitely more reasonable; but they
shrink from privation in a new way, as if it offended
some instinct in them. A hundred years ago, if
literature and family legend may be trusted, it was
the commonest thing for a half-educated lad to come
up to town with a suit of clothes and a couple of
pounds in silver, resolved to fight his way through
the world, and to live for a year or two on
barest necessaries ;" but we hear of few or none who
do it now. The lads are as bold as ever
and as full of personal vigaur, and de-
cidedly less tempted by drink and vice;
but they are softer, they realise facts more accu-
rately, they have observed life more closely; and
the notion of lying on bare boards, or going with
out regular meals, or wearing a shirt for a week, or
" camping " in any way, is not so much painful as
disgusting to them. They think if they do such
things they will feel as if they had lost their grade,
or were in some way outcast, or were like convicts
in a prison. They will not risk such contingencies
even for a year; and if they are compelled to face
them, prefer the colonies or America, or even South
America, apparently because they know less about
those regions. They will face anything, except dry
bread and a garret. What is the precise thing that
has happened to them to cause that change? Some
say it is the alteration in manners, but there has been
no alteration in manners which renders it more un-
pleasant to live poorly; rather the alteration ha t
been the other way. The ,grades of society have
drawn closer in external appearance, and it is far
easier to be lost in London. People are far less
affected, and confess to poverty far more readily.
It is not, we suspect, more difficult to obtain work,
if you will take anything, and be satisfied with little;
and the variety of occupation has admittedly in-
creased. Others say that there is a positive increase
in the necessity for expenditure, and that a poor lad,
if educated at all, actually cannot live on the money
which would, under the same circumstances, have
maintained his grandfather. That is a final state-
merit, if it is true; so let us look at that a little. Has
the necessity for expenditure increased? House rent
has, and the cost of moat, and the price of milk, and
the demand for washing; the latter, indeed, having
become a serious perplexity to the educated poor; but
everything else is much cheaper. Prima facie, a
strong lad, determined to encounter any hardship
rather than spend what he has not got, and to be con-
tent with mere necessaries, ought to be able to live
in London on, say, 10s. a week, for the working poor
man often does it, and the half-skilled labourer main-
tains on 15s. a wife and family. There are hundreds
of German clerks who do it for a time successfully,
and hundreds of Scotch students in the universities
of their own land who do not spend 155., paying their
fees besides ; and the difference in prices between
England and Scotland is, except in the matter of rent,
not much. Yet it may be taken as certain that the
English student lad will not do it, and that he will
quite honestly believe the proposal, if seriously made
to him, an impossibility. The truth is, the modern i
lad has a half-humorous, half pathetic idea that he s
not good for very much, that he had much better get
into a groove, that a salary will be safer for him than
an "opening," and that he will require a good many
helping hands. He says it, too, with the new frank-
ness of our day, which is so pleasing, but has not
much grit in it, and lays out his life upon the basis
that he is very like the average, and shall not take
any fort by storm. He is most reasonable; so rea-
sonable that the perplexed father, or guardian,
or tutor—who remembers other lads of
.an
older generation—look at him bewildered, with
a half-inclination to admire his sense, and a
quarter of an inclination to damn him for a milksop.
The boy of to-day is not conceited, but he has lost
something besides that queer motive-power, which
tho world has agreed to denounce, and which thein-
dividual feels the. want of every day—be has lost
stoicism. There is plenty to hope for in the new
generation, but it lacks the old strength to dominate
circumstances; and as the battle with them never
ends, will, in each contest, lose more men than the
previous generations did. Old colonists say the
new immigrants will never do what the old did; and
though the new immigrants only smile to see that old
age, even at the Antipodes, looks back with regret,
there is more truth in the saying than they think.
The new men may even do best; but they will not
conquer the earth, and the malaria, and the natives in
the same cheerfully strenuous way.