New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1855-12-26
SHAVE OR RESIGN!


Directors of the Northumberland and Durham
"District Bank have ordered oil their employees
| who adoln their faces with a mustache to shave
cor resign" A thoroughly English order! About
eighteen m nths ago we heard Of the great
beard movement and Of the onslaught of the
Directors of the Bank of England upon those Of
their employees who had given it their counte
nance TbereupoD the terrible order of Shave or
Resign' ran through all the London Banks. The
beard movement having run its course for veal or
for wee, some advanced spiIits, it seems have now
started great mustache movement 1t may be
that this latter movement has originated with the
very individuals whose boards were tyrannically
"crushed out, on the principle illustrated in his
tory, that freedom crushed out in one place ifts
its head in another. The spirit of resistance to
Rome, put down in Prague, lifted up its head in
Wittenberg, and the spirit of resistance to the ra
zor, driven from It's first stronghold-the Cain
has taken refuge in the upper lp-and here, again,
the mOoeyed hierarchy intervenes with its ruthless
mandate, "Sbaye or Resign +"
Thisis only the last application Of those sumpsu
airy laws which are riedly enforced by social
opinion in England The way in which these la rs
operate upon domestic servants, male and female,
is notorious Sir George Browns Indignation at
the British soldier, because during the campaign
on the Danubs he suffered his hair and beard to
grow beyond the barleycorn lengths and spaces
allowed by the Queens regulations, had also moth
ing surprising in it but it is not often thst we
catch glimpse at the application of a sunptuary
Law to the case of bankers clerks or those ap-
prenticed to the learned professions We have
known of one embryo attorney who was exborted
by his master to discard Butcher shoes for Wei
Iipeton boots. and of another who was warnet to
discontinue radical journal and to substitute
conservative paper in its stead, though such in
stances are not commonly made public. So,
too, at the time that wi6e-awase hats began
to be worn in Englend, that circumstance gave
occasion to many acts of petty tyranny The
young man who wore wideawake after lS4S
was set down IS Revoutionist or Socialist, until
Kossuth's arrival in 1851 gave great impulse to
this fashion of head-g The individual who
donned the wide awake at this last period was lst
off with 10 more injurious imputation upon his
character than that of being partisan of Hanga-
rian independence.
For our part, we have not shadow Of
doubt that this Dusiache movement in Engl and is
intimately connected with European politics Tie
NorthumbIiaK clerks in cultivatiug the mustacbe,
mean, beyond question, to assume an attitude of de-
iance to Russia. 1t would be perfectly safe, we
fancy to bet eight to one that these young fellows
are men who are not afraid to pronounce the word
Poland They are, depend upon it, warm sup
porters of Palmerston against all treacberous
coalitions, and are leading spirits az their Lyceum
and Debating Club. Imagine the awkward posi-
ton of these innovating young men after they have
knuckled under and conformed to social require
ments They had been known to hold strong opn-
ions in favor of the mustache; how chop-fallen
they must look, when to their friends kind ques-
toniuss they confess the CALLING reason of its sud
den dssse! Lst these miserable young English
men come over here, and they will find with us
bank directors who not only have too high sense
of mans dignity to enforce upon their subordinates
such ignomnious conditions ss "sAave Or resign"
but who themselves boldly wear mustachss of
great length, luxurisnce and splendOr