, 1865-12-29

as ar attorney, a
accept the management OF a railway, a
Governor keep an hotel. General Lee is
not considered to be lowered by turning
srhoolmaster, General Mcclellan was in
command of a great army, is a traffic
manager, and may be Secretary at War.
Everybody seems able TO do everything
within certain limits without loss of
caste, and the limits are growing wide.
That is a very remarkable story told by
Sir Morton Peto of the printing Office in
Chicago where he found forty-seven
compositors who had been in the war.
One of them had raised himself 10 be
major, another TO be captain, and two
others TO subaltern grades, but all had
returned quietly when the war was over
to the 'compositor's stick. Sir Morton
qnoted that as an illustration of patriot
ism, but to our minds it illustrates some
thing else at least as strongly. English
compositors might go to battle Just as
readily, and if the slaughter were large,
rise just as high, but they would be very
unlikely indeed TO return to their work
again. They would feel that they had
fallen in life, and would struggle against
the fall with an energy scarcely any
other danger would elicit. Moreover, if
they succumbed they would lie regarded
as having fallen, the comrades who had
not sncCumbed would look down on them,
and their new old friends would either
despise or pity them. The major who.
having been a compositor, had command
ed volunteers for years in agreat struggle,
and then become a compositor again,
would not in England have Il happy life
of it among compositors. sCincinnatus
could go to his farm, but he could not
have gone to tailoring with the same
unrufded dignity, and in England he could
not go to anything. Imagine Mr.. Glad
stone a bank manager! Shares in that
bank would rise, but he would fall. The
American does not see the fall, cannot
recognize any reason why a decent work
man should not serve his country, rise if
he can, and then having risen, become a
decent workman again. Any work hon
eslly done is in its way honorable, and
if a general is useful as a traffic manager,
why should he not become traffic mama
ger, and be as we'll received as before9
This idea, the judgment of men for them
selves and not for their occupation, APP
pears to outsiders on the increase, and if
it is, the change indicates the approach
of a phase of democracy which has often
been suggested by philosophers, but
which no people of European lineage
has ever attempted 10 carry out. Sup
pose it realized, and occupation to cease
to be associated with grade, what would
be the result7 Clearly in the first place
an indefinite addition to the force of the
nation which asserted the new liberty.
Any obstacle which forbids to a nation
unlimited freedom of choice in the selec-
iion Of lis rulers, agents, and servants is
pro tanto an evil, and the association of
work and caste in such an obstacle.
When it disappears the chooser has thirty
millions TO choose among instead of three
as in France, or thirty thousand as in
England, and the chance therefore of The
square man getting into the square hole
is proportionately increased. That is as
regards the chooser only, but the gain is
multiplied fifty fold by the change in the
position of the chosen. The idea of
grade once removed, a man will almost
always select the occupation he likes
best, which in nine cases out of ten will