The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-10-15
The study Of Professions and Learning
of Trades.


The study of Professions and Learning
of Trades.
THERE has been for many years percephble
increase in the number Of young men who are
seeking to make living by entering the pro-
fessions. and visible diminution Of those
who are choosing, by honest toll, to acquire
competency by learning trade. We do not
see where this current will lead to, If it con-
tinues at the same rate it has been flowing for
the past twenty years, but suppose that the
natural equilibrium will be restored some
time by the utter failure of the professions as
means living, and compulsory return to
the work of the muscle instead of the brain.
It seems, however, about time that the reac-
tion should set in. A glance at our Philadel-
phia bar will show how poor an inducement is
held out by the profession of law; yet how
many who could earn a sufficient competency
by their muscles are living from hand to
mouth because of false pride or preference
which induces them to attempt task which
they are incapable of fulfilling OF the
numerous lawyers at the bar Of our city, how
many of them are making an income in
proportion to what they could had
they adopted a trade While the at
torneys are numbered by hundreds, the
successful lawyers can be almost counted on
your fingers. Yet with this evidence of the
almost certain result of such an attempt the
crowd still continues to flock up for admission,
and seek to fill position which, if there were
no competitors, they would still be untitled by
nature to adequately maintain. AS it is, with
powerful rivals, and men who are by nature
fitted for legal prominence, they sink into in
significance, and barely manage to live by
doing other work than that pertaining to their
profession. The same remarks apply in a
lesser degree to both medicine and divinity.
In them are men who were never designed by
nature for anything but trade, and who,
having wilfully mistaken their calling, are
paying dearly for their supposed responsibility
by Strengthened means and wretched remorse.
1t is not as if this was an exceptional thing
| but it is an everyday occurrence. Honest
| labor is being held derogatory, and
one of the professions seems the only thing
highly respectable. The consequences are, of
course, disastrous. We have a deteriorated
bar, shallow ministry, and incapable ply
sicians, while the trades languish for want
of those who are capable of filling them with
skill and energy. The idea seems to have
possessed the mind of youthful America that
it is beneath the dignity of our people to work
with their hands, that it is a discredit to be a
machinist, or bricklayer, or a carpenter, or
a dozen other trades all equally honorable
and remunerative. Under the influence of this
idea, the apprenticeship system is being gradu-
ally abandoned, and our statute which relates
to apprentices is reckened among the obsolete
laws of the days of our colonial government.
That we deprecate this unfounded notion it is
hardly necessary for us to say wo over
this false standard of respectability, standard
as ridiculous as it is ruinOus to the prospects
Of many of our young men. The professions
are overlooked. So full are they, that if not
a recruit was added for ten years, the want of
them would never be felt. While they are
crowded to repletion, the trades are opening a
chance for a competency, which needs
but energy to secure. The broad field of skilled
labor calls for young men to enter and possess
themselves of its wealth. 1t holds forth a
prospect of almost immediate support and of
certain independency in the future. There is
but one need, and that is the will to undertake
the necessary preparation. The superior in
telligence of our young men forms an effectual
protection against any fears of foreign compe-
tition. That the want is felt is proved by the
action of many of our manufacturers, and
especially those of machinery, who are inn
porting, at heavy expense, skilled hands
from Belgium, because their want cannot be
supplied by native material. This fact is a
demonstration of a want, and it behooves our
young men and boys to see to it that they Sc
cure the lucrative places now offered to for
eigners.
Parents are doing grievous wrong to their
children in not impressing on them the honor
and dignity of labor. 1t is with them that
the responsibility must rest, and when we see
them putting their sons into stores at ridicu-
lously low wages, or eagerly seeking to gain
them places as Office boys with lawyers, and
congratulating themselves that they are doing
their sons great favor, rather than having
the boys apprenticed to some trade, We
f regret to think of the wrong they are really
, committing on their children. Until a boy ii
of age, he certainly cannot do more than make
: his living: if he does that he does well-fal
better than most boys. His living can bt
earned either by the purposeless life in stor,
q or an Office, or else by course of training