The Idaho world. [volume] (Idaho City, Idaho Territory) 1864-1918, 1869-03-18
WHY DON'T BOYS LEARN TRADES!

The present generation of young men seem
to have strong aversion to every kind of trade,
business, calling, or occupation that requires
manual labor, and an equal strong tendency
toward some so called "genteel" employment
or profession. The result is seen in a supera-
bundance of elegant penmen, book-keepers,
and clerks of every kind who can get no en-
ployment, and are wasting their lives in the
vain pursuit of what is not to be had; and q
terrible overstock of lawyers without practice
and doctors without patients
The passion on the part of the boys and
young men to be clerks, Office-attendants, mes
sengers, anything, SO that it is not work of the
kind that it will make them mechanics or trades
men, is deporable sight to those who have
full opportunities to see the distressing effects
of it in the struggle for such employments by
those unfortuates who have put it out of their
power to do anything else by neglecting to
learn some permanent trade Or business in
which trained skill can always be turned to
account. The applications for cerkships and
similar positions in large establishments are
numerous beyond anything that would be
thought of by those who have no chance to
witness il. Parents and relatives, as well as
the boys and young men themselves, seem to be
afflicted with the same iDtatuatiOn. To all
such we say, that the most unwise advice that
you can give to your boy is to encourage him
to be clerk or book-keeper. At the best,
1T is not well paid occupation. Very fire.
quently it is among the very poorest. This is
the case when the clerk is fortunate enough to
be employed but if he should happen to be out
of place, then comes the weary search the fear
full struggle with the thousands of others look
ing for places, the never ending disappOint-
ments, the hope deferred that makes the heart
sick, the strife with poverty, the humiliations
that take the manhood out of the poor souls,
the privations and suaerngs of those who de-
pend upon his earnings, and who have no re-
source when he is earning nothing. No father,
no mother, no relative should wish to see their
boys or kindred wasting their young lives in
striving after the genteel positions that bring
such trials and priyations upon them in after
life.
How do these deplorably false notions as to
choice of occupation get into the heads of boys!
why do they or their parents consider it more
" genteel" or desirable to run errands, sweep
out Offices, make fires, copy letters, &c, than
10 make hats or shoes, or lay bricks, or WELD
the saw or jackplane, or handle the machinist's
file, or the blacksmiths hammer! We have
heard that some of them get these notions at
school. If this be true, 1t is a sad perversion
of the means of education provided for our
youth, which are intended to make them useful,
as we'll as intelligent members of society, and
not useless drags and drones Should it be so,
that the present generation of boys get it into
their heads that, because they have more school
learning and book accomplishment than their
fathers had, they must therefore look down
upon the trades that require skill and handi-
craft and whose productions make up the vast
mass of the wealth of every country, then it is
time for the controllers and the directors to
have the interior walls of our schoolhouses COW
cred with maxims and notices warning them
against the fatal error.