The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1873-08-16
Market fO2. E0hO9,

From the Annapolis Republican.
We need not apprehend an overstocked mar
ket for labor, so long millions of acres of pro-
ductive lands, all over this wide domain, and
especially in the West, are inviting the hands
of industry to cultivate them. The wealth Of
the world, it is we'll said, sis in proportion to
what the worlds labor produces and unless
there is cheating somewhere, all participate in
adding to production share in the addition in
the ratios of their respective contributions.
Notwithstanding all that we have heard, all
that has been written about industrial schools,
practical education, POLYTECHNIC education, the
average American parent, the average Amer
lean boy, seem to have kind of supersti-
tious adherence of industrial labor they scorn
the working mans jacket and all the marks,
conditions, and appurtenances, of labor and di-
rect perfect industry. This is one of the bar
barisms of our advanced 'civilization," and it
must be purged away before society can bright
en- and bloom in the dawn of true progress. 1t
is a barbarism that entails in its track as much
desolation and misery as war and more famine
than pestilence.
"Our greatest trouble is that we have too few
workers and too much gentility, so called. A
large proportion of American BOYS are brought
up with view to the learned professions or to
trade. What is the result? There are multi
tudes of men, that become greater as scholastic
education is more diffused, who are not wanted,
and cannot obtain employment in those pro-
LESSONS or occupations, and who become unfit
ted, physically, mentally, and morally, for
turning their hands to occupations in which
they are wanted. Unfortunately these human
superfuities are drawn by some fatal fascina-
ton into our great cities. Nature, which never
tetrays the heart that trusts her, nature in her
rural aspects, where she most reveals her gen.
erous charms, has for them no attraction. And
so they swarm into the binding glare of our
great cities.
hot 10 Of n,.fa
tured gentility to do! Take the unemployed
clerk, for example. He is only medium, con-
sequently he cannot say, as Daniel Webster
said when told the bar was over-crowded,
There is room at the top He can make out
bills and invoices, and keep books after fash
ion. But he can do nothing else except it be to
keep up genteel appearances as long as his
money or his credit will hold out Employers
know this, and knowing that the market for
this sort of service is over-stocked largely, ma
turally take advantage of these facts. If they
were to advertise for clerk at no more than
fifty dollars month they would have hundreds
of applications, and many of the applicants,
with families to support, would be glad Of e
situation at even less. Yet this is the L y
BILE prospect that lies before the large maturity
of clerks. He has but slim prospect for ris-
ing to manly independence, and is but little
else than bond slave to spurious gentility.
"If he had good trade, and was industri-
Gus and sober, he could make "a to IS a day and
make it free from that frightful tax which keeps
him and his manhood down in the name of
genteel appearance.
GAS it is, what is TO become of him? 1t is
really painful to think it would be charity to
wish that his fate might be no worse than
blank. Let us hope that the false education and
barbarous social conventionalisms to which he
owes his existence will not much longer operate
in the multiplication of his class.
with children who will ultimately have to fight
their way in the world, that it is better to train
them in the mysteries of respectabl e mechan-
ical calling than to educate them for clerkshps
and other over-stocked occupations an pro-
fessions."