The Wheeling daily register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1864-1878, 1874-11-11

From the Chicago Inter-ocean.

! from the Chicago lnter-Ocean.
Nothing .is perhaps becoming more
evident than the fact that rude labor, re-
quiring only certain amount of practice
and dexterity, is now generally better
paid than what involves more or less ed
ucstion, brain work, and skill. In many
places the clerk is not earning half Of the
income Of the carpenter. In short, all
kinds Of manual labor both skilled and
unskilled, are at u premium; while all
that is sedentary and involves chiefly, if
not exclusively, the work of the brain,
has become drug on the market.
Day laborers grumble when receiv-
ing only 81 for eight hours
work, while clerks can be had by
the hundreds for So or $40 week, with
hours of almost any length. All the
professions are crowded The candidates
for sedentary work increase ct far more
rapid rate than the demand for them;
and hence is coming round the strange
anomaly that education, instead of fit
ting the young for earning higher wages
and getting on better in the world, Is
actually becoming bar to their progress,
and condemning them to a lifelong
course of pinchery and unremunerative
struggle. The fact is undoubted, what
ever may be its cause, and however So
ciety may seek to apply remedy.
The main cause of this unpleasant
State of things is the foolish notion that
physical toll carries with it, in one way
or another, certain amount of inferi-
ority, if not positive disgrace; so that in
order to be 'genteel," it is thought nee
cssary to earn ones bread with unsoiled
fingers. Mrs, Grundy has settled it that
s'labor" is not honorable, and therefore,
in obedience to her ruling, any and eve
ry device is attempted to get young men
into respectable though pinched, ways
of living The result is manifest. Clerks
of all sorts and sizes, swarm like flies in
Egypt, and jostle and underbid each 9TH
or for every small, ill-paid vacancy that
turns up; while mechanics cant get jour-
neymen, and day laborers turn up their
noses ut what would be Il
godsend to many starving,
educated gentleman. So long as the pres
cnt state of feeling in reference to labor
prevails, matters will not only continue
Some mothers and sisters and wives are
born aristocrats, and have far more to do
with this crying evil than they might be
ready to acknowledge. To think of any
of their relatives coming home at night
begrimed with "honest sweat D." and dust
would be intolerablc The boy that hints
at such thing for himself is apt to be
forthwith denounced rs person of GLOW
tastes" who is bent on disgracing the
family. While, on the other hand, the
prosperous mechanic or his wife dreams
at once of getting his son into something
hi. her and better than that at which he
himself has toilcd.
Now, it is an interesting question
whether this evil will work itself out
like some others, by ultimately going To
all extreme and causing a revulsion?
Nav it not come, by and by, that labor
shall be all the rage and education looked
on as Il brand of inferiority, as it was in
DAYS when knightly hands were guiltlcss
of the use of the pen? That would GER
tainlv be sad issue to all our civillza-
ton and all our schemes OF popular it
struction. Fortunately, there Is no need
for such return to comfortable and
prosperous ignorance side by side with a
nervous, ill-paid education and accom-
plishmcnts. What is wanted is simply a
more rational and more correct estimate
of the position and dignity OF labor; a
conviction that manual and mechanical
toll does not necessarily imply either
coarscnoSs of manners or barrenness OF
intellect. We must come to understand
that gentlemen may, without reproach,
have horny hands, and that the dignity
of "A family is not compromised by any
of its members being skilled carpenter
or good blacksmith.