Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1876-01-08
Uncertainty Of Wealth.

AhCtENdihal VI NNoiih'
The absence of the law of primogeni-
ture causes a frequent change Of owner
ship in the private residences which
contribute SO much to tie adornment of
our cities. While the head of the family
lives, the home may be retained
though very often q reverse of fortune
compels him to seek humber quarters
but when he dies the heirs are COM
PEELED to get rid of the too expensive
luxury. How many of the houses built
in st. Louis twenty years ago, says the
Republican of that city, are now owned
by the men who erected them, or their
descendants How many of later date,
now occupied by their builders, will be
in possession of their present tenants,
or their descendants, twenty years
hence Other influences beside the
lack of primogeniture contribute to
this, in some respects, unfortunate re-
suit. There are more ups and downs in
life in the new world than in the old.
Fortunes are made more quickly, and
disappear much more rapidly. Wealth
is seldom transmitted beyond the second
generation, and in many instances does
not last through the first.
The boy born with a silver spoon in
his mouth frequently has to taste pewter
before his pilgrimage is over, and he
may have the pleasure of being splash
ed with mud from the carriage wheels
of the man who was once his father s
porter. This is free country, very
free indeed, and among the consequences
of that freedom is the exceeding uncer-
tainty of financial matters. Yet in no
country is less provision made for the
evil day SO far as our children are con-
cerned. The wealthy parent brings up
his sons and daughters as though there
were not the remotest possibility that
they could ever be poor. If rich
father should insist upon his boy learn
ing trade he would be set down as a
| mild-mannered lunatic. If rich moth
er should instill into her daughter rigid
ideas of economy and industry, she
would be looked upon as either very
mean or very foolish-probably both.
Yet every day we are taught the neces-
sity of this preliminary discipline; every
day we see men and women falling from
af1uence to poverty, who, if properly
trained, might not have fallen at all, or,
if they did fall, could have risen again.
It is a shame and disgrace that, in a
land where labor is supposed to be hon
orable, and where the law recognizes no
distinction of caste, so small a proper.
ton of the sons of the wealthier classes
learn trades. No young man has right
to consider himself thoroughly indie
pendent unless he has someavocation by
which, health permitting, he can always
make living. And the best and surest
avocations are those for which there is
always a demand. Lawyers, doctors,
preachers, professors, clerks-all these
and their kindI ed are frequently drug
In the market; but how seldom is it that
good carpenter, blacksmith, machin-
ist, wagon maker, shoemaker, tinsmith,
book binder, or printer has to travel far
in search of remunerative employment
We shall never be thoroughly republican
until there are fewer genteel drones in
the national hive.
There is probably no subject on which
more has been written than the above
Almost everybody has seen evidences Of
the fact about them; and how many who
will read this article can realize its
| truthfulness