The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-10-18
BOYS AND TRADES.
How Can a Boy Obtain a Situation?-Difi-
culties in Their Way.

How Can a Boy Obtain a Situation?-Difi
culties in Their Way.
Philadelphia Record.
Three causes combine to render it every year
more difficult for a boy to learn a trade. These
three causes are: III Increase of population. lead
ing to overcrowding; ~ trade-defense on the
part Of employers, leading them to employ only
those who are skilled in some specific matter,
and to keep each to his specialty-in other words,
division of labor; and (3) trades-unionism on the
part of the employed, leading them to discounte-
nance additions to their number. Parents In all
classes of life feel the effect Of these three
causes. The rich man who has retired from
business or who wishes his son to follow another
business is confronted With the effects of which
he was himself the partial cause, and the son of
the workingman finds his way to work barred
by the organizations of one of which
his father is an ornament When a
boy succeeds in obtaining work it by
no means follows that he learns a trade. In
deed, if ne is paid, he is paid not to learn the
trade, but to do some one thing the doing of
which IL worth the sum paid him. Anything
more that he may learn is the result of his own
tact and shrewdness. In his odd minutes, or as
he does his subordinate work, q quick-witted
boy sees how other things are done, and on some
occasion may persuade a friendly workman to
let him try his hand, until at last he comes in as
a substitute for some one. Apprenticeship in
the old sense, which was supposed to mean al
lowing "a youth to see how things are done, and
permitting him to attempt to do them, is a thing
OF the past. U~nremitting observation while at
work and unremitting study of matters relating
to business during free hours are the secrets of
success in learning a trade at the present day.
The assiduous, patient worker, who minds moth
ing but his own business in working hours, and
then goes home to rest, is doomed to stay his
life long in q subordinate position.
Overcrowding and division of labor are not
confined to the mill trades. They extend into
other trades and into the professions, which lat
ter are also becoming affected with an exclusive
nnn1 x-If.l. - 80 Lee ualz- Ez-sn ,lAna~@EhA.
name. The young gentleman who enters a mer-
chants Office under the impression that he will
learn the honorable business Of a merchant may
be found engaged in work scarcely as Intellectual
as that of the GRAND boy; and the youth who,
carried away by the ~grandeurs of architecture,
enters the Office of a craftsman. will usually find
that tracing upon paper or linen and keeping
drawers in order is all the architectural educa-
ton he is likely to get for years. The number
of youths who, in the hope to rise, attach them
selves to the professions increases at a greater
ratio than the population, and the influx tends
to bring the pay of mental work down to the
level of manual labor.
This is the state of things. To suggest a rem
edy is difficult, to apply it impossible. A state
that is the result of the habits of several genera
lions can only be done away with by the gradual
growth of habits tending in a reverse direction.
Emigration relieves crowding, but the gaps it
leaves are quickly filed so long as population
continues to increase at present rates. Cooper
alton, if it could become extensive, would act as
a check to the power of exclusive organizations
of every sort, whether ruled by employers or
employed-but cooperation seems ct present al
most as far away as the millennium Socialists
of extreme views suggest anarchy and a re-deal
on communistic principles; but, so long as man
is individual, communism is impossible, and the
attempt to enforce 1t would end in despotlsm
and loss of the large amount of individual liberty
which, after all is said that can be said against
existing institutions, is enjoyed by the men and
women of this century.