Semi-weekly south Kentuckian. [volume] (Hopkinsville, Ky.) 1883-1889, 1886-05-21
A NEW PROFESSION.
rhe Tempting Advantages It Offers to
Young Men of Brains and Industry,

Young Men OF Brains and Industry.
In an address delivered to the
students OF Harvard College, Mr.,
Charles Francis Adams called the at
tention of the young men to q new
profession, in which they could find
field for tho exercise of their abilities
and for the practical use of the intel
lectual training they are receiving.
1t is the profession of railroading,
and its Developments though very rapid
during the last generation, is yet far
from complete, and will afford an OPP
portunity for a useful and successful,
even for brilliant, career to hosts Of
young men of natural energy and ca
pacity and thoroughly disciplined
minds. The practical management of
the railroad business is already in the
hands of men who, as q body, are in
the very front rank of the professional
talent of the United States-tLe sort of
men who in former times would have
done the constructive work fof States,
led great armies, and won fame as the
administrators of Governments. Inde-
pendent lines have consolidated into
grand systems, covering thousands Of
miles and employing thousands of men,
and demanding for their management
the highest order of executive capacity,
and the widest range of abilities, gem
eral and special. These leaders-and
we mean, not the directors of the roads
and the manipulators Of their securi-
ties, but those who actually concern
themselves with the running of the
enterprises from day to day-are as
Mr.. Adams says, chiefly self-mAde
men, "who have worked up from the
brake and from the footboard of the
locomotive" and who have grown up
with the railroad business almost fl om
its infancy. But the time is at hand
when these pioneers must be re-
placed by experts of equal ability, who
will be all the more valuable and s,lc-
cessful in the new era of railroading he
cause of greater and broader and more
thorough general training. The work
of consolidation, begun of recent
years only, promises to go on until tho
present corporations seem small in
comparison with the vast corporations
OF the future, and the army Of workers
now employed is only feeble force as
compared with that which will be re-
quired by the extension and develop
ment of the railroad business during
the next half century.
There is also no other profession
which demands 80 wide a range Of
abilities as railroading calls for. The
financial department, the construction
department, the operating the general
traffic, the clerical and the legal dc.
partments afford fields for great va
riety of special aptitudes and acquire
ments, and the head of each must be
of an executive and administrative
genius akin to that which makes great
captains and great governors.
Mr.. Adams, therefore, could well
inhame the ambitions of the Harvard
students by picture of the posslbili-
ties within the grasp of the young
man who enters upon a railroad career.
Railroading, too, is profession so re-
cent that it is not overcrowded with
novices, like the law and medicine.
There is also much perplexity at this
time among young men who would
choose career, and those who would
direct them in the choice, as to the
fields in which they can most profit
ably expend their energies, The old
professions are full to overhowing.
Our merchant marine, it may almost
be said, consists of nothing except
coasters. The fight of the labor unions
for better pay shows that the mechani-
cal trades want few recruits, the organi-
cations even going so far as to rigidly
restrict the number of apprentices.
Agriculture is more and more passing
into the hands Of industrious immi-
grants, the old farms of New England,
for instance, coming into the possession
Of men of foreign extraction. The mer-
camille business is drawing to it too
great a multitude for its needs, and the
supply of clerks and bookkeepers is Sc
much in excess of the demand that they
can not, on the average, obtain the
wages of mechanic or OF car driver.
Mr.. Adams has accordingly done the
young men of the country, and especi-
ally the educated young men, real
service in calling their attention to the
opportunities offered them by the rail-
road profession. But it is a profession
into which they must enter without
foolish prejudiccs as to the character Of
their initial work. AS he says, progress
will not be slower than in the law or in
medicine, for each of which man must
study at least five years; but the begin.
ming must be made at the lowest round
of the ladder. H
The Pennsylvania Railroad Company
has established a system of promotion
for its employees which is bringing into
It's service an exceptionally fine quality
Of young men, who may start by hand.
ling the brakes, and the system ia
pretty sure TO extend through the rail
road business, and to be a common
feature of the vast and consolidated
corporations of the future. Even as q
brakeman or an ordinary road-worker,
a young man can earn more than he is
likely to get at the outstart in one Of
the old professions, or as clerk to q
| merchant,-N Y Sun.