Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1889-06-20
OvercrOwded Professions.

The country is overcrowded with young
men, candidates for business in law, medi-
cine, theology and literature. The conse-
quence is the great mob of young people,
who, upon graduating, expect to make
money easily, find their shingles with the
paint worn into obscurity year after year
but clients come not. The new-fedged
lawyer wears out the w1ndow-sill of his
Office with his heels, his pinions growing
smaller and smaller; the medicine man
gets no patients, and at length loses pa
thence; the young theologian accepts col
porteur8ge, honorable, but hard as it is
honorable, if unpaying while the young
man who was to surprise the world with
his gems of thought, grows more thought
full of the future, as he grows sadder-
eyed.
Yet there is a vast and honorable field,
with plenty of room, and ever yet demand
ing and to demand workers trained to
think. 1t Is paying field, if we'll Quilt
waited. It is the field of manual art and
industry, of skilled labor in the higher
plane of Industrial art, the ground work
of which is scientific education to the in
dustries. Does it not seem strange that
these money making industries, especial
ly in inventive talent, are fast passing
into the hands of foreigners of educa-
ton? Not at all. American youth gets
too much of smattering education,
while the higher European schools turn
out thinking brains.
The young man who has been educated
to think carefully and consecutively is
ten years ahead of him whose education
has been superficial, and covering too
much ground. The average college grad
uate, trained to literature, must first I'M
learn many things before he can cope
with mechanical art. Yet in mechanical
science and art lies the path toward a
competency if not wealth. OF the
seventytwo wealthiest men of the day in
the United States, nearly all started in
life poor, and nearly all of them have
made their money outside the learned
prof essions, or in other words, in manu-
features and trade. High education and
careful training TO thought are now found
to be surer means to fortune ID agricul-
tural pursuits than ever before, and those
who have made large success, have been
men with mental facilities early trained
or who have SO trained themselves.
The boy on the farm naturally is daz
zled with the glitter of city life. His am
bition Is to excel in some pursuit in one
OF the great cities. The law and medi-
cine naturally attract him, but ninety
times out of one hundred he lies at length
stranded on the shores of adversely. The
farmers boy, with his fine physical con-
stitution, health standing out in every
motion, has immense advantage over the
city bred boy, both being alike studious.
1t is from the Drawn of the country that
cities get their best men. But the farm
er's boy yearning for CITY life should not
make the mistake in supposing that the
learned professions are where lie success.
1t lies rather in technical art-the pro-
ductiou of some handiwork that every one
must buy. The farm cannot absorb the
lives of all farmers families. Happy are
those children that il does! The farms
must recruit city life, but let it be done
rather in the domain of productive in
dustry than in the soft handed profess
siOns.