The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1889-09-04
Why NOn-PrOducers.

The tendency of American youth to
forsake the industrial field and Join
the great army of non-producers has
long been bewailed by magazine writers
and popular lecturers. Their SUPER
fetal declarations on the subject,
however, have conspicuously failed to
enlighten the public as to the real I'M
derying cause of the dislike of the
young for manual labor. Nobody pos
sessing even an inkling of the truth
will be apt to imagine that the evil will
be checked in any appreciate degree
by greater attention to industrial train
ing. What the latter movement will
accomplish, if wisely carried out, will
be to better equip those who now de-
sire to follow mechanical calling for
the battle of life-to prepare them for
becoming skilled artisans in place of
half-trained botches. 1t will require
some far more radical change than in
dustrial schooling to stem the current
which has set in from the farm and the
workshop toward the counting-house,
store and office. Young people with a
smattering of education can easily see
that there are prizes within reach of
those who enter upon a mercantile or
professional career such as the working
man can hardly hope to obtain. They
see, moreover, that even if they never
rise beyond the lower steps of the
ladder there is greater degree of social
consideration extended to the clerk or
book.keeper, even though he be strug-
Cling to exist upon a wretched pittance,
than to the mechanic or laborer. The
man who is able to wear black coat at
his work and to keep his hands clean,
who can assume enough of the conven-
tional gentlemanly appearance to
pass in crowd, occupies far better
social position than his father, the
carpenter or farmer. The female clerk
or saleswoman has better chances of
marriage than the factory girl or do
nestle. So long as this is the case it is
folly to expect that technical education
or any scheme of the kind will materi-
ally alter the situation. The simple
fact that labor is despised caste is
quite sufficient both to explain and to
Justify the intense desire of most young
men and women to attach themselves
to the non-producing class. When, in
addition to this, it is borne in mind
that toll is systematically eXpoliated
for the benefit of the idlers and the
superfluous and Improbable brain
workers, and that every one who enters
commercial or professional life has at
least a chance, though it be but small
one, of attaining position where he
can share the spoils, the preference of
the rising generation for light and easy
head-work appears not only natural,
but, from the competitive point of
view, sensible and worthy of approval.
There is no remedy for this state of
things, and there ought to be no rem
edy short of complete justice to labor
Until the development of sounder
and healthier public opinion raises the
status of manual industry in the social
scale, so that an honest worker receives
as much consideration as the genteel
idler, and by just system of distribu-
ton secures the whole instead of a
mere fraction of his earnings, the
constant study of the alert and quick
witted young American of either sex
will be not how to fit him or herself for
useful toll, but how to escape from
the prison-house of despised and i'll
requited labor. Not until labor re-
ceives its due, both in social estimation
and improved material conditions, will
any less fundamental reform suffice to
stay the exodus from the farm, the
workshop and the factory to the over
crowded highways and byways of bust
ness and professional life.-Jounal Of
United Labor.