The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-06-26
THE RISE OF THE OFFICE BOY,

ciate and Defer to His Judgment Promising Fields are Open to Him if He Behaves Himself.
 (From the Chicago Chronicle.)
 If you have lived many years in Chi cago you must know that it is only some twenty years since the office boy became one of the factors of business,
 There are men in this city who never knew what an office boy was until twenty years ago. Fernando Jones, Potter Palmer, George Fergus, Land lord Pierce, Marshall Field and that class never thought of employing boys until after the '70s.
 There always was a boy in neWspa- per offices, and always will be, even if he has to be eventually rigged out as a dummy, But as no one ever thinks the newspaper business is a commercial enterprise, until mo one" tries it, it is legitimate to say that the office boy was never known in commercial circles in Chicago until some time about the centennial.
 At guess it may be said that the career of the office boy began when he was employed as cash boy in the big retail stores. There are a few of them left in that capacity But where the machinery for carrying cash has not supplanted the cash boy, the cash girl has. When the boy was employed for this work his name was invariably "boy." All salesmen addressed him in that way. The cash girl is known as 'cash," never as girl"
 In the early days of the Board Of Trade there were very many boys em- ployed as settling clerks" but that was a business which required some judgment, and those employed for that work were oftener young men than boys.
 The telegraph companies gave the first impetus to the demand for boys, employed as messengers, and the de- mand is still on. It is a rare thing to find telegraph messenger who is more than fourteen years old. When he has reached that age he Is either promoted or, if he has shown that he has no ma terial in him which warrants promo ton, he is discharged.
 When the American District Tele graph company was organized in this city it opened field for more boys and the demand for more is the same there as in telegraph offices, and the outcome of the A. D. T. boy is the same as that of the telegraph messen- ger Promotion or discharge, in case he does not utilize his acquaintance to get into other business, as he often does.
 Train boys antedate cash boys, but as the former do not properly come un- der the head of city boys, they need not be considered.
 In the accumulation of business, in the progress of commerce, in the law of demand, it was found that there were not enough men to go round. When a man applied for position and was asked for his qualifications it was found in most cases that the man had tried a number of things and had suc- ceeded in none The old adage of try ing to teach an old dog new tricks was applied to business, and so it came about that business men preferred to take a raw boy and break him into their ways, and to this hour it is easier for a boy to get a place in a wholesale house, or in railroad offices, or in any line of business which has certain fu- ture, than it is for a man, unless that man has made his mark in some par ticular line so as to create a demand for him by some live competitor
 Primarily the newsboy outranks the cashboy. But he did not become a commercial factor as soon as the cash boy. There has never been any diffi culty in running out the career of the cash boy, the office boy. the telegraph and A. D. T. boy, but the question as to what becomes of the newsboy has worried many an industrious reporter. Useful as the newsboy is acknowledged to be, accommodating as he has be- come, courteous to patrons as he cer- tainly is, far more so than many men who have better advantages, 1t is to be regretted that fewer newsboys get into the higher plane. Occasionally the page in congress becomes a United States senator The canal boy be- comes president, but the newsboy has yet to make his mark in statesmanship or literature.
 There is something in the surround ings of the boy of the city, who comes in contact with commercial activities, that seems to head him off from ad- vancement in politics of the higher kind and in literature. A plow-boy wrote the poetry of Scotland and farm CT boys have made a good deal of the history of the United States, but it is the city boy who gets ahead commer- cially
 There is something interesting in the evolution of the city boy from the time when he is first thrust forward Ion his own hook.' He is generally from good home. He has had examples of morality and theories about the re- wards that await the righteous from his infancy to the day when he gets his first job. He takes hold of his first work with timidity. He presents him. self with an outfit which would pass muster in society, and his half is artis- tically smoothed He is modest and harsh word makes his ears jingle. He is seldom fresh, as the word is un- derstood, in the beginning, and his punctuality is always marked. The dawning of business affairs, the hum and push of the world, break upon him like the landscape when it is first seen from the mountain top by the peasant who has lived always in the lowland. He becomes an observer unconsciously, and constant observation gives him confidence
 After his wages have been saved for 8 few weeks he begins to be restless for