The Washburn leader. [volume] (Washburn, McLean County, N.D.) 1890-1986, 1904-09-24
SOCIETY IN ENGLAND
POWER OF CASTE AND INFLUENCE
OF THE LANDOWNING GLASS.
The Number Of Things That a "Gen-
%tlemnn" Cannot Do Without Losing
Social Prestige Ix Too Great by
Fur to Catalogue.

uelnnn' CannOt Id without Losing
Social Prestige Is Too Great by
Fur to Catalogue.
An interesting book might be writ
ten on the influence Of the English
handwriting class. Even in these days
Of ubiquitous manufactures, when to
look at Il map Of England is to wonder
how it is possible for a landowning
class even to exist, the social and po-
litical influence of that class is some
thing more than maintained.
Tho ambition of every successful
Englisllman is to have "a place in the
country" to get a foothold IN the as
piring territorial ladder, and tie ranks
OF tie landed gentry are continually
being reinforced, more SO perhaps to-
day than ever before, by recruits from
the Industrial army. The Immense util-
ity Of the English country gentleman
will not be questioned by any II who
really knows England.
But 1T the sane time it is equally in
disputable that the sort of life he af-
fects-thc endless Indulgence in sport,
the salmon stream, tic grouse moor,
the hunting box, the pheasant preserve
and so Oils on the Whole one Of more
or less harmless and often irresponsi-
bic idleness and that the neighbOrhoOd
in which he lives is rarely apt to re-
gard him as an apostle of strenuous
ness.
The country everywhere stands for
leisure, and so long as the country"
continues to represent h supreme OBJ
ject of an IInglishman's ambition and
his social ideal so long will England be
,eisurely.
Again, in an old and stable land, with
social standards as fixed as the social
! foundations and governed by a mon
archy, the conventions play an enor-
nous part, and the conventions in Eng
land are all against hard work. 1t is
the leisure class that rules, that makes
up society, that holds all the positions
mel naturally covet.
A sort Of "Four Hundred" atlnos-
phere permeates England. In America
one gets Il whiff of it on Fifth avenue
aud at Newport, but i'll England n is
never away from it. Tho number of
things, for instance. that q gentleman"
cannot do without losing social caste is,
in England, so prodigious as to form
almost a schedule of forbidden in
dustries. There are some trades and
professions that are respectable" and
those that are not.
Only an E%nglishman knows which is
which, why u doctor ranks socially
above a dentist. why q man who sells
should be ~irretrievably below the man
who manufactures, and he, the Eng
lishman, knows it by an instinct which
is born in him and which he never
examines and so cannot define. Any
one who can tell why the merchant.
should consider himself and be con
sidered by others. the sorinA superior
of the biggest storekeeper in the king
dom will lie well on the way toward
understanding England.
The daughter Of j wealthy
turer of kettles marrics the owner or
the largest dry goods store in London
Why should she he thought and spo-
ken Of as having married Il little.
though only q little, beneath her? Per-
sonally, l do not know. l merely OBJ
serve, without attempting an explana-
ton, that the man in the wholesale
business is more looked up to than the
man in the retail business, that while
the former is not averse to- talking
about his affairs, the latter is only too
anxious to "sink the shop" and that
social position in England is regulated
by a host of perfectly Fictitious and
conventional considerations more read
lily felt than expressed.
Such graduations exist Of course to
some extent everywhere, but nowhere
are they so stcreotyped, nowhere do
they strike so deeply, as in England.
have never yet been able to discover
an Englishman who had not the social
privilege Of despising some other Eng
lishman, and the lower n penetrates
in the social scale the more complex
and mysterious and the more rigidiy
defined do these lines Of demarcation
become.
The point is that throughout England
the sense Of the nobility of work for
it's own sake, if not actually lost, has
become SO confused by the intrusion
Of quite alien factors that the sphere
of action open to a young man of what
ever rank is sensibly circumscribed.
The country, while democratic in form,
is not democratic in spirit. 1t has not
accepted and does not subscribe to
that gospel of work which lies at the
root Of American strength, American
success, American, democracy.
Any one who has looked into English
trade unionism must have realized how
largely it is mixed up with class spirit.
The workingman who knows that his
employer drives down to the Office at
half past 10, takes a couple of hours
for lunch, is home again shortly after
s and thinks himself somewhat of a
"hustler"" If he is content with three
months holiday in a year is not likely
to have a keen appreciation of the dig
nifty Of labor. His ideal insensibly be-
comes that of doing as little as he can,
of striving to reproduce on his own
plane his employers mode OF life and
Of regarding work as an unpalatable
interruption of the real business of ex-