WHY DON’T BOYS LEARN TRADES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 514, 23 February 1872, Page 1 (Supplement)

WHY DON’T BOYS LEARN TRADES.

(From the Philadelphia Ledger.) The present generation of young men have a strong aversion to every kind of trade, business calling, or occupation that requires manual labor, and an equally strong tendency towards some io-called “ genteel employment or profession.' iTho* teSult is seen in the superabundance of elegant penmen book-keepers, and clerks of every kind who can got.no employment, and are wasting their lives in the vain pursuit of what is not to be had ; and a terrible overstock of lawyers without practice and doctors without patients. The passion on the part of boys and young men to be clerks, office attendants, messengers, anything, so that it is not work of the kind that will make mechanics or tradesmen, is a deplorable sight to those who have full opportunities to see the distressing effects in the struggle for such employment by those unfortunates who have put it out of their power to do anything else, by neglecting to learn so.ue per- i mnnont trade 'or business in which trained skill can always be turned to account. The applications lor clerkships and similar positions in huge establishments are numerous beyond anything that would be thought of by those who have no chance to witness it; Parents and relatives, as well as the toys and young men themselves, seem to bo afflicted with the same infatuation To ad such we say, that the most unwise advice yon can give your son is to encourage him to be a clerk o.r a book-keeper. At the best it is not a well paid occupation. Very frequently it is among the poorest This is the case when the clerk is unfortunate enough to be employed, but if lie should be out of place, then comes the weary search, the fearful struggle with the thousands of others looking for places, the never-ending disappointments,, ths hope deferred that makes the heart' sick, the strife with poverty, the humiliations that take all the manhood out of the poor souls, the privations and sufferings of those who depend upon their earnings and who have no resource when he is earning nothing. Nofather, no mother, would wish to see their boy or kindred wasting their lives in striving after the genteel positions that bring, such trials and privations upon them in after life. How do these deplorably false notions get into the beads of boys! Why do they or their parents consider it more “ genteel ’’ or desirable to run errands, sweep out offices, n.i Mcc fires, copy letters, (fee., than to make hats or shoes, or lay bricks, or wield the saw or jack plane, or handle the mechanic’s file, or the blacksmith’s hammer! We have heard that some of them get these notions , at school. If these be true, it is a-sad | perversion of the means of education i provided for our youth which are in- I tended ft make them useful as well as i intelligent members of society, and | not useless drags and drones. Should i it bo so, that tho present generation of boys get it into their heads that because they have more school leanring and book accomplishments than their fathers had, they must look down upon tiro trades that require skill and handicraft, and those productions make up tho vast mass of tho weal th of every country, then it is time for the controllers and directors to have the interior walls of our school-houses covered with maxims and mottoes warning them against the fatal error.