The Feilding Star. THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 1887. Genteel Employment

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 140, 2 June 1887, Page 2

The Feilding Star. THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 1887. Genteel Employment

For several years past in England there has been a considerable outcry among a certain class, against the employment of foreigners, especially Germans, in mercantile houses to the exclusion of the home grown article. It is alleged by employers as a good and sufficient reason for , this, that the foreign is more docile, ! better educated, and cheaper than the J average English clork. We are satisfied that this contention is in every way perfectly just. We differ entirely I from those who believe the " chief end of man" is a so-called "genteel employment." Especially do we differ with those who would plant the young men of Great Britain for the term of their natural lives at writing desks, instead of allowing them to fulfil their natural mission which is to "go out into the wilderness and subdue it." Anything which diverts them from this grand object we hold to be contrary to nature, and if the influx of cheap clerical labor into England has the effect of teaching her sous to utterly despise " genteel employment" an incalculable benefit will have been conferred upon them as individuals, and the British as a nation. A hundred years ago, when emigration was not so well understood, and provided for, as at the present time, and when the population of England was so much smaller, there was, perhaps, some excuse for persons unfitted physically from following the same line of life as their yeoman fathers, seeking lighter employment better suited for them, but they were the exceptions. Now-a-days the exception has become the rule, for as soon as a farmer's son has learned the rudiments of education, the first thing thought of is to get kirn fastened to a desk as a clerk, although he may have the thews and sinews of a giant, capable of felling a forest or tilling a prairie. This sort of thing, naturally enough, tends to bring manual labor into contempt. We admit there may be some excuse for parents who are ignorant of the opportunities waiting to be grasped by the young typical Englishman, in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, where labor is estimated at its proper value, but we cannot find the slightest excuse for parents in the colonies who rush their sous into clerkships when they would be much more profitably employed in tilling the soil or farming a piece of land for themselves. Let those " light genteel employment" billets be filled by those who are physically unfitted for the more manly occupations of farmers or artizans, and a vast amount of real progress woidd be made in the colonies. Less would be hoard of depression or hard times. We certainly blame the several Governments for making civil service employment the acme of human ambition to scholars in the state schools ; the example thus given is a bad one. There would be some sense and good in offering special inducements to lads to make themselves I good agriculturists, good engineers, or good carpenters, but the use of being a good clerk is extremely problematical. Having these opinions it appears to us to be a blessing instead of a curse, the importation of " cheap foreign labor" into the English market for clerkships, to the exclusion of men who are fitted for better things.