WHY DON'T BOYS LEARN TRADES?

Southland Times, Issue 1538, 16 February 1872, Page 3

WHY DON'T BOYS LEARN TRADES?

(From the Philadelphia Ledger.) The present generation of y^ung 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 so-called " genteel" employment or profession. The result is seen in the superabundance of elegant penmen, book-keepers, and clerks of every kind who can get no employment, and are wasting their lives ia 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 them 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 some permanent trade or business in which trained skill can always be turned to account. The applications for clerlcships and similar positions in large 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 boys and young men themselves, seem to be afflicted with the same infatuation. To all such we say, that the most unwise advice you can give your son is to encourage him to be a clerk or a book-keeper. At the best it is not a well-Daid occuDa-

tion. Very frequently it is among tke poorest. This is the case when the clerk is unfortunate enough to be employed ; but if he 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, the hope deferred that makes the heart sick, the strife with i poverty, the humiliations that take all che manhood out of the poor souls, the priva- j tions and sufferings of those who depend upon their earnings, and who have no resource when he is earning nothing. No father, no mother, would wish to see their boy or kindred wasting their lives ia 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 Leads of boys ? "Why do they or their parents consider it more " genteel" or desirable to run errands, sweep out offices, make fires, copy letters, &c, than to make hats or shoes, or lay bricks, or wield the saw or jackplane, or handle the mechanic's file, or the blacksmith's hammer ? We have heard that some of them get these notions at school. If this be true, it is a sad perversion of the means of education provided for our youth which are intended to make them useful as well as intelligent members of society, and not useless drags and drones. Should it be so, that the present generation of boys get it into their heads that because they have more school learning: and book accomplishments than their fathers had, they must look down upon the trades that require skill and handicraft, and those productions make up the vast mass of the wealth of every couutry, then it is time for the controllers and directors to have the interior walls of our schoolhouses covered with maxims and mottoes warning them against the fatal error.