"GENTLEMEN HELPS."

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2598, 5 May 1877, Page 4

"GENTLEMEN HELPS."

A thousand applicants for a berth of thirty shillings a week, and five hundred applicants for a berth of twenty shillings ! There must be something essentially unsound about a community, prosperous and wealthy although it fancies.itself, where such incidents ordinarily occur. Perhaps the old apologue of the Gentleman and the Basketmaker may help us-to under-' stand the matter. At home the Gentleman was a great swell, and the "iJasketmaker was a nobody. Cast on the desert island the Gentleman was helpless and useless^ while the Basketmaker; delighted the savages by his wicker works of art. England seems to have reached the desert-. island stage. That which we style education, but which is very far from being complete education, has become so widely spread that a man who can read, write, and cypher is just the reverse of a phenomenon. He is as common "an occurr rence" as a woman who can sew, and so," in consequence of the modern distaste for muscular labor, and for what are absurdly called " menial occupations," all berths where the -three li's come into play for men, and stitching comes into play for women, are eagerly run after. Hence the typical clerk and the typical sempstress, always in excess of the demand, and always underpaid. But the Poor Gentleman who applied for the situation above referred to implies that his ambition is not confined to clerkly work,- and that he would willingly take a situation as " forest keeper or gamekeeper, or even gardener or coachman.". But he has here named: four-methods of gaining a livelihood, all of which demand special qualifications and special training. Middle-class town-bred men. would find it no easy matter to acquire the requisite experience, and even "men of the higher ranks, who can ride and shoot, and who know what country life is, would in most cases find they : had mnch to learn before they cbuld be called satisfactory grooms or gamekeepers. The real remedy lies in the old Jewish custom. Every man—and woman too we may add in these days—should in y^outh be taught a trade, whatever their rank, suitable to" their physical and mental capacities ; and then, while, on the one hand, we should be relieved from the painful spectacle of thousands of well-educated (so-called) men and women snatching at some miserablypaid berth, we should, on the other hand, be less at the mercy of the carpenter, the painter, the plumber, and other, varieties of the "British workmen," who are apt to presume on our known helplessness.— Graphic. . / ' ■ .