WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR GENTLEMEN.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2683, 21 September 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR GENTLEMEN.

Tub question has often enough been asked, What are we to do with our sous ?—and more recently the no less serious problem of tho disposal of " our daughters '" occupied tho public mind for a time But the real question, in which these two are included, is—What arc we to do with our gentlemen ? We say that the other two are embraced in this, for tho difficulty with our sons is not, so much how to get them nil started i" sufficiently gentlemanly vuoations ; while our daughters on the other baud, are left more and more to taste the sweets of blessedness beoausc our gilded youth, being obliged before all things t<; mniiitiin the grcntlernaoly status —oftener than not cm extremely attenuated and ungentleinan like income—cannot afford to marry. The cause of this curious social phenomenon, which may be described as the pressure of tho gentleuiiiuly creation udou the means of gentlemanly Mibsisteuee, is traceable in the main to two factors. The first and most, important is to be found in tho spread of popular education. Scotland, in mi education respect, is still a long way J ahead of England. Here, therefore, wo have alre idy tested the result that is now in process of achievement over tho Border. That result has been apparent, as is well known, in an enormous development of the professional ambition. The sous of the soil, who formerly whistled contentedly at the ancestral ploughtail, crowd the universities, and thence ewarin out upon the world as lawyers, doctors and what not. Not only have they supplied the needs of their uativo country, they have flowed into England, the Colonies, to the ends of tho earth. The professional Scotch limn is übiquitous. Thoso, again of loss soaring ambitions have made their way to the cities, where, speedily blossoming out in gloves, silk handkerchiefs, andcigarettes they have crammed the clerkly calling to tho bursting point. Tho second factor is the increasing predomiuanco of urban over rural life. The iuflueneo of this factor is far less powerful than that of education, , but still it has its effect, for tho whole i tendency of the social intercourse that is . pcveloped hi cities, and of the wonderfully ; cheap luxuries in dress and pastime that ( the city alone affords, is to promote a 1 spurious faahionableness infinitely beneath j the honourable intellectualambitiou of the ] would-be scholar, yet very similar in its J ultimate result. By these means there is ( a process of gentleman manufacture (we ; use the term " gentleman,' 7 of course, in ] an every-day sense) constantly going on ; 1 and as the existing gentlemen are also busy c reproducing their kind, and no counteract- \ ing process is at work transforming gentle- f men into " common men," a very rapid I increase of gentlemanly order of creation is t plainly inevitable. And it is of this great ci social tendency that the swollen condition '] of the professions is a symptom. Fortu- a nately for us, the invention of machinery, n by abridging the methods of manufacture a and reducing the need of manual labour, ti hasenabled an enorinouslylarge proportion (i of mankind to enjoy the fruits of labour f< without descending to the ungentlemanly p act of labouring ; but evon the abridging (

power of machinery has a limit, and nothing is more certain than this, that to whatever point civilization may ultimately attain, there must still remain the necessity —the hard and uncompromising fate —of some people, an 1 not tin; relative few, but the relative many, being hewers of wood and drawers of water for tho rest.

In social matters it is generally easier to diagonise the disease than to find the proper remedy. In practice a remedy for fc'ic trouble we arc considering has been sought in the shipment of consignments of supci fluous young g-iitlcmen to America and the colonies. Out there, as everybody knows, wo discover Peer's sons driving mill; c.irts and descendants of the Conqueror dispensing brandy cocktails. Once out of Mnglu.tid they cause to be encased in the limitations of the conventional gentleman, and turn their hand to any work that offers. As a perfect remedy, this method has proved utterly inadequate, but it is a paitial one, and what is more it suggests the direction in which the real rcmuly is to bo looked for. Our gentlemen, when they go abroad, are not above any honest work, and, further, unless they mean to starve, thuy have to work extremely hard. As Lord Derby lately said, if young men would only condescend to the same kind of employment here, and work as they do in the colonies, they would probably get on as well, without Koing out of the country at all. This is the remedy in a nutshell. It is a false idea of the " gentility " of the professional occupations that has caused the inordinate rush to them just as a still more ridiculous ambition makes thousands of men endure an existence of dandified starvation as clerks, rather than bo well-fed merchanica and have crimy hands. Take away the artificial distinctions that create the spirit of caste in callings, and immediately our geutiemen have abundant employment and to spare. A movement in this direction is already apparent. Many of our nodility have been compelled by the improverishment of the family inheritance to come down into the market-place, and even ladies of title and fashion have resorted to the ancient expedient of the shop. The step does them honour. It is the man that makes the calling, not the calling that makes the man ; and if only this simple old age were more commonly remembered there would be no cause to dread the increase of our gentlemen, but the reverse.