Kitabı oku: «The Art of Living», sayfa 6
II
“Supposing you had four daughters, like Mr. Perkins, what would you do with them, educationally speaking?” I said to my wife Barbara, by way of turning my attention to the other sex.
“You mean what would they do with me? They would drive me into my grave, I think,” she answered. “Woman’s horizon has become so enlarged that no mother can tell what her next daughter may not wish to do. I understand, though, that you are referring simply to schools. To begin with, I take for granted you will agree that American parents, who insist on sending their boys to a public school, very often hesitate or decline point-blank to send their girls.”
“Precisely. And we are forthwith confronted by the question whether they are justified in so doing.”
Barbara looked meditative for a moment, then she said: “I am quite aware there is no logical reason why girls should not be treated in the same way, and yet as a matter of fact I am not at all sure, patriotism and logic to the contrary notwithstanding, I should send a daughter to a public school unless I were convinced, from personal examination, that she would have neither a vulgar teacher nor vulgar associates. Manners mean so much to a woman, and by manners I refer chiefly to those nice perceptions of everything which stamp a lady, and which you can no more describe than you can describe the perfume of the violet. The objection to the public schools for a girl is that the unwritten constitution of this country declared years ago that every woman was a born lady, and that manners and nice perceptions were in the national blood, and required no cultivation for their production. Latterly, a good many people interested in educational matters have discovered the fallacy of this point of view; so that when the name of a woman to act as the head of a college or other first-class institution for girls is brought forward to-day, the first question asked is, ‘Is she a lady?’ Ten years ago mental acquirements would have been regarded as sufficient, and the questioner silenced with the severe answer that every American woman is a lady. The public school authorities are still harping too much on the original fallacy, or rather the new point of view has not spread sufficiently to cause the average American school-teacher to suspect that her manners might be improved and her sensibilities refined. There, that sounds like treason to the principles of democracy, yet you know I am at heart a patriot.”
“And yet to bring up boys on a common basis and separate the girls by class education seems like a contradiction of terms,” I said.
“I am confident – at least if we as a nation really do believe in obliterating class distinctions – that it won’t be long before those who control the public schools recognize more universally the value of manners, and of the other traits which distinguish the woman of breeding from the woman who has none,” said Barbara. “When that time comes the well-to-do American mother will have no more reason for not sending her daughters to a public school than her sons. As it is, they should send them oftener than they do.”
“Of course,” continued Barbara, presently, “the best private schools are in the East, and a very much larger percentage, both of girls and boys, attends the public schools in the West than in the East. Indeed, I am inclined to think that comparatively few people west of Chicago do not send their children to public schools. But, on the other hand, there are boarding-schools for girls all over the East which are mainly supported by girls from the West, whose mothers wish to have them finished. They go to the public schools at home until they are thirteen or fourteen, and then are packed off to school for three or four years in order to teach them how to move, and wear their hair, and spell, and control their voices – for the proper modulation of the voice has at last been recognized as a necessary attribute of the well-bred American woman. As for the Eastern girl who is not sent to the public school, she usually attends a private day-school in her native city, the resources of which are supplemented by special instruction of various kinds, in order to produce the same finished specimen. But it isn’t the finished specimen who is really interesting from the educational point of view to-day; that is, the conventional, cosmopolitan, finished specimen such as is turned out with deportment and accomplishments from the hands of the English governess, the French Mother Superior, or the American private school-mistress.
“After making due allowance for the national point of view, I don’t see very much difference in principle between the means adopted to finish the young lady of society here and elsewhere. There are thousands of daughters of well-to-do mothers in this country who are brought up on the old aristocratic theory that a woman should study moderately hard until she is eighteen, then look as pretty as she can, and devote herself until she is married to having what is called on this side of the Atlantic a good time. To be sure, in France the good time does not come until after marriage, and there are other differences, but the well-bred lady of social graces is the well-bred lady, whether it be in London, Paris, Vienna, or New York, and a ball-room in one capital is essentially the same as in all the others, unless it be that over here the very young people are allowed to crowd out everybody else. There are thousands of mothers who are content that this should be the limit of their daughter’s experience, a reasonably good education and perfect manners, four years of whirl, and then a husband, or no husband and a conservative afternoon tea-drinking spinsterhood – and they are thankful on the whole when their girls put their necks meekly beneath the yoke of convention and do as past generations of women all over the civilized world have done. For the reign of the unconventional society young woman is over. She shocks now her own countrywoman even more than foreigners; and though, like the buffalo, she is still extant, she is disappearing even more rapidly than that illustrious quadruped.”
“Are you not wandering slightly from the topic?” I ventured to inquire.
“Not at all,” said Barbara. “I was stating merely that the Old-World, New-World young lady, with all her originality and piquancy, however charming, and however delightfully inevitable she may be, is not interesting from the educational point of view. Or rather I will put it in this way: the thoughtful, well-to-do American mother is wondering hard whether she has a right to be content with the ancient programme for her daughters, and is watching with eager interest the experiments which some of her neighbors are trying with theirs. We cannot claim as an exclusive national invention collegiate education for women, and there’s no doubt that my sex in England is no less completely on the war-path than the female world here; but is there a question that the peculiar qualities of American womanhood are largely responsible for the awakening wherever it has taken place? My dear, you asked me just now what a man like Mr. Perkins should do with his four daughters. Probably Mrs. Perkins is trying to make up her mind whether she ought to send them to college. Very likely she is arguing with Mr. Perkins as to whether, all things considered, it wouldn’t be advisable to have one or two of them study a profession, or learn to do something bread-winning, so that in case he, poor man – for he does look overworked – should not succeed in leaving them the five thousand dollars a year he hopes, they need not swell the category of the decayed gentlewoman of the day. I dare say they discuss the subject assiduously, in spite of the views Mr. Perkins has expressed to you regarding the sacredness of unemployed feminine gentility; for it costs so much to live that he can’t lay up a great deal, and there are certainly strong arguments in favor of giving such girls the opportunity to make the most of themselves, or at least to look at life from the self-supporting point of view. At first, of course, the students at the colleges for women were chiefly girls who hoped to utilize, as workers in various lines, the higher knowledge they acquired there; but every year sees more and more girls, who expect to be married sooner or later – the daughters of lawyers, physicians, merchants – apply for admission, on the theory that what is requisite for a man is none too good for them; and it is the example of these girls which is agitating the serenity of so many mothers, and suggesting to so many daughters the idea of doing likewise. Even the ranks of the most fashionable are being invaded, though undeniably it is still the fashion to stay at home, and I am inclined to think that it is only the lack of the seal of fashion that restrains many conservative people, like the Perkinses, from educating their daughters as though they probably would not be married, instead of as though they were almost certain to be.”
“You may remember that Perkins assured me not long ago, that marriage did not run in the Perkins female line,” said I.
“All the more reason, then, that his girls should be encouraged to equip themselves thoroughly in some direction or other, instead of waiting disconsolately to be chosen in marriage, keeping up their courage as the years slip away, with a few cold drops of Associated Charity. Of course the majority of us will continue to be wives and mothers – there is nothing equal to that when it is a success – but will not marriage become still more desirable if the choicest girls are educated to be the intellectual companions of men, and taught to familiarize themselves with the real conditions of life, instead of being limited to the rose garden of a harem, over the hedges of which they are expected only to peep at the busy world – the world of men, the world of action and toil and struggle and sin – the world into which their sons are graduated when cut loose from the maternal apron-strings? We intend to learn what to teach our sons, so that we may no longer be silenced with the plea that women do not know, and be put off with a secretive conjugal smile. And as for the girls who do not marry, the world is open to them – the world of art and song and charity and healing and brave endeavor in a hundred fields. Become just like men? Never. If there is one thing which the educated woman of the present is seeking to preserve and foster, it is the subtle delicacy of nature, it is the engaging charm of womanhood which distinguishes us from men. Who are the pupils at the colleges for women to-day? The dowdy, sexless, unattractive, masculine-minded beings who have served to typify for nine men out of ten the crowning joke of the age – the emancipation of women? No; but lovely, graceful, sympathetic, earnest, pure-minded girls in the flower of attractive maidenhood. And that is why the well-to-do American mother is asking herself whether she would be doing the best thing for her daughter if she were to encourage her to become merely a New-World, Old-World young lady of the ancient order of things. For centuries the women of civilization have worshipped chastity, suffering resignation and elegance as the ideals of femininity; now we mean to be intelligent besides, or at least as nearly so as possible.”
“In truth a philippic, Barbara,” I said. “It would seem as though Mrs. Grundy would not be able to hold out much longer. Will you tell me, by the way, what you women intend to do after you are fully emancipated?”
“One thing at a time,” she answered. “We have been talking of education, and I have simply been suggesting that no conscientious mother can afford to ignore or pass by with scorn the claims of higher education for girls – experimental and faulty as many of the present methods to attain it doubtless are. As to what women are going to do when our preliminary perplexities are solved and our sails are set before a favorable wind, I have my ideas on that score also, and some day I will discuss them with you. But just now I should like you to answer me a question. What are the best occupations for sons to follow when they have left school or college?”
Pertinent and interesting as was this inquiry of Barbara’s, I felt the necessity of drawing a long breath before I answered it.
Occupation
I
The American young man, in the selection of a vocation, is practically cut off from two callings which are dear to his contemporaries in other civilized countries – the Army and the Navy. The possibility of war, with all its horrors and its opportunities for personal renown, is always looming up before the English, French, German, or Russian youth, who is well content to live a life of gilded martial inactivity in the hope of sooner or later winning the cross for conspicuous service, if he escapes a soldier’s grave. We have endured one war, and we profoundly hope never to undergo another. Those of us who are ethically opposed to the slaughter of thousands of human beings in a single day by cannon, feel that we have geography on our side. Even the bloodthirsty are forced to acknowledge that the prospects here for a genuine contest of any kind are not favorable. Consequently, the ardor of the son and heir, who would like to be a great soldier or a sea captain, is very apt to be cooled by the representation that his days would be spent in watching Indians or cattle thieves on the Western plains, or in cruising uneventfully in the Mediterranean or the Gulf of Mexico. At all events our standing, or, more accurately speaking, sitting Army, and our Navy are so small, that the demand for generals and captains is very limited. Therefore, though we commend to our sons the prowess of Cæsar, Napoleon, Nelson, Von Moltke, and Grant, we are able to demonstrate to them, even without recourse to modern ethical arguments, that the opportunities for distinction on this side of the water are likely to be very meagre.
Also, we Americans, unlike English parents, hesitate to hold out as offerings to the Church a younger son in every large family. We have no national Church; moreover, the calling of a clergyman in this country lacks the social picturesqueness which goes far, or did go far, to reconcile the British younger son to accept the living which fell to his lot through family influence. Then again, would the American mother, like the conventional mother of the older civilizations, as represented in biography and fiction, if asked which of all vocations she would prefer to have her son adopt, reply promptly and fervidly, “the ministry?”
I put this question to my wife by way of obtaining an answer. She reflected a moment, then she said, “If one of my boys really felt called to be a clergyman, I should be a very happy woman; but I wouldn’t on any account have one of them enter the ministry unless he did.” This reply seems to me to express not merely the attitude of the American mother, but also the point of view from which the American young man of to-day is apt to look at the question. He no longer regards the ministry as a profession which he is free to prefer, merely because he needs to earn his daily bread; and he understands, when he becomes a clergyman, that lukewarm or merely conventional service will be utterly worthless in a community which is thirsty for inspirational suggestion, but which is soul-sick of cant and the perfervid reiteration of outworn delusions. The consciousness that he has no closer insight into the mysteries of the universe than his fellow-men, and the fear that he may be able to solace their doubts only by skilful concealment of his own, is tending, here and all over the civilized world, to deter many a young man from embracing that profession, which once seemed to offer a safe and legitimate niche for any pious youth who was uncertain what he wished to do for a living. Happy he who feels so closely in touch with the infinite that he is certain of his mission to his brother-man! But is any one more out of place than the priest who seems to know no more than we do of what we desire to know most? We demand that a poet should be heaven-born; why should we not require equivalent evidence of fitness from our spiritual advisers?
And yet, on the other hand, when the conviction of fitness or mission exists, what calling is there which offers to-day more opportunities for usefulness than the ministry? The growing tendency of the Church is toward wider issues and a broader scope. Clergymen are now encouraged and expected to aid in the solution of problems of living no less than those of dying, and to lead in the discussion of matters regarding which they could not have ventured to express opinions fifty years ago without exposing themselves to the charge of being meddlesome or unclerical. The whole field of practical charity, economics, hygiene, and the relations of human beings to each other on this earth, are fast becoming the legitimate domain of the Church, and the general interest in this new phase of usefulness is serving to convince many of the clergy themselves that the existence of so many creeds, differing but slightly and unimportantly from one another, is a waste of vital force and machinery. In this age of trusts, a trust of all religious denominations for the common good of humanity would be a monopoly which could pay large dividends without fear of hostile legislation.
In this matter of the choice of a vocation, the case of the ambitious, promising young man is the one which commends itself most to our sympathies; and next to it stands that of the general utility man – the youth who has no definite tastes or talents, and who selects his life occupation from considerations other than a consciousness of fitness or of natural inclination. There are here, as elsewhere, born merchants, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, architects, engineers, inventors, and poets, who promptly follow their natural bents without suggestion and in the teeth of difficulties. But the promising young man in search of a brilliant career, and the general utility man, are perhaps the best exponents of a nation’s temper and inclination.
In every civilization many promising youths and the general run of utility men are apt to turn to business, for trade seems to offer the largest return in the way of money with the least amount of special knowledge. In this new country of ours the number of young men who have selected a business career during the last fifty years, from personal inclination, has been very much greater than elsewhere, and the tone and temper of the community has swept the general utility man into mere money making almost as a matter of course. The reasons for this up to this time have been obvious: The resources and industries of a vast and comparatively sparsely settled continent have been developed in the last fifty years, and the great prizes in the shape of large fortunes resulting from the process have naturally captivated the imagination of ambitious youth. We have unjustly been styled a nation of shopkeepers; but it may in all fairness be alleged that, until the last fifteen years, we have been under the spell of the commercial and industrial spirit, and that the intellectual faculties of the nation have been mainly absorbed in the introduction and maintenance of railroads and factories, in the raising and marketing of grain, in the development of real estate enterprises, and in trading in the commodities or securities which these various undertakings have produced.
The resources of the country are by no means exhausted; there are doubtless more mines to open which will make their owners superbly rich; new discoveries in the mechanical or electrical field will afford fresh opportunities to discerning men of means; and individual or combined capital will continue to reap the reward of both legitimate and over-reaching commercial acumen. But it would seem as though the day of enormous fortunes, for men of average brains and luck, in this country were nearly over, and that the great pecuniary prizes of the business world would henceforth be gleaned only by extraordinary or exceptional individuals. The country is no longer sparsely settled; fierce competition speedily cuts the abnormal profit out of new enterprises which are not protected by a patent; and in order to be conspicuously successful in any branch of trade, one will have more and more need of unusual ability and untiring application.
In other words, though ours is still a new country, it will not be very long before the opportunities and conditions of a business life resemble closely those which confront young men elsewhere. As in every civilized country, trade in some form will necessarily engage the attention of a large portion of the population. From physical causes, a vast majority of the citizens of the United States must continue to derive their support from agriculture and the callings which large crops of cereals, cotton, and sugar make occasion for. Consequently business will always furnish occupation for a vast army of young men in every generation, and few successes will seem more enviable than those of the powerful and scrupulous banker, or the broad-minded and capable railroad president. But, on the other hand, will the well-to-do American father and mother, eager to see their promising sons make the most of themselves, continue to advise them to go into business in preference to other callings? And will the general utility man still be encouraged to regard some form of trade as the most promising outlook, for one who does not know what he wishes to do, to adopt? He who hopes to become a great banker or illustrious railway man, must remember that the streets of all our large cities teem with young men whose breasts harbor similar ambitions.
Doubtless, it was the expectation of our forefathers that our American civilization would add new occupations to the callings inherited from the old world, which would be alluring both to the promising young man and the youth without predilections, and no less valuable to society and elevating to the individual than the best of those by which men have earned their daily bread since civilization first was. As a matter of fact, we Americans have added just one, that of the modern stock-broker. To be sure, I am not including the ranchman. It did seem at one time as though we were going to add another in him – a sort of gentleman shepherd. But be it that the cattle have become too scarce or too numerous, be it that the demon of competition has planted his hoofs on the farthest prairie, one by one the brave youths who went West in search of fortune, have returned East for the last time, and abandoned the field to the cowboys and the native settler. The pioneers in this form of occupation made snug fortunes, but after them came a deluge of promising or unpromising youths who branded every animal within a radius of hundreds of miles with a letter of the alphabet. Their only living monument is the polo pony.
Our single and signal contribution to the callings of the world has been the apotheosis of the stock-broker. For the last twenty-five years, the well-to-do father and mother and their sons, in our large cities, have been under the spell of a craze for the brokerage business. The consciousness that the refinements of modern living cannot adequately be supplied in a large city to a family whose income does not approximate ten thousand dollars a year, is a cogent argument in favor of trying to grow rich rapidly, and both the promising young man and the general utility man welcomed the new calling with open arms. Impelled by the notion that here was a vocation which required no special knowledge or attainments, and very little capital, which was pleasant, gentlemanly, and not unduly confining, and which promised large returns almost in the twinkling of an eye, hundreds and thousands of young men became brokers – chiefly stock-brokers, but also cotton-brokers, note-brokers, real-estate-brokers, insurance-brokers, and brokers in nearly everything. The field was undoubtedly a rich one for those who first entered it. There was a need for the broker, and he was speedily recognized as a valuable addition to the machinery of trade. Many huge fortunes were made, and we have learned to associate the word broker with the possession of large means, an imposing house on a fashionable street, and diverse docked and stylish horses.
Of course, the king of all brokers has been the stock-broker, for to him was given the opportunity to buy and sell securities on his own account, though he held himself out to his customers as merely a poor thing who worked for a commission. No wonder that the young man, just out of college, listened open-mouthed to the tales of how many thousands of dollars a year so and so, who had been graduated only five years before, was making, and resolved to try his luck with the same Aladdin’s lamp. Nor was it strange that the sight of men scarcely out of their teens, driving down town in fur coats, in their own equipages, with the benison of successful capitalists in their salutations, settled the question of choice for the youth who was wavering or did not know what he wished to do.
It is scarcely an extreme statement that the so-called aristocracy of our principal cities to-day is largely made up of men who are, or once were, stock-brokers, or who have made their millions by some of the forms of gambling which our easy-going euphemism styles modern commercial aggressiveness. Certainly, a very considerable number of our most splendid private residences have been built out of the proceeds of successful ventures in the stock market, or the wheat pit, or by some other purely speculative operations. Many stars have shone brilliantly for a season, and then plunged precipitately from the zenith to the horizon; and much has been wisely said as to the dangers of speculation; but the fact remains that a great many vast fortunes owe their existence to the broker’s office; fortunes which have been salted down, as the phrase is, and now furnish support and titillation for a leisurely, green old age, or enable the sons and daughters of the original maker to live in luxury.
Whatever the American mother may feel as to her son becoming a clergyman, there is no doubt that many a mother to-day would say “God grant that no son of mine become a stock-broker.” I know stock-brokers – many indeed – who are whole-souled, noble-natured men, free from undue worldliness, and with refined instincts. But the stock-broker, as he exists in the every-day life of our community, typifies signally the gambler’s yearning to gain wealth by short cuts, and the monomania which regards as pitiable those who do not possess and display the gewgaws of feverish, fashionable materialism. There are stock-brokers in all the great capitals of the world, but nowhere has the vocation swallowed up the sons of the best people to the extent that it has done here during the last thirty years. And yet, apart from the opportunity it affords to grow rich rapidly, what one good reason is there why a promising young man should decide to buy and sell stocks for a living? Indeed, not merely decide, but select, that occupation as the most desirable calling open to him? Does it tend either to ennoble the nature or enrich the mental faculties? It is one of the formal occupations made necessary by the exigencies of the business world, and as such is legitimate and may be highly respectable; but surely it does not, from the nature of the services required, deserve to rank high; and really there would seem to be almost as much occasion for conferring the accolade of social distinction on a dealer in excellent fish as on a successful stock-broker.
However, alas! it is easy enough to assign the reason why the business has been so popular. It appears that, even under the flag of our aspiring nationality, human nature is still so weak that the opportunity to grow rich quickly, when presented, is apt to over-ride all noble considerations. Foreign censors have ventured not infrequently to declare that there was never yet a race so hungry for money as we free-born Americans; and not even the pious ejaculation of one of our United States Senators, “What have we to do with abroad?” is conclusive proof that the accusation is not well founded. In fact: there seems to be ample proof that we, who sneered so austerely at the Faubourg St. Germain and the aristocracies of the Old World, and made Fourth of July protestations of poverty and chastity, have fallen down and worshipped the golden calf merely because it was made of gold. Because it seemed to be easier to make money as stock-brokers than in any other way, men have hastened to become stock-brokers. To be sure it may be answered that this is only human nature and the way of the world. True, perhaps; except that we started on the assumption that we were going to improve on the rest of the world, and that its human nature was not to be our human nature. Would not the Faubourg St. Germain be preferable to an aristocracy of stock-brokers?
At all events, the law of supply and demand is beginning to redeem the situation, and, if not to restore our moral credit, at least to save the rising generation from falling into the same slough. The stock-broker industry has been overstocked, and the late young capitalists in fur overcoats, with benedictory manners, wear anxious countenances under the stress of that Old World demon, excessive competition. Youth can no longer wake up in the morning and find itself the proprietor of a rattling business justifying a steam-yacht and a four-in-hand. The good old days have gone forever, and there is weeping and gnashing of teeth where of late there was joy and much accumulation. There is not business enough for all the promising young men who are stock-brokers already, and the youth of promise must turn elsewhere.
