Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/98

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��MEN AND THEIR PROFESSIONS.

��ior partner of the firm and was a pros- perous merchant. But adversity and ill health gathered over his way. Afflicted with mental disease, his last years were clouded, and he passed away the victim of care and disappointment, and the ob- ject of sympathy.'

THE MERCHANT'S CLERK.

It is due that I should mention the merchant's clerk. The popular belief that his is a life free from the trials, temptations and perplexities of the man who has a trade or tills the soil is an er- roneous one. There is no man who is compelled to labor for his daily bread — and all men ought to be compelled to do diligence or go hungry — that has a more disagreeable task. Through summer's heat and winter's cold he is ' cooped up ' behind a counter and is face to face all the day long with customers. Some of these customers know what belongs to good manners, but the greater number have only a vague idea of k shopping eti- quette,' and are nice, polite and aristo- cratic in their imagination only. This latter class — and we know enough of hu- man nature to feel confident that there is not a woman in America who will make a personal application of what is here truthfully said — are an unmitigated an- noyance, a libel on good breeding, and are liberally hated and emphatically de- spised by clerks who have no alternative but to shirk them upon their fellows. There is not a merchant's clerk of our acquaintance — we have no fear of con- tradiction — but can give the names of a hundred persons who are dreaded as the plague and dodged as a timid man would a dog with the hydrophobia. There are other trying ordeals to which clerks are subjected ; such as dull days when there is nothing to do but stand around, first on one foot and then on the other, and wait for a storm to clear up and custom- ers to put in an appearance; such as irritable and unreasonable masters ; such as insufficient salary to meet their ex- penses; such as the impossibility to ac- cumulate the wherewith to clothe their family — if they happen to be blessed with one — or pay their tired and need-of- rest wife's expenses to her country

��home ; such as an inability to save a few dollars to pilot them through sickness and support them in their old age. All these things should be considered by country boys who have got the merchant clerk maggot in their crazy heads, and the truth should be stated in all candor that not one in a hundred of those who go behind the counter become ' merchant princes.' It has been our observation that when a business man wants a part- ner, or is compelled to promote some one, the person who has the preference is a son, brother or individual who is backed by money not his own and who comes to the establishment without ex- perience and with monstrous, overhear ing and presuming airs, while the faith- ful clerk, who has spent his strength to build up the business, is snubbed. and T if the times be a little dull, so that he can not readily find employment elsewhere T is cut down in the matter of salary be- cause the expense of the concern has be- come greater than the income. These are facts that admit of no cavil, and there- fore we say to every young man who is about to become a participant in the struggle for place, consider well the sit- uation. Do not despise the lessons of the experienced or imagine that you are so much smarter than others that you will escape their grievances, for it is not so 'much in the possibility of success now as it has been in the past.

THE MECHANIC.

Concerning the mechanic, whether he be first, second or third class, much may be said. Were we to speak at length it would be with great respect and sympa- thy, for we realize that he is indispensa- ble to the world, that much of the pros- perity of the people depends upon him, that by his inventions he has conferred blessings that cannot well be estimated, and that just now he is, in consequence of the general depression of business,, a victim of low wages and in most case& has a hard chance in the matter of ob- taining employment and snpporting his family. To discourage young men from learning a trade is a responsibility — even with a full knowledge of the times and the belief that low wages are to contin-

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