As I write, I am, myself oppressed by this of . Half a dozen times while I was writing this book I stopped to reason with myself to the effect that it wouldn’t do any good, that the rich will not read it, and that, even if they do, it cannot pierce through the of self-conceit, vanity, and . Yet I have , in the hope that perhaps some few will read and understand, and, instead of setting me down as an alarmist and an , will at least consider me honest, and perhaps set to work for themselves to find out the truth about these things.
That grim truth is that we as a class are to death. We have outlived our time. It is not necessary, as it was in the earlier ages of the world’s history, that the mass of the people should be enslaved to give leisure to an upper class in the pursuit of luxuries, of , of the factors that go to the making of civilization. Instead of being the roof and crown of things, the wealthy class in America to-day has sunk to the level of the . The time has come when the producing classes are about to bring it to . In fact, to-day we stand before the court of civilization. We are charged openly with being ; and the mass of evidence against us is so overwhelming that there is no doubt whatever about the verdict of history, if indeed it must come to a verdict.
Idleness is as a . Of that I am certain. Even in the social world it is becoming unfashionable. Not so very long ago, in the fashionable world of New York, it was considered bad taste, in fact, it was a of , to inquire amongst the men of your acquaintance what anybody did for a living. Within the past five years there has been a very decided change in this respect, and I constantly hear that very question asked, without , in the most fashionable clubs of the city.
A man whom I know pretty well, himself a member of the highest social order, but a man of energy, recently put very this fact that many of the quondam idle class are now engaging themselves in useful pursuits. On the street one day he met a young man, a confirmed idler of long . He exchanged the time of day with him, and was told that he was about to go to Europe to join in the social season of London. He congratulated him and said he thought it was a good thing to do.
A few nights later, talking to me about him, he said:
“I feel sorry for Charlie. He seems so lonely. He can’t find any one to play with him!”
In a measure, that is true. The confirmed idler of the social world is slowly coming to be despised instead of envied. He still a few of the up-town clubs, but even here he is more and more to the bottom of the social list. It is harder and harder every social year to fill up the ranks for social entertainment. A dinner or an early reception can be managed223 very well, for the young men who work will go to such functions, perhaps as freely as they ever went. It is far different with the late dance or the late reception.
If you could go down into Wall Street and call the roll of the bond houses, it would you to discover how many young men of the highest social class are working very hard right at the bottom of the ladder of industry learning the financial business. A friend of mine, a fairly well-to-do man of a small city in the Middle West, sent his son to me a year or so ago with a letter asking me to introduce him in Wall Street with a view to his learning the bond business. He had chosen that as his vocation in life, and he had taken a special course in college as a preparation for it. I sent him, with personal letters, to half a dozen friends of mine, partners in various houses. I told him simply to look around, at first, and to talk freely and to these gentlemen about the chances for a young man in that line of business.
He came back to me in the course of a week, . He had looked forward to earning his living in an way. He found the conditions in this labour market most deplorable from his point of view. According to his story, every one of these big bond houses announced itself able to get all the labour that it needed at from five dollars to ten dollars a week. His report interested me so much that I went around myself to some of my friends to learn the causes of this strange condition.
In the case of one bond house I discovered that it had one very and very high225 paid man selling bonds at throughout the city. Working under him were three young men learning the bond business. I knew them all, personally, socially. They belonged to one of the best of the younger sets. Two of them went out a good deal, and the third had a reputation as something of a student. One of them I knew to be the happy possessor of four and a small stable of horses. Both the others owned automobiles, and belonged to some of the most expensive, as well as the best, of the up-town clubs.
One of these young men—and none of them was so very young at that—received the salary of fifteen dollars a week. The other two were getting ten dollars apiece. All three were college men. My friend in this bond house told me that two of them were making good; but the third has the “ten o’clock in the morning habit,” and will not last very long. Of course, none of them can begin to live on the money he receives for his work. I do not think that any one of them could pay his tailor and haberdashery bill with his salary, and even the bond house clerk has to eat, you know.
Further showed me that there is a perfect flood of these young men turned loose each year upon the financial districts of this country, not only here, but in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. They go to work for trivial salaries, because they care little or nothing about the amount that they receive. They are not working for wages, but they are working for . They do not want to be idlers, because they know that in these days idleness is doomed. They pick out Wall Street, particularly, I think, the bond department of Wall Street, because that is recognized as a world of real work that is fitted to the tastes and abilities of a well-educated but not too rigorously trained young man.
These young men are by no means dilletanti. They are strong, vigorous young men, and they into what they know to be a competitive field with a full knowledge that they are not likely to go very far unless they earn their way. For in these same offices, and working in the field in hot competition with them, there is still an army of young men from the provinces, so to speak, who actually do live upon the proceeds of their work. It gave a real personal joy to discover that, in several of the houses which I looked into, the poor young man who starts228 out into the world in competition with these of the wealthy aristocracy is paid a better salary at the beginning than is his moneyed competitor, and has at least an equal chance for . Indeed it is recognized that the wealthy young man has a marked advantage through his personal acquaintance with men of money, and more is expected of him in return from his training than is expected of the self-supporting clerk. As a rule, however, the real workers are given outlying districts of the country to , while the aristocracy of the profession does its work in the city.
I this phenomenon in some detail, because I think it is a very significant thing in its bearing upon the subject of this book. Perhaps more than any other one it is an avenue leading toward honourable229 labour, suited to the capacity and the taste of our wealthy young men. That the market is crowded to-day, and has been crowded for five years past, more than it ever was crowded before in the history of the financial profession, speaks far more than I can speak of the change of sentiment amongst the wealthy.
In the Harvard Club, of a Saturday afternoon in winter, you will find groups of young men sitting around and talking, just as you would have found them fifteen years ago. There is one m............