16 APRIL 1954, Page 7

Figarina ?

There is almost certain to be trouble ahead for a craft or profession when, in the journal devoted to its interests, the Situations Vacant" outnumber very heavily the "Situations Wanted." This is what is happening in the urbane and indispensable World of barbering. Whether the abstruse sense of vocation which sets a youth on fire to cut the hair of his fellow-men is withering away, or whether there is now more money to be made in other and easier ways, the fact remains that apprentices are not entering the profession and that gaps in its ranks—sometimes caused by its leaders deserting the gentlemen for the ladies—are not being filled. Although it is true that the population.of these islands is growing steadily older, and therefore presumably less hirsute, a grave situation seems bound to arise before long. I suppose it will be saved, in the end, by the emergence of female barbers. But the ladies, who have been desperately keen to compete in practically every other sphere of masouline activity, have shown so marked an indifference to this one that one cannot help wondering whether they are' not inhibited by some congenital handicap from cutting men's hair in anything like the proper way. If this is so, baldness may lose its sorrows before the century is much older.