THE OUTLOOK OF THE PROFESSIONAL CLASSES. A GERMAN statist recently asserted,
in a carefully drawn. up monograph on the Subject, that the majority of University students, and, indeed, of all educated lads in Germany, were living in a dream. They all wanted to be "professional men," and there was not professional work in the country, including among the professions the service of the State, for more than one-third of them all. Either the work must be divided and all professionals become poorer even than at present, or two out of three candidates must, as far as their professional incomes were Concerned, go without food. The writer may have exaggerated the facts, for he could hardly calculate accurately the work requiring to be done, and which may ultimately be attempted—for instance, Germany, like England, needs five hygienic inspectors where there is one, and the " poor " are only beginning to consult lawyers, while a religious revival might treble the number of needed spiritual teachers—but he was probably right in his main idea. Germany is overrun with half-starved professional men, so is America, and so before long the United Kingdom will be. The increase of remufterative work to be done by the educated who desire to live by their brains, and, if possible, by the professions recognised as conferring a diploma of pre- sumable culture, and leaving the workers gentlemen in their own eyes and those of the girls they court, bears no proportion to the increase in the nutabers Of those who contend for it. We cannot give the figures, for there are and can be no statistics of the total of work to be divided, but every one knows that in every profession the young are more and more disappointed, that competition grows ever keener, and that the numbers who admit that they make absolutely nothing, is becoming bewildering. The Bar declaies itself starving ; the Solicitors lament the proportion who 'remain clerks for half their lives ; the State service is besieged with., applicants for examination; and Medicine is positively choked with men who strive, con- tend, and intrigue for appointments and " practices " of £50 and £100 a year. Fathers lament loudly over children whom, do what they will, they cannot "place ;" and the journals mention almost every week the hundreds of applicants for the smallest vacancy which an educated man can fill. The " cases " which come before the chiefs of the professions grow more painful every day, in spite of the decline in drinking —which, in the last generation, was the great first cause of failure—and it has become a truism to say that of all who start on professional careers, one-third "go under,"—that is, get sick, die, or emigrate one-third barely survive fighting on, without a hope of retiring, to old age ; and one-third make a decent or comfortable living. That is just the proportion given by the learned German, and we fear the numbers of the first class are far from having reached their limit. The rush caused by the enormously increased numbers of the educated has hardly begun, and there are other causes. The desire for "a life in which ability tells" is increasing even faster than education, and so is the indisposition to lead the kind of life, no doubt a most painful one, which "business" with insufficient capital involves. We notice in country towns a positive horror among the educated for shop-life which is certainly new, and a shrinking, too, from " monotonous " life generally. Caste-feeling, which always feeds the professions, grows stronger than ever in certain sections of the community; while, owing at once to the greater accumulation and diffusion of wealth, there is a new pressure intä the ranks of young men with small fixed incomes, the class which looks on its gains from work as supplementary, and which all over the Continent keeps down the salaries of professionals. These men aLl think that they rise in life by entering the close professions. The price of partnerships is for the same reason rising, while owing to the habit of postponing retirements, vacancies grow constantly fewer; and the system of jobbing in favour of close relatives is, outside• the service of the State, more inveterate than ever. Men descend to anything for the sake of their sons-in-law. The prizes, too, grow less. Democracy. hates large sale ries, and thinks all salaries large ; while, though the close professions make desperate efforts to keep up their standard of remuneration, it is declining in every direction. The ordinary "professional man" must either take less or see -his connection gradually slip away. For the very bright, or pushing, or fortunate, prospects are still very good,—for, after all, their aid is always wanted ; but the ordinary professional man's chance of making £800 a year is, we should say, 50 per cent. less than it was thirty years ago, and his chance of £500, 30 per cent. This diminished chance, moreover, is not accompanied by any diminution in the strain of life. That increases every year with the increased number of competitors, and with the incessant rise in the standard of necessary acquirement, till it is now asserted that hardly any pro- fessional man escapes serious loss from any illness which may visit him ; while an interruption of six months from any cause whatever ruins the most promising career. The absent are, as far as pecuniary hope is concerned, the dead.
This is not a pleasing outlook for the new generation, which needs money more than ever. People say "sim- plicity" increases, and that is true in a sense ; but it is simplicity rather in thought, and in methods of expression, than in habits of life. Nothing is cheaper except bare food, rent in the professional districts does not decline—witness the new habit of dividing houses between two or more dissociated men of the same profession—and there never was a time when, it was more imperative on professional men just starting to lead a " civilised " life, meaning in a great city a life in which one bleeds money from every pore. The demands, to avoid which is to give up chances, or at all events greatly to postpone success, are endless, and reduce life in thousands of cases to a succession of half-despairing efforts to keep out of debt, or .dependence. Taxation is said to be growing lighter, and so it is for the million ; but it grows heavier every year for the professional man, who is compelled by opinion or the necessity of room to over-house himself, and who finds very early that, as regards their decrease, rates are very different things from taxes. Men in the professional streets and squares are paying in London 30 per cent. higher rates than they did in 1859, the in- crease being partly direct, and an admitted consequence of new philanthropic legislation, and partly the result of the increase in valuations, which, so far as any one can see, never stops. Even enemas has become for professionals less valu- able than it was. The immense majority, of them desire to save, and the change in their position in this respect has been astounding. The fall in the rate of interest to be obtaine covers every secure investment, except, we believe, cer- tain kinds of house-property which it is a heartbreak to inherit, and which no one with his time fully occupied would or could attempt to manage properly. Every one feels this fall, but very few realise its full extent. In 1860 it was possible for a man without working to obtain £500 a year for a principal of £10,000 with the fullest security, and now he is fortunate if with the same security he obtains £350—a change which not only whittles away his income, but leaves the road choked with competitors who, were the annual product of sleeping-money still 5 per cent., would retire at once. That evil, if it be one, affects men in business, like men in the professions ; but the latter feel it more, for while business may be indefinitely expanded, the pro- fessional inan's gains are limited by that great natural fact, that neither energy nor ability will put more than twenty- four hours into one day. You can buy or sell to the extent of
£10,000 in as little time as you can buy or sell to the extent of 21,000; but the patient, or the client, or the customer for education or knowledge must, whatever he pays, consume so many minutes.
What is the remedy P There is none whatever. As the pressure increases, the work must either be divided or the price of work must come down, with, in either case, a reduc- tion of professional income. We do not believe that the strong causes which increase the number of those entering on a pro- fessional career will lose their potency in our time, and fully expect to see the great professional class an exceedingly poor one. In 1910 the situation here will probably resemble that in America, where, though a very few professionals make great incomes, a majority are not better-off than English Dissenting ministers, and to earn by incessant work 21,200 a year is to have succeeded greatly. The mass of those who do not "go under" will make from 2150 to 000, and will look-out most assiduously for wives who can bring some addition to their incomes. That is already the position of affairs on the Continent, and there is nothing whatever to pro- tect Englishmen from a similar pressure. The change results from progress, from that thirst for education which it is in our day the ambition of legislators to gratify, and from that desire for refined life which is its necessary result. The capacity for brain-work is growing more common, and brain- work is therefore less valuable. That is all ; but that is sufficient to cause a small social revolution out of which that section of "the classes" whom Mr. Gladstone thinks so sure to be unwise will emerge much less happy men, with leas dignity, less money, and less leisure than they had.
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