THE PROFESSIONS versus TRADE. T HE will of Mr. Peter Robinson,
the popular draper of Oxford Street, published this week, shows that he had accumulated a fortune, including of course a valuation of his extensive business, but excluding his freeholds, exceeding eleven hundred thousand pounds. That is a large fortune, even in these days of great accumulations, and mast make some of the old squires smile or groan when they recollect the selling value of the "great estates," for the possession of which they are so bitterly envied and even publicly reviled. Mr. Meeking, of Holborn Viaduct, a draper with the same kind of business, left, if we remember rightly, a little less than six hundred thousand pounds, while the personalty of Mr. Marshall, of Messrs. Marshall and Snelgrove, also drapers, was sworn under three-quarters of a million. Fortunes like these, which are exclusive, it mast be remembered, of any freeholds the testators may have possessed—such men usually buy valuable little estates in the home counties—attract atten- tion even in a time when men begin to think of fortunes on the American scale, and the accounts of them produce two note- worthy results. They greatly excite the cupidity of Chan- cellors of the Exchequer, to the despair of great freeholders, whose sons are compelled to sell their properties in a de- moralised market ; and they increase the general impression of the cultivated that the professions are not worth entering, that if money is to be a young man's object, his only chance is to devote himself to "business." To become a farmer of any kind, even the "occupying owner" kind, is to starve, while to become a barrister, a solicitor, a doctor, a journalist, a soldier, a sailor, or even an engineer, is only to earn a living in which the prizes are far below those of business, while for the majority of those who do not fail there is only a bare living, out of which the children can get nothing but an education, and sometimes not that. Nothing approaching to a million or half a million has been bequeathed in our time by a professional man, indeed we doubt whether, if we exclude inheritances and lucky investments, any pro- fessional man has ever accumulated £250,000, while the largest fortune made in the Services, and that only in India, has not exceeded £100,000. In a country like this and among a people like ours, which is always thirsting to reach the top, if it be only in the production of orchids, the great prizes produce an imaginative effect, and that effect is reinforced among cool minds by a study of the general scene around them. The average business man is more comfortable, if he succeeds at all, than the average professional man, has more to spend, can save more, lives farther out of the cities—now a great object of middle-class ambition—and can give his children rather better chances. The social prejudice against trade, and even against shopkeeping, has long been dying away ; the admitted object of hard work outside the Services is comfort., and we do not wonder therefore when we read, as in the Times of Tuesday, that, according to the census returns, the number of farmers is shrinking rapidly and that of lawyers shrinking slowly, while every other kind of gainful work has every year more candidates for its prizes. Nor are we surprised to be told that "gentlemen" who inherit businesses elect to carry them on ; that mothers of degree make interest to get their sons "into the City "—a very wide phrase covering many occupations—and that their fathers, who themselves were taught Latin and Greek, question angrily whether modern education is not "all wrong," and
declare that if there were a first-rate "business-school" in England—which, so far as we know, there is not—they would greatly prefer it for their boys to Eton and Harrow. We expect, in fact, within a few years to see the American system in vogue here, that is, to see the strong and ambitious lads of a family learning manufactures or trade, while only the weak, or those with an instinct for study, will adhere to the pro- fessions. Here and there, as in America, a bold and energetic person will break loose from the ruck, and to the surprise of his schoolmates will cut his way to distinction, and even for- tune, on the old professional lines ; but the majority will think the effort too hopeless, will turn aside to commerce, and will make of the great marts of the world worse "com- petitive wild beasts' dens" than ever. They will "cut one another's throats," as the clerks do now, till all careers will alike seem disappointing; though still the few prizes that will remain of the very large kind will fall to the men of commerce. They cannot disappear wholly, for the simple reason that it is as easy to sell a thousand bales of goods as a hundred if there is only a demand, that demand tends more and more to run in grooves, and that a thousand pennies are worth more than four times a pound. If a man can attract ten thousand persons a day to his shops, it hardly matters what the scale of his charges is; he must, if he takes ready money and lives for thirty years, die a millionaire. The immense expansion of modern markets, owing to improved means of communica- tion, works almost automatically, so that those who attract the mass of buyers gather in wealth almost without knowing it. We suppose the humblest known kind of manufacture is tag- making—a mere twisting of minute pieces of tin—but if everybody buys of one tag-maker, and he can make a machine twist tin for him, it is inevitable that his annual takings, and therefore profits, should be on an enormous scale.
What will be the result of the change ? It should be bad, but we are not quite sure that it will be. It should be bad a priori, because trade yields only money, and the pursuit of money as a sole object breeds sordidness in the mind ; because the rules of trade are less honourable than professional rules ; and because trade allows more than the professions do of an extreme specialisation which concentrates, and therefore im- pairs, the intellect. The doctor who is only a doctor is seldom an intellectual man ; still less so the button-maker who only makes buttons. That should be the result, it is certain, and is so in part in America and our Northern cities, but the question is whether it will continue so ; and the answer de- pends upon a problem not yet in any degree fairly solved. Is it essential in order to make money to be stupid? or rather, to put the matter less offensively, is it essential that the mental interests should be strictly limited ? If that is the case, then the rise of "business" into the position of the most attractive career is deeply to be regretted; and it must be admitted that this is the opinion of the most successful business men. They distrust wide culture ; they dislike great variety or elevation of mind ; and they inculcate on their children a devotion to mere practice which is almost fatal to intellectual develop- ment. Moreover, they seem at first sight to be right ; the men of enormous saf-made success, with of course an exception or two like Mr. Cecil Rhodes, being as a rule inferior persons, incapable of getting out of a groove of thought, and disposed to regard all who are unlike themselves as persons to be dis- regarded. They succeed, necessarily, by reduplication; and of all efforts the effort to do one thing over and over again for ever most rapidly stunts the mind. This, we say, is the a priori answer ; but we are not sure that it will be the true one for any length of time. The tendency of successful business is to enlargement ; and with enlarge- ment comes a new multitude of agents, a new variety of markets, a new kind of competitive danger, to avert which absolutely requires mind. The very number of his employes compels the great tradesman of cur day to become a judge of character ; the very expansion of his market drives him to study many countries, many tariffs, many laws; and his ex- treme danger from competition makes of him an artist, a chemist, and a critic. The process is slow, because he is always governed by the idea of selling, and he often learns rather to know public taste than to know what taste is, and to seek in his purchases the popular rather than the good ; but still the process must develop his mind. The tradesman tends to grow into the merchant, and the merchant may be of
the Medicean type, and may find in the largeness rather than the concentration of his mind the necessary capacity for profit. making. Statesmen have begun to spring from the trading families, and bring into statesmanship an energy and re- sourcefulness in which the aristocratic classes are apt as time goes on to show themselves deficient. In every trade those at the top set the ideal, and it is a low ideal more than a low practice which we should dread from the coming victory of trade. That victory will not last for ever ; for the soldier, the law-maker, and the interpreter of laws are the permanent chiefs of mankind, and their ascendency will be no more affected permanently by a period of the thirst for money, than it has been by the periods when the thirst for pleasure has ruled, or those in which the world has given itself up to the luxury of dreaming. We are, however, considering only immediate results, and for some time to come business will be the popular career.
We began this paper by a word about the wills of men with great personal fortunes, and we want to end it with a word about the wills of men with landed estates. That class may rely on it that the rule or etiquette, or whatever it is, which prevents the publication of the value of the properties they bequeath, is exceedingly injurious to them. °nine ignotum pro magnifica and the popular envy of wealth concentrates itself on them because of the general ignorance. They are supposed to be the only rich because their posses- sions are never accurately known even when they die. A great squire with ten thousand acres in an agricultural county receives for his wealth ten times the abuse, and even the political hostility which falls to the lot of a Mr. Peter Robinson ; yet the latter, in the present condition of affairs, has probably six times the great squire's income, and eight times his actual wealth when reduced into sovereigns capable of being expended. There are large proprietors in Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk at this moment, whom all Radicals would tax to the bone because they must have so large a surplus, yet whose property, if valued for probate, would not be worth one-fifth of that possessed by Mr. Peter Robinson. Yet Mr. Robinson is treated as an excellent citizen who benefits his country, while Lord Deepdrains is denounced as "bloated aristocrat," who, while "rolling in riches," clamours for a reduction in agricultural rates.
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