The Art of Living

And yet, on the other hand, when the conviction of fitness or mission exists, what calling is there which offers to-day more opportunities for usefulness than the ministry? The growing tendency of the Church is toward wider issues and a broader scope. Clergymen are now encouraged and expected to aid in the solution of problems of living no less than those of dying, and to lead in the discussion of matters regarding which they could not have ventured to express opinions fifty years ago without exposing themselves to the charge of being meddlesome or unclerical. The whole field of practical charity, economics, hygiene, and the relations of human beings to each other on this earth, are fast becoming the legitimate domain of the Church, and the general interest in this new phase of usefulness is serving to convince many of the clergy themselves that the existence of so many creeds, differing but slightly and unimportantly from one another, is a waste of vital force and machinery. In this age of trusts, a trust of all religious denominations for the common good of humanity would be a monopoly which could pay large dividends without fear of hostile legislation.

In this matter of the choice of a vocation, the case of the ambitious, promising young man is the one which commends itself most to our sympathies; and next to it stands that of the general utility man – the youth who has no definite tastes or talents, and who selects his life occupation from considerations other than a consciousness of fitness or of natural inclination. There are here, as elsewhere, born merchants, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, architects, engineers, inventors, and poets, who promptly follow their natural bents without suggestion and in the teeth of difficulties. But the promising young man in search of a brilliant career, and the general utility man, are perhaps the best exponents of a nation’s temper and inclination.

In every civilization many promising youths and the general run of utility men are apt to turn to business, for trade seems to offer the largest return in the way of money with the least amount of special knowledge. In this new country of ours the number of young men who have selected a business career during the last fifty years, from personal inclination, has been very much greater than elsewhere, and the tone and temper of the community has swept the general utility man into mere money making almost as a matter of course. The reasons for this up to this time have been obvious: The resources and industries of a vast and comparatively sparsely settled continent have been developed in the last fifty years, and the great prizes in the shape of large fortunes resulting from the process have naturally captivated the imagination of ambitious youth. We have unjustly been styled a nation of shopkeepers; but it may in all fairness be alleged that, until the last fifteen years, we have been under the spell of the commercial and industrial spirit, and that the intellectual faculties of the nation have been mainly absorbed in the introduction and maintenance of railroads and factories, in the raising and marketing of grain, in the development of real estate enterprises, and in trading in the commodities or securities which these various undertakings have produced.

The resources of the country are by no means exhausted; there are doubtless more mines to open which will make their owners superbly rich; new discoveries in the mechanical or electrical field will afford fresh opportunities to discerning men of means; and individual or combined capital will continue to reap the reward of both legitimate and over-reaching commercial acumen. But it would seem as though the day of enormous fortunes, for men of average brains and luck, in this country were nearly over, and that the great pecuniary prizes of the business world would henceforth be gleaned only by extraordinary or exceptional individuals. The country is no longer sparsely settled; fierce competition speedily cuts the abnormal profit out of new enterprises which are not protected by a patent; and in order to be conspicuously successful in any branch of trade, one will have more and more need of unusual ability and untiring application.

In other words, though ours is still a new country, it will not be very long before the opportunities and conditions of a business life resemble closely those which confront young men elsewhere. As in every civilized country, trade in some form will necessarily engage the attention of a large portion of the population. From physical causes, a vast majority of the citizens of the United States must continue to derive their support from agriculture and the callings which large crops of cereals, cotton, and sugar make occasion for. Consequently business will always furnish occupation for a vast army of young men in every generation, and few successes will seem more enviable than those of the powerful and scrupulous banker, or the broad-minded and capable railroad president. But, on the other hand, will the well-to-do American father and mother, eager to see their promising sons make the most of themselves, continue to advise them to go into business in preference to other callings? And will the general utility man still be encouraged to regard some form of trade as the most promising outlook, for one who does not know what he wishes to do, to adopt? He who hopes to become a great banker or illustrious railway man, must remember that the streets of all our large cities teem with young men whose breasts harbor similar ambitions.

Doubtless, it was the expectation of our forefathers that our American civilization would add new occupations to the callings inherited from the old world, which would be alluring both to the promising young man and the youth without predilections, and no less valuable to society and elevating to the individual than the best of those by which men have earned their daily bread since civilization first was. As a matter of fact, we Americans have added just one, that of the modern stock-broker. To be sure, I am not including the ranchman. It did seem at one time as though we were going to add another in him – a sort of gentleman shepherd. But be it that the cattle have become too scarce or too numerous, be it that the demon of competition has planted his hoofs on the farthest prairie, one by one the brave youths who went West in search of fortune, have returned East for the last time, and abandoned the field to the cowboys and the native settler. The pioneers in this form of occupation made snug fortunes, but after them came a deluge of promising or unpromising youths who branded every animal within a radius of hundreds of miles with a letter of the alphabet. Their only living monument is the polo pony.

Our single and signal contribution to the callings of the world has been the apotheosis of the stock-broker. For the last twenty-five years, the well-to-do father and mother and their sons, in our large cities, have been under the spell of a craze for the brokerage business. The consciousness that the refinements of modern living cannot adequately be supplied in a large city to a family whose income does not approximate ten thousand dollars a year, is a cogent argument in favor of trying to grow rich rapidly, and both the promising young man and the general utility man welcomed the new calling with open arms. Impelled by the notion that here was a vocation which required no special knowledge or attainments, and very little capital, which was pleasant, gentlemanly, and not unduly confining, and which promised large returns almost in the twinkling of an eye, hundreds and thousands of young men became brokers – chiefly stock-brokers, but also cotton-brokers, note-brokers, real-estate-brokers, insurance-brokers, and brokers in nearly everything. The field was undoubtedly a rich one for those who first entered it. There was a need for the broker, and he was speedily recognized as a valuable addition to the machinery of trade. Many huge fortunes were made, and we have learned to associate the word broker with the possession of large means, an imposing house on a fashionable street, and diverse docked and stylish horses.

Of course, the king of all brokers has been the stock-broker, for to him was given the opportunity to buy and sell securities on his own account, though he held himself out to his customers as merely a poor thing who worked for a commission. No wonder that the young man, just out of college, listened open-mouthed to the tales of how many thousands of dollars a year so and so, who had been graduated only five years before, was making, and resolved to try his luck with the same Aladdin’s lamp. Nor was it strange that the sight of men scarcely out of their teens, driving down town in fur coats, in their own equipages, with the benison of successful capitalists in their salutations, settled the question of choice for the youth who was wavering or did not know what he wished to do.

It is scarcely an extreme statement that the so-called aristocracy of our principal cities to-day is largely made up of men who are, or once were, stock-brokers, or who have made their millions by some of the forms of gambling which our easy-going euphemism styles modern commercial aggressiveness. Certainly, a very considerable number of our most splendid private residences have been built out of the proceeds of successful ventures in the stock market, or the wheat pit, or by some other purely speculative operations. Many stars have shone brilliantly for a season, and then plunged precipitately from the zenith to the horizon; and much has been wisely said as to the dangers of speculation; but the fact remains that a great many vast fortunes owe their existence to the broker’s office; fortunes which have been salted down, as the phrase is, and now furnish support and titillation for a leisurely, green old age, or enable the sons and daughters of the original maker to live in luxury.

Whatever the American mother may feel as to her son becoming a clergyman, there is no doubt that many a mother to-day would say “God grant that no son of mine become a stock-broker.” I know stock-brokers – many indeed – who are whole-souled, noble-natured men, free from undue worldliness, and with refined instincts. But the stock-broker, as he exists in the every-day life of our community, typifies signally the gambler’s yearning to gain wealth by short cuts, and the monomania which regards as pitiable those who do not possess and display the gewgaws of feverish, fashionable materialism. There are stock-brokers in all the great capitals of the world, but nowhere has the vocation swallowed up the sons of the best people to the extent that it has done here during the last thirty years. And yet, apart from the opportunity it affords to grow rich rapidly, what one good reason is there why a promising young man should decide to buy and sell stocks for a living? Indeed, not merely decide, but select, that occupation as the most desirable calling open to him? Does it tend either to ennoble the nature or enrich the mental faculties? It is one of the formal occupations made necessary by the exigencies of the business world, and as such is legitimate and may be highly respectable; but surely it does not, from the nature of the services required, deserve to rank high; and really there would seem to be almost as much occasion for conferring the accolade of social distinction on a dealer in excellent fish as on a successful stock-broker.

However, alas! it is easy enough to assign the reason why the business has been so popular. It appears that, even under the flag of our aspiring nationality, human nature is still so weak that the opportunity to grow rich quickly, when presented, is apt to over-ride all noble considerations. Foreign censors have ventured not infrequently to declare that there was never yet a race so hungry for money as we free-born Americans; and not even the pious ejaculation of one of our United States Senators, “What have we to do with abroad?” is conclusive proof that the accusation is not well founded. In fact: there seems to be ample proof that we, who sneered so austerely at the Faubourg St. Germain and the aristocracies of the Old World, and made Fourth of July protestations of poverty and chastity, have fallen down and worshipped the golden calf merely because it was made of gold. Because it seemed to be easier to make money as stock-brokers than in any other way, men have hastened to become stock-brokers. To be sure it may be answered that this is only human nature and the way of the world. True, perhaps; except that we started on the assumption that we were going to improve on the rest of the world, and that its human nature was not to be our human nature. Would not the Faubourg St. Germain be preferable to an aristocracy of stock-brokers?

At all events, the law of supply and demand is beginning to redeem the situation, and, if not to restore our moral credit, at least to save the rising generation from falling into the same slough. The stock-broker industry has been overstocked, and the late young capitalists in fur overcoats, with benedictory manners, wear anxious countenances under the stress of that Old World demon, excessive competition. Youth can no longer wake up in the morning and find itself the proprietor of a rattling business justifying a steam-yacht and a four-in-hand. The good old days have gone forever, and there is weeping and gnashing of teeth where of late there was joy and much accumulation. There is not business enough for all the promising young men who are stock-brokers already, and the youth of promise must turn elsewhere.

II

But though the occupation of broker has become less tempting, the promising youth has not ceased to look askance at any calling which does not seem to foreshadow a fortune in a short time. He is only just beginning to appreciate that we are getting down to hard pan, so to speak, and are nearly on a level, as regards the hardships of individual progress, with our old friends the effete civilizations. He finds it difficult to rid himself of the “Arabian Nights’” notion that he has merely to clap his hands to change ten dollars into a thousand in a single year, and to transform his bachelor apartments into a palace beautiful, with a wife, yacht, and horses, before he is thirty-five. He shrinks from the idea of being obliged to take seriously into account anything less than a hundred-dollar bill, and of earning a livelihood by slow yet persistent acceptance of tens and fives. His present ruling ambition is to be a promoter; that is, to be an organizer of schemes, and to let others do the real work and attend to the disgusting details. There are a great many gentry of this kind in the field just at present. Among them is, or rather was, Lewis Pell, as I will call him for the occasion. I don’t know exactly what he is doing now. But he was, until lately, a promoter.

A handsome fellow was Lewis Pell. Tall, gentlemanly, and athletic-looking, with a gracious, imposing presence and manner, which made his rather commonplace conversation seem almost wisdom. He went into a broker’s office after leaving college, like many other promising young men of his time, but he was clever enough either to realize that he was a little late, or that the promoter business offered a more promising scope for his genius, for he soon disappeared from the purlieus of the Stock Exchange, and the next thing we heard of him was as the tenant of an exceedingly elaborate set of offices on the third floor of a most expensive modern monster building. Shortly after I read in the financial columns of the daily press that Mr. Lewis Pell had sold to a syndicate of bankers the first mortgage and the debenture bonds of the Light and Power Traction Company, an electrical corporation organized under the laws of the State of New Jersey. Thirty days later I saw again that he had sailed for Europe in order to interest London capital in a large enterprise, the nature of which was still withheld from the public.

During the next two or three years I ran across Pell on several occasions. He seemed always to be living at the highest pressure, but the brilliancy of his career had not impaired his good manners or attractiveness. I refer to his career as brilliant at this time because both his operations and the consequent style of living which he pursued, as described by him on two different evenings when I dined with him, seemed to me in my capacity of ordinary citizen to savor of the marvellous, if not the supernatural. He frankly gave me to understand that it seemed to him a waste of time for an ambitious man to pay attention to details, and that his business was to originate vast undertakings, made possible only by large combinations of corporate or private capital. The word combination, which was frequently on his lips, seemed to be the corner-stone of his system. I gathered that the part which he sought to play in the battle of life was to breathe the breath, or the apparent breath, of existence into huge schemes, and after having given them a quick but comprehensive squeeze or two for his own pecuniary benefit, to hand them over to syndicates, or other aggregations of capitalists, for the benefit of whom they might concern. He confided to me that he employed eleven typewriters; that he had visited London seven, and Paris three times, in the last three years, on flying trips to accomplish brilliant deals; that though his headquarters were in New York, scarcely a week passed in which he was not obliged to run over to Chicago, Boston, Washington, Denver, Duluth, or Cincinnati, as the case might be. Without being boastful as to his profits, he did not hesitate to acknowledge to me that if he should do as well in the next three years as in the last, he would be able to retire from business with a million or so.

Apart from this confession, his personal extravagance left no room for doubt that he must be very rich. Champagne flowed for him as Croton or Cochituate for most of us, and it was evident from his language that the hiring of special trains from time to time was a rather less serious matter than it would be for the ordinary citizen to take a cab. The account that he gave of three separate entertainments he had tendered to syndicates – of ten, twelve, and seventeen covers respectively, at twenty dollars a cover – fairly made my mouth water and my eyes stick out, so that I felt constrained to murmur, “Your profits must certainly be very large, if you can afford that sort of thing.”

Pell smiled complacently and a little condescendingly. “I could tell you of things which I have done which would make that seem a bagatelle,” he answered, with engaging mystery. Then after a moment’s pause he said, “Do you know, my dear fellow, that when I was graduated I came very near going into the office of a pious old uncle of mine who has been a commission merchant all his life, and is as poor as Job’s turkey in spite of it all – that is, poor as men are rated nowadays. He offered to take me as a clerk at one thousand dollars a year, with the promise of a partnership before I was bald-headed in case I did well. Supposing I had accepted his offer, where should I be to-day? Grubbing at an office-desk and earning barely enough for board and lodging. I remember my dear mother took it terribly to heart because I went into a broker’s office instead. By the way, between ourselves, I’m building a steam-yacht – nothing very wonderful, but a neat, comfortable craft – and I’m looking forward next summer to inviting my pious old uncle to cruise on her just to see him open his eyes.”

That was three years ago, and to-day I have every reason to believe that Lewis Pell is without a dollar in the world, or rather, that every dollar which he has belongs to his creditors. I had heard before his failure was announced that he was short of money, for the reason that several enterprises with which his name was connected had been left on his hands – neither the syndicates nor the public would touch them – so his suspension was scarcely a surprise. He at present, poor fellow, is only one of an army of young men wandering dejectedly through the streets of New York or Chicago in these days of financial depression, vainly seeking for something to promote.

When the promising youth and the general utility man do get rid of the “Arabian Nights’” notion, and recognize that signal success here, in any form, is likely to become more and more difficult to attain, and will be the legitimate reward only of men of real might, of unusual abilities, originality, or dauntless industry, some of the callings which have fallen, as it were, into disrepute through their lack of gambling facilities, are likely to loom up again socially. It may be, however, that modern business methods and devices have had the effect of killing for all time that highly respectable pillar of society of fifty years ago, the old-fashioned merchant, who bought and sold on his own behalf, or on commission, real cargoes of merchandise, and real consignments of cotton, wheat, and corn. The telegraph and the warehouse certificate have worked such havoc that almost everything now is bought and sold over and over again before it is grown or manufactured, and by the time it is on the market there is not a shred of profit in it for anybody but the retail dealer. It remains to be seen whether, as the speculative spirit subsides, the merchant is going to reinstate himself and regain his former prestige. It may already be said that the promising youth does not regard him with quite so much contempt as he did.

We have always professed in this country great theoretical respect for the schoolmaster, but we have been careful, as the nation waxed in material prosperity, to keep his pay down and to shove him into the social background more and more. The promising youth could not afford to spend his manhood in this wise, and we have all really been too busy making money to think very much about those who are doing the teaching. Have we not always heard it stated that our schools and colleges are second to none in the world? And if our schools, of course our schoolmasters. Therefore why bother our heads about them? It is indeed wonderful, considering the little popular interest in the subject until lately, that our schoolmasters and our college professors are so competent as they are, and that the profession has flourished on the whole in spite of indifference and superiority. How can men of the highest class be expected to devote their lives to a profession which yields little more than a pittance when one is thoroughly successful? And yet the education of our children ought to be one of our dearest concerns, and it is difficult to see why the State is satisfied to pay the average instructor or instructress of youth about as much as the city laborer or a horse-car conductor receives.

There are signs that those in charge of our large educational institutions all over the country are beginning to recognize that ripe scholarship and rare abilities as a teacher are entitled to be well recompensed pecuniarily, and that the breed of such men is likely to increase somewhat in proportion to the size and number of the prizes offered. Our college presidents and professors, those at the head of our large schools and seminaries, should receive such salaries as will enable them to live adequately. By this policy not only would our promising young men be encouraged to pursue learning, but those in the highest places would not be forced by poverty to live in comparative retirement, but could become active social figures and leaders. In any profession or calling under present social conditions only those in the foremost rank can hope to earn more than a living, varying in quality according to the degree of success and the rank of the occupation; but it is to be hoped – and there seems some reason to believe – that the great rewards which come to those more able and industrious than their fellows will henceforth, in the process of our national evolution, be more evenly distributed, and not confined so conspicuously to gambling, speculative, or commercial successes. The leaders in the great professions of law and medicine have for some time past declined to serve the free-born community without liberal compensation, and the same community, which for half a century secretly believed that only a business man has the right to grow rich, has begun to recognize that there are even other things besides litigation and health which ought to come high. For instance, although the trained architect still meets serious and depressing competition from those ready-made experimenters in design who pronounce the first c in the word architect as though it were an s, the public is rapidly discovering that a man cannot build an attractive house without special knowledge.