As We Are and As We May Be - Walter Besant (most recommended books txt) 📗

/> I have spoken of certain exceptions to this exclusion of the lower classes. There were provided at the public schools and the Universities scholarships founded for the purpose of enabling poor lads to carry on their studies. 'The schools had long ceased to be the property of the poor for whom they were designed: their scholarships, mostly of recent foundation, were granted by competitive examination to those boys who had already spent a large sum of money on preliminary work. The scholarships of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge were also given by examination, without the least consideration of the candidates' private resources. There was, however, a chance that a poor lad might get one of these. If he did, everything was open to him. The annals of the Universities contain numberless instances in which lads from the lower middle class made their way, and a few instances--a very few--here one and there one--in which the sons of working men thus forced themselves upward. We must remember these scholarships when we speak of the barrier, but we must not attach too much importance to them. One may also recall many instances of generosity when a bay of parts was discovered, educated, and sent to the University by a rich or noble patron.

In the Army, again, many men rose from the ranks and obtained commissions. In the Navy, this was always impossible, with one or two brilliant exceptions--as the case of Captain Cook.

It may be said that there are many cases on record in which men of quite humble origin have advanced themselves in trade, even to becoming Lord Mayor of London. Could not a poor lad do in the nineteenth century what Whittington did in the fourteenth? Could he not tie up his belongings in a handkerchief and make for London, where the streets were paved with gold, and the walls were built of jasper? Well, you see, in this matter of the poor lad and his elevation to giddy heights there has been a little mistake, principally due to the chap-books. The poor lad who worked his way upward in the nineteenth century belonged to the bourgeoise, not the craftsman class. While his schoolfellows remained clerks, he, by some early good fortune--by marriage, by cousinship, was enabled to get his foot on the ladder, up which he proceeded to climb with strength and resolution. The poor lad who got on in earlier times was the son of a country gentleman. Dick Whittington was the son of Sir William Whittington, Knight and afterwards outlaw. He was apprenticed to his cousin, Sir John Fitzwarren, Mercer and merchant-adventurer, son of Sir William Fitzwarren, Knight. Again, Chichele, Lord Mayor, and his younger brother, Sheriff, and his elder brother, Archbishop of Canterbury, were sons of one Chichele, Gentleman and Armiger of Higham Ferrers in the county of Northampton. Sir Thomas Gresham was the son of Sir Richard Gresham, nephew of Sir John Gresham, and younger brother of Sir John Gresham, also of a good old country family. In fact, we may look in vain through the annals of London city for the rise of the humble boy from the ranks of the craftsmen. Once or twice, perhaps, one may find such a case. If we consider the early years of the nineteenth century, when the long wars attracted to the army all the younger sons, it does seem as if the Mayors and Aldermen must have come from very humble beginnings. Even then, however, we find on investigation that the city fathers of that time had mostly sprung from small shops. They were never, to begin with, craftsmen, and at the end of the century any such rise was never dreamed of by the most ambitious. The clerk, if a lad became a clerk, remained a clerk: he had no hope of becoming anything else. The shopman remained a shopman, his only hope being the establishment of himself as a master if he could save enough money. The craftsman remained a craftsman. And for partnerships there were always plenty--younger sons and others--eager to buy themselves in, or there were sons and nephews waiting their turn. No son of a working man, or a clerk, could hope for any other advancement in the City than advancement to higher salary for long and faithful service.

Once more, then, the situation was this: To him who could afford to earn nothing till he was two-and-twenty, and little till he was five-and-twenty, and could find the money for fees, lectures, and courses and coaches, everything that the country had to offer was open. With this limitation there was never any country in which prizes were more open than Great Britain and Ireland. A clever lad might enter the Royal Engineers or Artillery with a tolerable certainty of being a Colonel and a K.C.B. at fifty; or he might go into the Church where if he had ability and had cultivated eloquence and possessed good manners, he might count on a Bishopric; or he might go to the Bar, where, if he was lucky, he might become a judge or even Lord Chancellor. Unless, however, he could provide the capital wanted for admission, he could attain to nothing--nothing--nothing.

What became, then, of the clever lad? In some cases he became a clerk, crowding into a trade already overcrowded. He trampled on his competitors, because most of them, the sons and grandsons of clerks, had no ambition and no perception of the things wanted. This young fellow had. He taught himself the things that were wanted; he generally took therefore the best place. But he had to remain a clerk.

Or, more often, he became a teacher in a Board School. In this capacity he obtained a certain amount of social consideration, a certain amount of independence, and an income varying From L150 to L400 a year.

Or, which also happened frequently, he might become a dissenting minister of the humbler kind. In that case he had every chance of passing through life in a little chapel at a small town, a slave to his own, and to his congregation's, narrow prejudices.

Or, he might go abroad, to one of the Colonies. Earlier in the century, between the years 1850 and 1880, many poor lads had gone to Australia or New Zealand and had done well for themselves, a few had become millionaires; but by the year 1890 these Colonies, considered as likely places wherein it young man could advance himself, seemed played out. Working-men they wanted, but not clever and penniless young fellows.

He might, it has been suggested, go into the House. There were already one or two workingmen in the House. But they were sent there especially to represent certain interests by working-men, not because their representative was an ambitious and clever young man. And the working-man's member, so far, had advanced a very little way as a political success. It was not in Politics that a young man would find his opening.

This brings us to the one career open to him--he might become a Journalist. It is an attractive profession: and even in its lower walks it seems a branch of literature. There is independence of hours: the pay depends upon the man's power of work: there are great openings in it and--to the rising lad at least--what seems a noble possibility in the shape of pay. Many distinguished men have been journalists, from Charles Dickens downward. Nearly all the novelists have dabbled with journalism; and, since all of us cannot be novelists, the young man might reflect that there are editor, sub-editors, assistant editors, news-editors, leader writers, descriptive writers, reviewers, dramatic critics, art and music critics, wanted for every paper. He could become a journalist and he could rise to the achievement of these ambitions.

At first he rose a very little way, despite his ambition, because in every branch of letters imperfect education is an insuperable obstacle. Still he could become news-editor, descriptive reporter, paragraph writer, and even, in the case of country papers, editor. Sometimes he passed from the office of the journal to that of one of the many societies, where he became secretary and succeeded in getting his name associated with some cause, which gave him some position and consideration. Whether he succeeded greatly or not, his whole object was to pass from the class which has no possible future to the class for which everything is open. His sons would be gentlemen, and if he could only find the necessary funds, they should make what he had been unable to make, an attempt upon the prizes of the State.

This was the situation at the beginning of the last decade of the nineteenth century. It is summed up by saying that all the avenues to honour and power were closed and barred to the lad who could not command a thousand pounds at least. Let us pass on.

Most thoughtful people have considered the growth and development of the great educational movement whose origin belongs to the nineteenth century; whose development so profoundly affects the history of our own.

It began, like the spread of scientific knowledge, and the reforms in the Old Constitution, and everything else, with the introduction of railways. Before the end of the century the country was covered with schools, as it was also covered with railways. There was hardly a man or woman living when the nineteenth century ended who could not read; there were few indeed who did not read. But the school course naturally taught little beyond the elements and was already completed when the pupil reached his fourteenth year. He was then taken from school and put to work, apprenticed--set to something which was to be his trade. Clever or stupid, keen of intellect or dull, that was to be the lot of the boy. He was set to learn how to earn his livelihood.

About the year 1885 or 1890--no exact date can be fixed for the birth of a new idea--began a very remarkable extension of the educational movement. It was discovered by philanthropists that something ought to be done with the boys after they had left school. The first intentions seem to have been simply to keep them out of mischief. Having nothing to do the lads naturally took to loafing about the streets, smoking bad tobacco, drinking, gambling, and precocious love-making. It was also perceived by economists about the same time that unless something was done for technical education, the old superiority of the British craftsman would speedily vanish. It was further pointed out that the education of the Board Schools gave the pupils little more than the mastery of the merest elements, the tools by means of which knowledge could be acquired. In order, therefore, to carry on general education and to provide technical training there were started simultaneously in every great town, but especially in London, Technical Schools, 'Continuation' Classes, Polytechnics, Young Men's Associations and Clubs, Guilds for instruction and recreation--under whatever form they were known, they were all schools.

Then the young working lad was invited to enter himself at one of these places, and to spend his evenings there. 'Come,' said the founders, 'you are at an age when everything is new and everything is delightful. Give up all your present joys. Send the girl with whom you keep company, night after night, home to her mother. Put down your cherished cigarette, cease to stand about in bars, give up drinking beer, go no more to the music-hall. Abandon all that you delight in. And come to us. After working all day long at your trade, come to us and work all the evening at books.'

A strange invitation! To forego delights and live laborious evenings. Stranger still, the lads accepted the invitation. They accepted in thousands. They consented to work every evening as well