LETTER V.
TO A YOUNG ETONIAN WHO THOUGHT OF BECOMING A COTTON-SPINNER.
Absurd old prejudices against commerce—Stigma attached to the great majority of occupations—Traditions of feudalism—Distinctions between one trade and another—A real instance of an Etonian who had gone into the cotton-trade—Observations on this case—The trade a fine field for energy—A poor one for intellectual culture—It develops practical ability—Culture not possible without leisure—The founders of commercial fortunes.
It is agreeable to see various indications that the absurd old prejudices against commerce are certainly declining. There still remains quite enough contempt for trade in the professional classes and the aristocracy, to give us frequent opportunities for studying it as a relic of former superstition, unhappily not yet rare enough to be quite a curiosity; but as time passes and people become more rational, it will retreat to out-of-the-way corners of old country mansions and rural parsonages, at a safe distance from the light-giving centres of industry. It is a surprising fact, and one which proves the almost pathetic spirit of deference and submission to superiors which characterizes the English people, that out of the hundreds of occupations which are followed by the busy classes of this country, only three are entirely free from some degrading stigma, so that they may be followed by a high-born youth without any sacrifice of caste. The wonder is that the great active majority of the nation, the men who by their industry and intelligence have made England what she is, should ever have been willing to submit to so insolent a rule as this rule of caste, which, instead of honoring industry, honored idleness, and attached a stigma to the most useful and important trades. The landowner, the soldier, the priest, these three were pure from every stain of degradation, and only these three were quite absolutely and ethereally pure. Next to them came the lawyer and the physician, on whom there rested some traces of the lower earth; so that although the youthful baron would fight or preach, he would neither plead nor heal. And after these came the lower professions and the innumerable trades, all marked with stigmas of deeper and deeper degradation.
From the intellectual point of view these prejudices indicate a state of society in which public opinion has not emerged from barbarism. It understands the strength of the feudal chief having land, with serfs or voters on the land; it knows the uses of the sword, and it dreads the menaces of the priesthood. Beyond this it knows little, and despises what it does not understand. It is ignorant of science, and industry, and art; it despises them as servile occupations beneath its conception of the gentleman. This is the tradition of countries which retain the impressions of feudalism; but notwithstanding all our philosophy, it is difficult for us to avoid some feeling of astonishment when we reflect that the public opinion of England—a country that owes so much of her greatness and nearly all her wealth to commercial enterprise—should be contemptuous towards commerce.
I may notice, in passing, a very curious form of this narrowness. Trade is despised, but distinctions are established between one trade and another. A man who sells wine is considered more of a gentleman than a man who sells figs and raisins; and I believe you will find, if you observe people carefully, that a woollen manufacturer is thought to be a shade less vulgar than a cotton manufacturer. These distinctions are seldom based on reason, for the work of commerce is generally very much the same sort of work, mentally, whatever may be the materials it deals in. You may be heartily congratulated on the strength of mind, firmness of resolution, and superiority to prejudice, which have led you to choose the business of a cotton-spinner. It is an excellent business, and, in itself, every whit as honorable as dealing in corn and cattle, which our nobles do habitually without reproach. But now that I have disclaimed any participation in the stupid narrowness which despises trade in general, and the cotton-trade in particular, let me add a few words upon the effects of the cotton business on the mind.
There appeared in one of the newspapers a little time since a most interesting and evidently genuine letter from an Etonian, who had actually entered business in a cotton factory, and devoted himself to it so as to earn the confidence of his employers and a salary of 400l. a year as manager. He had waited some time uselessly for a diplomatic appointment which did not arrive, and so, rather than lose the best years of early manhood, as a more indolent fellow would have done very willingly, in pure idleness, he took the resolution of entering business, and carried out his determination with admirable persistence. At first nobody would believe that the “swell” could be serious; people thought that his idea of manufacturing was a mere freak, and expected him to abandon it when he had to face the tedium of the daily work; but the swell was serious—went to the mill at six in the morning and stayed there till six at night, from Monday till Saturday inclusive. After a year of this, his new companions believed in him.
Now, all this is very admirable indeed as a manifestation of energy, and that truest independence which looks to fortune as the reward of its own manly effort, but it may be permitted to me to make a few observations on this young gentleman’s resolve. What he did seems to me rather the act of an energetic nature seeking an outlet for energy, than of an intellectual nature seeking pasture and exercise for the intellect. I am far indeed from desiring, by this comparison, to cast any disparaging light on the young gentleman’s natural endowments, which appear to have been valuable in their order and robust in their degree, nor do I question the wisdom of his choice; all I mean to imply is, that although he had chosen a fine large field for simple energy, it was a poor and barren field for the intellect to pasture in. Consider for one moment the difference in this respect between the career which he had abandoned and the trade he had embraced. As an attaché he would have lived in capital cities, have had the best opportunities for perfecting himself in modern languages, and for meeting the most varied and the most interesting society. In every day there would have been precious hours of leisure, to be employed in the increase of his culture. If an intellectual man, having to choose between diplomacy and cotton-spinning, preferred cotton-spinning it would be from the desire for wealth, or from the love of an English home. The life of a cotton manufacturer, who personally attends to his business with that close supervision which has generally conducted to success, leaves scarcely any margin for intellectual pleasure or spare energy for intellectual work. After ten hours in the mill, it is difficult to sit down and study; and even if there were energy enough, the mind would not readily cast off the burden of great practical anxieties and responsibilities so as to attune itself to disinterested thinking. The leaders of industry often display mental power of as high an order as that which is employed in the government of great empires; they show the highest administrative ability, they have to deal continually with financial questions which on their smaller scale require as much forethought and acumen as those that concern the exchequer; but the ability they need is always strictly practical, and there is the widest difference between the practical and the intellectual minds. A constant and close pressure of practical considerations develops the sort of power which deals effectually with the present and its needs but atrophies the higher mind. The two minds which we call intelligence and intellect resemble the feet and wings of birds. Eagles and swallows walk badly or not at all, but they have a marvellous strength of flight; ostriches are great pedestrians, but they know nothing of the regions of the air. The best that can be hoped for men immersed in the details of business is that they may be able, like partridges and pheasants, to take a short flight on an emergency, and rise, if only for a few minutes, above the level of the stubble and the copse.
Without, therefore, desiring to imply any prejudiced contempt for trade, I do desire to urge the consideration of its inevitable effects upon the mind. For men of great practical intelligence and abundant energy, trade is all-sufficing, but it could never entirely satisfy an intellectual nature. And although there is drudgery in every pursuit, for even literature and painting are full of it, still there are certain kinds of drudgery which intellectual natures find to be harder to endure than others. The drudgery which they bear least easily is an incessant attention to duties which have no intellectual interest, and yet which cannot be properly performed mechanically so as to leave the mind at liberty for its own speculations. Deep thinkers are notoriously absent, for thought requires abstraction from what surrounds us, and it is hard for them to be denied the liberty of dreaming. An intellectual person might be happy as a stone-breaker on the roadside, because the work would leave his mind at liberty; but he would certainly be miserable as an engine-driver at a coal-pit shaft, where the abstraction of an instant would imperil the lives of others.
In a recent address delivered by Mr. Gladstone at Liverpool, he acknowledged the neglect of culture which is one of the shortcomings of our trading community, and held out the hope (perhaps in some degree illusory) that the same persons might become eminent in commerce and in learning. No doubt there have been instances of this; and when a “concern” has been firmly established by the energy of a predecessor, the heir to it may be satisfied with a royal sort of supervision, leaving the drudgery of detail to his managers, and so secure for himself that sufficient leisure without which high culture is not possible. But the founders of great commercial fortunes have, I believe, in every instance thrown their whole energy into their trade, making wealth their aim, and leaving culture to be added in another generation. The founders of commercial families are in this country usually men of great mother-wit and plenty of determination—but illiterate.
[12] The word “disinterested” is used here in the sense explained in Part II. Letter III.
[13] “This work has at any rate the character of having come into the world like every really living creation. It has been produced by the heat of a gentle incubation.”