The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED "The Evening News." "The Morning News," and "The Echo." FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 1878.

Auckland Star, Volume IX, Issue 2494, 22 March 1878, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED "The Evening News." "The Morning News," and "The Echo."

FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 1878.

get*k* ciutse tia lacks zntein^*, tit fee wrong that scctb lesistaaCh F« tic fciasc !« tS»s dlvwacs,

The speeches at the opening of the Working Men's Club the other night, were eminently practical. It is very rarely indeed that so much good and well-timed advice is crowded into the compass of an hour and-a-half's meeting. We have, therefore, reported the speeches at length, and published them from day to day, so that the members will be enabled to keep in view the useful suggestions offered by the different speakers. We recommend to the thoughtful consideration of all our readers, but more particularly to parents, the observations of the lion, the Native Minister on the subject of the prevailing tendency to despise honest and remunerative trades and industrial occupations. During a comparatively brief term of office, Mr Sheehau— who is not, and has no need to be ashamed to own himself the sou of a journeyman carpenter—has been astonished and grieved, and no doubt considerably pestered, through the extraordinary anxiety on the part of parents to push their sons iuto the Civil Service, and to increase the already too numerous ranks of Tite Barnacles, simply because they have a mawkish preference for some genteel and light employment over wholesome and ennobling manual labour or profitable commerce; both of which offer opportunities and prizes to the energetic, the skilful, and the persevering, which can never be found in the slow promotion and often degrading servility of a Government office. The desire of parents to get their sons into banks, the law, or the Government service, arises no doubt from a laudable wish to give their children a higher start in life than they have themselves enjoyed, but the aspiration is in too many cases an altogether mistaken one, and leads to bad results. A man must be blind indeed to patent facts in these days if he fails to observe the golden prizes which trade and commerce offer to men of intellect and energy. One need only look at the great fortunes that have been built up in this country by the Robinsons, the Martins, the Williamsons, and a host of others who have risen from the ranks of industry and commerce to positions of affluence and honour in the community. In England we have thousands of examples of great families built up and large properties acquired by merchants, manufacturers, and tradesmen. There are not a few peers in England who can look back a generation or two, when their grandfathers began life at the loom, the anvil, or in the counting - house. The folly which despises honest labour in the colonies is bred, not so much of pride, as of narrowness of view and ignorance of facts. A false idea of respectability is generally at the bottom of the mistake. Men attach a fictitious value to what are supposed to be genteel employments. They seldom think of the overcrowded condition of the Civil Service, the multitude ol eager candidates, the poor pay of subordinate officials, the drudgery, the loss of independence, and the slow and wearisome advancement. The great'evil of all this mistaken preference for the law, the Government Service, and other like avocations, is that the industrial occupations and artizanshipjin which the main requisites are intelligence, aptitude, quick perception, and mechanical skill, lose the most highlyeducated of our colonial youth, and are thus deprived of the great, essentials of progressive development. Whenever it shall come to be recognised by colonists of wealth and social eminence that the higher mecha-

nical arts and industries open up a remunerative field for their sons, then we may hope to see the manufacturing interests of New Zealand receive a great and beneficial impetus from the accession of weath and intellect. The remedy for the present unsatisfactory state of things lies in the introduction of a more technical system of education, the establishment of agricultural schools, aud artizans' classes, with laboratories, lectures, and prizes for excellence.