OUR BOYS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 274, 1 May 1873, Page 5

OUR BOYS.

The maxim that " a self-taught man is well taught," though old as the hills, every day presents to the observer fresh practical proofs of its usefulness, and we have perfect right to be gratified when we see around us instances illustrating the aphorism above quoted. Mr. Robert Stout, of Dunedin, is (if we are correctly informed) to a very large extent a selftaught man ; and, if we are misinformed, we need hardly apologise, as we pay Mr. Stout no bad compliment. Self-taught men are perhaps better qualified to discourse on the modus operadi of education and the effects of knowledge upon mankind than are those who have obtained their mental culture by a — so to speak — royal road, and who have consequently missed the advantages' always derived from the thousand and one experiences which attend the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, and who have thereby sacrificed the acquirement of knowledge of the world for certain more thoretical learning, the equivalent advantages derivable from which aie of questionable value. Self-taught men are therefore, in our opinion, well adapted $o jmeak with authority on the subject of education, the early training of the young, and the class of pursuits which the particular circumstances of the time point to as most fitting for the generation now in its bo^fiood to follow. "s7e regret having to content ourselves with 5 the (evidently) meagre resume of the lecture delivered by Mr, Stout on "Libraries and Education," contained in the " Otago Daily Times" of the 14th ult. ; and we wonder that our contemporary did not supply a better report, it being evident that his leader of the 15th ult.. was contemplated when the Bhort report of the lecture was published. The "Daily "Times" is of opinion that " our boys " are shirking an agricultural life, and that with our consent ; and proceeds with an attempt to prove that we are right in thus keeping them from the plough, the harrow, and the roll, and argues that agriculture is a losing game, while the professions offer magnicent inducements ! In thus criticising Mr. Stout's statements and opinions, our contemporary lias done an injustice ; and has, we think, arrived at it by some great mistake or blunder, for his deductions are contrary to all experience, contrary to facts as they exist in our midst, and are exceedingly likely to mislead those who have not seriously studied the matter, but to whom the subject may be of vital importance. Mr. Stout did not, we venture to opine, refer to agriculture alone — but to it as one of a number of useful and highly remunerate trades — in direct contradistinction to the various professional occupations into which parents are daily forcing their children, through an absurd belief that they are more respectable, better paid, and of easier work. That, in nine hundred and ninety cases out of a thousand, the reverse is the fact in all three particulars we shall, we think, be I able to prove. In all European countries (noticeably in Britain and in Germany, the two most prosperous countries in the western hemisphere), boys are at a reason-

able age apprenticed to an useful occupations. A fair proportion doubtless seek professions ; but the majority, following a natural law, take to trades, and therein are successful. By trade they have succeeded in building up the grandeur and victory of their respective fatherlands ; and the "Nation of Shopkeepers" is a proud instance indeed of the truth of our assertion. That professional avocations are far less remunerative thanin the ordary run of trades is as patent as the existence of the hills around us. Who amongst us is a wealthy or even a well-to-do lawyer, banker, broker, accountant, or clerk? And what is the reason ? Simply that now-adays it is the fashion that as soon as ever a boy can decently leave school his parents want to put him into a bank, a lawyer's or an accountant's office. In some cases good, useful business men are the product ; but in more we have turned out a set of half-educated nondescripts, who are fit for nothing, because they have been brought up to nothing — sent to idleness early in life instead of to that solid industry which trade avocations would accustom them to, and are thereby rabbed of that self-reliance which hard work and necessity can alone develope and supply. This over-stocking of the market reduces the rate of salary, and the honorable earnings of really good men are reduced by the nondescript competition of the class to which we have referred — a class almost every man of which would have made a useful citizen had he been trained to earn his living at some hard working trade J The quill-driving profession is very largely over-stocked in New Zealand. Parents are suffering by it,- and are doing their off-spring most incalculable injury by the course they are adopting. The female members of their families are also sustaining injury ; because on the one hand parents are spending money en their sons which will be worse than resultless as regards the success of their Bons in life ; and on the other hand they are robbing the female off-spring of their neighbors ef husbands, who, in the succeeding age, ought, in the natural order of things, to rise up as their succor and support. We have for a long time past read what is colonially termed " larikinism "— an institution which is becoming in our midst a nuisance of no common magnitude. Of what is it the out-growth ? Simply the neglect of ] parents to compel their children to learn j a useful calling. Boys are not taught to rely upon themselves -to learn to support ! themselves ; are not taught their duty to their parents ; they thus fail to acquire self-respect, and the result is as sure and as inevitable as the growth of the grain when securely placed in the virgin soil and safely tended. To keep a black suit on a boy's back and to keep his hands spotlessly white should not be the aim of any parent. Professional men we must' have ; and there will for ever be plenty ; of them without the rush now going on. Tradesmen are absolutely neccessary for the prosperity of the colony. We want builders, bakers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, tailors, watchmakers, schoolmasters (the latter particularly, and good ones too), saddlers, and a lot of other skilled workmen. Let our colonial youth be instructed by rigid apprenticeship to such useful trades, and~we shall build up in our posterity a nation of which the world |will not be ashamed. We have instances constantly arising around ns of cases in which men have been brought up to the_most menial trades, but who have "developeSnaatTtral abilities, the possession of which has justified them in seeking, and has led to their obtaining, employment in far higher spheres of life, and for which they have proved themselves eminently fitted. In almost all such cases the "natural abilites" of these men have been fostered and developed by early training to hard work ; while the acquirement of skill as workmen has engendered healthy ambition to rise higher and to do better. There is no reason why a man bred a carpenter should not live to be a Prime Minister.

For a large portion of our rising population employment in factories, under proper supervision, is urgently needed. It is a subject of great importance, and to which we may refer again ; but until the establishment of more factories than at present exist, nothing on a large scale can be done. We are glad to observe a healthy desire on the part of the legislature to encourage manufactories in our njidst ; and we trust that, as they are one by one established, ways and means will be found for the due engagement of a large number of our colonial youths, who, unless cared for in some such way, cannot avoid becoming members of the criminal class — a ruin to themselves, pests to the community, and a disgrace to the country which has failed to prevent such a state of things by providing the means of honest employment.