Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420. Various

p>Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420 / Volume 17, New Series, January 17, 1852

      HOW IS THE WORLD USING YOU?

      This is a very common question, usually put and answered with more or less levity. We seldom hear of any one answering very favourably as to the usage he experiences from the world. More generally, the questioned seems to feel that his treatment is not, and never has been, quite what it ought to be. It has sometimes occurred to me, that a great oversight is committed in our so seldom putting to ourselves the co-relative question: What have I done to make the world use me well? What merit have I shewn—by what good intention towards the world have I been animated—what has been the positive amount of those services of mine on which I found my pretensions to the world's rewards? All of these are interrogations which it would be necessary to answer satisfactorily before we could be truly entitled to take measure of the world's goodness to us in return; for surely it is not to be expected that the world is to pay in mere expectancy: time enough, in all conscience, when the service has been rendered, or at soonest, when a reasonable ground of hope has been established that it will not be withheld or performed slightingly. Only too much room there is to fear that, if these questions were put and faithfully answered, the ordinary result would be a conviction that the world had used us quite as well as we deserved.

      Men are of course prevented from going through this process by their self-love. Unwillingness to see or own their shortcomings, keeps them in a sort of delusion on the subject. Well, I do not hope to make an extensive change upon them in this respect; but perhaps it may not be impossible to rouse one here and there to the correct view, and thus accomplish a little good.

      Let us address ourselves to commercial life first, for the labour by which man lives is at the bottom of everything. Here we meet the now well-recognised principle in political economy, that generally wages, salaries, remunerations of all kinds, are in pretty exact relation to the value of the services performed—this value being of course determined, in a great degree, by the easiness or difficulty of the work, the commonness or rarity of the faculties and skill required for it, the risk of non-success in the profession, and so forth. Many a good fellow who feels that his income is inconveniently small, and wonders why it is not greater, might have the mystery solved if he would take a clear, unprejudiced view of the capacity in which he is acting towards the public. Is he a slave of the desk, in some office of routine business? Then let him consider how many hundreds of similar men would answer an advertisement of his seat being vacant. The fatal thing in his case evidently is, that the faculties and skill required in his situation are possessed by so many of his fellow-creatures. Is he a shopkeeper in some common line of business?—say a draper. Then let him consider how easy it is to be a draper, and how simple are the details of such a trade. While there are so many other drapers in the same street, his going out of business would never be felt as an inconvenience. He is perhaps not doing any real good to the public at all, but only interloping with the already too small business of those who were in 'the line' before him. Let him think of the many hours he spends in idleness, or making mere appearances of business, and ask if he is really doing any effective service to his fellow-creatures by keeping a shop at all. It may be a hardship to him to have failed in a good intention; but this cannot be helped. He may succeed better in some other scheme. Let him quit this, and try another, or set up in a place where there is what is called 'an opening'—that is, where his services are required—the point essential to his getting any reward for his work. We sometimes see most wonderful efforts made by individuals in an overdone trade; for example, those of a hatter, who feels that he must give mankind a special direction to his shop, or die. Half-a-dozen tortoise-like missionaries do nothing but walk about the streets from morning to night, proclaiming from carapace and plastron,1 that there are no hats equal to those at No. 98 of such a street. A van like the temple of Juggernauth parades about all day, propagating the same faith. 'If you want a good hat,' exclaims a pathetic poster, 'try No. 98.' As you walk along the street, a tiny bill is insinuated into your hand, for no other purpose, as you learn on perusing it, but to impress upon you the great truth, that there are no hats in the world either so good or so cheap as those at No. 98. The same dogma meets you in omnibuses, at railway platforms, and every other place where it can be expected that mankind will pause for a moment, and so have time to take in an idea. But it is all in vain if there be a sufficient supply of good and cheap hats already in that portion of the earth's surface. The superfluous hatter must submit to the all-prevailing law, that for labours not required, and an expenditure of capital useless as regards the public, there can be no reward, no return.

      Sometimes great inconveniences are experienced in consequence of local changes; such as those effected by railways, and the displacement of hand-labour by machinery. A country inn that has supplied post-horses since the days of the civil war, is all at once, in consequence of the opening of some branch-line, deserted by its business. It is a pitiable case; but the poor landlord must not attempt to be an innkeeper without business, for then he would be a misapplied human being, and would starve. Now the world uses him a little hardly in the diversion of his customers; that may be allowed: we must all lay our account with such hardships so long as each person is left to see mainly after himself. But if he were to persist in keeping his house open, and thus reduce himself to uselessness, he would not be entitled to think himself ill-used by reason of his making no profits, seeing that he did nothing for the public to entitle him to a remuneration. The poor handloom weavers—I grieve to think of the hardships they suffer. Well do I remember when, in 1813 or 1814, a good workman in this craft could realise 36s. a week. There were even traditions then of men who had occasionally eaten pound-notes upon bread and butter, or allowed their wives to spend L.8 upon a fine china tea-service. There being a copious production of cotton-thread by machinery, but no machinery to make it into cloth, was the cause of the high wages then given to weavers. Afterwards came the powerloom; and weavers can now only make perhaps 4s. 6d. per week, even while working for longer hours than is good for their health. The result is most lamentable; but it cannot be otherwise, for the public will only reward services in the ratio of the value of these services to itself. It will not encourage a human being, with his glorious apparatus of intelligence and reflection, to mis-expend himself upon work which can be executed equally well by unthinking machinery. Were the poor weavers able so far to shake themselves free from what is perhaps a very natural prejudice, as to ask what do we do to entitle us to any better usage from the public, they would see that the fault lies in their continuing to be weavers at all. They are precisely as the innkeeper would be, if he kept his house open after the railway had taken all his customers another way.

      There are many cases in the professional walks of life fully as deplorable as that of the weavers. Few things in the world are more painful to contemplate than a well-educated and able man vainly struggling to get bread as a physician, an artist, or an author. It is of course right that such a man should not be too ready to abandon the struggle as hopeless; for a little perseverance and well-directed energy may bring him into a good position. But if a fair experiment has been made, and it clearly appears that his services are not wanted, the professional aspirant ought undoubtedly to pause, and take a full unprejudiced view of his relation to the world. 'Am I,' he may say, 'to expect reward if I persist in offering the world what it does not want? Are my fellow-creatures wrong in withholding a subsistence from me, while I am rather consulting my own tastes and inclinations than their necessities?' It may then occur to him that the great law must somehow be obeyed—a something must be done for mankind which they require, and it must be done where and how they require it, in order that each individual may have a true claim upon the rest. To get into the right and fitting place in the social machine may be difficult; but there is no alternative. Let him above everything dismiss from his mind the notion, that others can seriously help him. Let him be self-helpful, think and do for himself, and he will have the better chance of success.

      We now come to a second branch of the subject—namely, as regards our conduct and manners in the scenes of social life. One might suppose it to be a very clear thing, that a person possessing no pleasing accomplishment could never be so agreeable a member of society as one who possessed one or more of such qualifications. It might seem very evident, that a person who had never taken any trouble to acquire such accomplishments, did not deserve so much of society as one who had taken such trouble. Yet such is the blinding influence of self-love, that we continually find the dull and unaccomplished

1

The upper and under plates of the tortoise are so called by naturalists.