The American young man, in the selection of a vocation, is practically cut off from two callings which are dear to his contemporaries in other civilized countries—the Army and the Navy. The possibility of war, with all its horrors and its opportunities for personal renown, is always looming up before the English, French, German, or Russian youth, who is well content to live a life of gilded martial inactivity in the hope of sooner or later winning the cross for conspicuous service, if he escapes a soldier’s grave. We have endured one war, and we profoundly hope never to undergo another. Those of us who are ethically opposed to the slaughter of thousands of human beings in a single day by cannon, feel that we have geography on our side. Even the bloodthirsty are forced to acknowledge that the prospects here for a genuine contest of any kind are not favorable. Consequently, the ardor of the son and heir, who would like to be a great soldier or a sea captain, is very apt to be cooled by the representation that his days would be spent in watching Indians or cattle thieves on the Western plains, or in cruising uneventfully in the Mediterranean or the Gulf of Mexico. At all events our standing, or, more accurately speaking, sitting Army, and our Navy are so small, that the demand for generals and captains is very limited. Therefore, though we commend to our sons the prowess of CÆsar, Napoleon, Nelson, Von Moltke, and Grant, we are able to demonstrate to them, even without recourse to modern ethical arguments, that the opportunities for distinction on this side of the water are likely to be very meagre.

Also, we Americans, unlike English parents, hesitate to hold out as offerings to the Church a younger son in every large family. We have no national Church; moreover, the calling of a clergyman in this country lacks the social picturesqueness which goes far, or did go far, to reconcile the British younger son to accept the living which fell to his lot through family influence. Then again, would the American mother, like the conventional mother of the older civilizations, as represented in biography and fiction, if asked which of all vocations she would prefer to have her son adopt, reply promptly and fervidly, “the ministry?”

I put this question to my wife by way of obtaining an answer. She reflected a moment, then she said, “If one of my boys really felt called to be a clergyman, I should be a very happy woman; but I wouldn’t on any account have one of them enter the ministry unless he did.” This reply seems to me to express not merely the attitude of the American mother, but also the point of view from which the American young man of to-day is apt to look at the question. He no longer regards the ministry as a profession which he is free to prefer, merely because he needs to earn his daily bread; and he understands, when he becomes a clergyman, that lukewarm or merely conventional service will be utterly worthless in a community which is thirsty for inspirational suggestion, but which is soul-sick of cant and the perfervid reiteration of outworn delusions. The consciousness that he has no closer insight into the mysteries of the universe than his fellow-men, and the fear that he may be able to solace their doubts only by skilful concealment of his own, is tending, here and all over the civilized world, to deter many a young man from embracing that profession, which once seemed to offer a safe and legitimate niche for any pious youth who was uncertain what he wished to do for a living. Happy he who feels so closely in touch with the infinite that he is certain of his mission to his brother-man! But is any one more out of place than the priest who seems to know no more than we do of what we desire to know most? We demand that a poet should be heaven-born; why should we not require equivalent evidence of fitness from our spiritual advisers?

And yet, on the other hand, when the conviction of fitness or mission exists, what calling is there which offers to-day more opportunities for usefulness than the ministry? The growing tendency of the Church is toward wider issues and a broader scope. Clergymen are now encouraged and expected to aid in the solution of problems of living no less than those of dying, and to lead in the discussion of matters regarding which they could not have ventured to express opinions fifty years ago without exposing themselves to the charge of being meddlesome or unclerical. The whole field of practical charity, economics, hygiene, and the relations of human beings to each other on this earth, are fast becoming the legitimate domain of the Church, and the general interest in this new phase of usefulness is serving to convince many of the clergy themselves that the existence of so many creeds, differing but slightly and unimportantly from one another, is a waste of vital force and machinery. In this age of trusts, a trust of all religious denominations for the common good of humanity would be a monopoly which could pay large dividends without fear of hostile legislation.

In this matter of the choice of a vocation, the case of the ambitious, promising young man is the one which commends itself most to our sympathies; and next to it stands that of the general utility man—the youth who has no definite tastes or talents, and who selects his life occupation from considerations other than a consciousness of fitness or of natural inclination. There are here, as elsewhere, born merchants, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, architects, engineers, inventors, and poets, who promptly follow their natural bents without suggestion and in the teeth of difficulties. But the promising young man in search of a brilliant career, and the general utility man, are perhaps the best exponents of a nation’s temper and inclination.

In every civilization many promising youths and the general run of utility men are apt to turn to business, for trade seems to offer the largest return in the way of money with the least amount of special knowledge. In this new country of ours the number of young men who have selected a business career during the last fifty years, from personal inclination, has been very much greater than elsewhere, and the tone and temper of the community has swept the general utility man into mere money making almost as a matter of course. The reasons for this up to this time have been obvious: The resources and industries of a vast and comparatively sparsely settled continent have been developed in the last fifty years, and the great prizes in the shape of large fortunes resulting from the process have naturally captivated the imagination of ambitious youth. We have unjustly been styled a nation of shopkeepers; but it may in all fairness be alleged that, until the last fifteen years, we have been under the spell of the commercial and industrial spirit, and that the intellectual faculties of the nation have been mainly absorbed in the introduction and maintenance of railroads and factories, in the raising and marketing of grain, in the development of real estate enterprises, and in trading in the commodities or securities which these various undertakings have produced.

The resources of the country are by no means exhausted; there are doubtless more mines to open which will make their owners superbly rich; new discoveries in the mechanical or electrical field will afford fresh opportunities to discerning men of means; and individual or combined capital will continue to reap the reward of both legitimate and over-reaching commercial acumen. But it would seem as though the day of enormous fortunes, for men of average brains and luck, in this country were nearly over, and that the great pecuniary prizes of the business world would henceforth be gleaned only by extraordinary or exceptional individuals. The country is no longer sparsely settled; fierce competition speedily cuts the abnormal profit out of new enterprises which are not protected by a patent; and in order to be conspicuously successful in any branch of trade, one will have more and more need of unusual ability and untiring application.

In other words, though ours is still a new country, it will not be very long before the opportunities and conditions of a business life resemble closely those which confront young men elsewhere. As in every civilized country, trade in some form will necessarily engage the attention of a large portion of the population. From physical causes, a vast majority of the citizens of the United States must continue to derive their support from agriculture and the callings which large crops of cereals, cotton, and sugar make occasion for. Consequently business will always furnish occupation for a vast army of young men in every generation, and few successes will seem more enviable than those of the powerful and scrupulous banker, or the broad-minded and capable railroad president. But, on the other hand, will the well-to-do American father and mother, eager to see their promising sons make the most of themselves, continue to advise them to go into business in preference to other callings? And will the general utility man still be encouraged to regard some form of trade as the most promising outlook, for one who does not know what he wishes to do, to adopt? He who hopes to become a great banker or illustrious railway man, must remember that the streets of all our large cities teem with young men whose breasts harbor similar ambitions.

Doubtless, it was the expectation of our forefathers that our American civilization would add new occupations to the callings inherited from the old world, which would be alluring both to the promising young man and the youth without predilections, and no less valuable to society and elevating to the individual than the best of those by which men have earned their daily bread since civilization first was. As a matter of fact, we Americans have added just one, that of the modern stock-broker. To be sure, I am not including the ranchman. It did seem at one time as though we were going to add another in him—a sort of gentleman shepherd. But be it that the cattle have become too scarce or too numerous, be it that the demon of competition has planted his hoofs on the farthest prairie, one by one the brave youths who went West in search of fortune, have returned East for the last time, and abandoned the field to the cowboys and the native settler. The pioneers in this form of occupation made snug fortunes, but after them came a deluge of promising or unpromising youths who branded every animal within a radius of hundreds of miles with a letter of the alphabet. Their only living monument is the polo pony.

Our single and signal contribution to the callings of the world has been the apotheosis of the stock-broker. For the last twenty-five years, the well-to-do father and mother and their sons, in our large cities, have been under the spell of a craze for the brokerage business. The consciousness that the refinements of modern living cannot adequately be supplied in a large city to a family whose income does not approximate ten thousand dollars a year, is a cogent argument in favor of trying to grow rich rapidly, and both the promising young man and the general utility man welcomed the new calling with open arms. Impelled by the notion that here was a vocation which required no special knowledge or attainments, and very little capital, which was pleasant, gentlemanly, and not unduly confining, and which promised large returns almost in the twinkling of an eye, hundreds and thousands of young men became brokers—chiefly stock-brokers, but also cotton-brokers, note-brokers, real-estate-brokers, insurance-brokers, and brokers in nearly everything. The field was undoubtedly a rich one for those who first entered it. There was a need for the broker, and he was speedily recognized as a valuable addition to the machinery of trade. Many huge fortunes were made, and we have learned to associate the word broker with the possession of large means, an imposing house on a fashionable street, and diverse docked and stylish horses.

Of course, the king of all brokers has been the stock-broker, for to him was given the opportunity to buy and sell securities on his own account, though he held himself out to his customers as merely a poor thing who worked for a commission. No wonder that the young man, just out of college, listened open-mouthed to the tales of how many thousands of dollars a year so and so, who had been graduated only five years before, was making, and resolved to try his luck with the same Aladdin’s lamp. Nor was it strange that the sight of men scarcely out of their teens, driving down town in fur coats, in their own equipages, with the benison of successful capitalists in their salutations, settled the question of choice for the youth who was wavering or did not know what he wished to do.

It is scarcely an extreme statement that the so-called aristocracy of our principal cities to-day is largely made up of men who are, or once were, stock-brokers, or who have made their millions by some of the forms of gambling which our easy-going euphemism styles modern commercial aggressiveness. Certainly, a very considerable number of our most splendid private residences have been built out of the proceeds of successful ventures in the stock market, or the wheat pit, or by some other purely speculative operations. Many stars have shone brilliantly for a season, and then plunged precipitately from the zenith to the horizon; and much has been wisely said as to the dangers of speculation; but the fact remains that a great many vast fortunes owe their existence to the broker’s office; fortunes which have been salted down, as the phrase is, and now furnish support and titillation for a leisurely, green old age, or enable the sons and daughters of the original maker to live in luxury.

Whatever the American mother may feel as to her son becoming a clergyman, there is no doubt that many a mother to-day would say “God grant that no son of mine become a stock-broker.” I know stock-brokers—many indeed—who are whole-souled, noble-natured men, free from undue worldliness, and with refined instincts. But the stock-broker, as he exists in the every-day life of our community, typifies signally the gambler’s yearning to gain wealth by short cuts, and the monomania which regards as pitiable those who do not possess and display the gewgaws of feverish, fashionable materialism. There are stock-brokers in all the great capitals of the world, but nowhere has the vocation swallowed up the sons of the best people to the extent that it has done here during the last thirty years. And yet, apart from the opportunity it affords to grow rich rapidly, what one good reason is there why a promising young man should decide to buy and sell stocks for a living? Indeed, not merely decide, but select, that occupation as the most desirable calling open to him? Does it tend either to ennoble the nature or enrich the mental faculties? It is one of the formal occupations made necessary by the exigencies of the business world, and as such is legitimate and may be highly respectable; but surely it does not, from the nature of the services required, deserve to rank high; and really there would seem to be almost as much occasion for conferring the accolade of social distinction on a dealer in excellent fish as on a successful stock-broker.

However, alas! it is easy enough to assign the reason why the business has been so popular. It appears that, even under the flag of our aspiring nationality, human nature is still so weak that the opportunity to grow rich quickly, when presented, is apt to over-ride all noble considerations. Foreign censors have ventured not infrequently to declare that there was never yet a race so hungry for money as we free-born Americans; and not even the pious ejaculation of one of our United States Senators, “What have we to do with abroad?” is conclusive proof that the accusation is not well founded. In fact: there seems to be ample proof that we, who sneered so austerely at the Faubourg St. Germain and the aristocracies of the Old World, and made Fourth of July protestations of poverty and chastity, have fallen down and worshipped the golden calf merely because it was made of gold. Because it seemed to be easier to make money as stock-brokers than in any other way, men have hastened to become stock-brokers. To be sure it may be answered that this is only human nature and the way of the world. True, perhaps; except that we started on the assumption that we were going to improve on the rest of the world, and that its human nature was not to be our human nature. Would not the Faubourg St. Germain be preferable to an aristocracy of stock-brokers?

At all events, the law of supply and demand is beginning to redeem the situation, and, if not to restore our moral credit, at least to save the rising generation from falling into the same slough. The stock-broker industry has been overstocked, and the late young capitalists in fur overcoats, with benedictory manners, wear anxious countenances under the stress of that Old World demon, excessive competition. Youth can no longer wake up in the morning and find itself the proprietor of a rattling business justifying a steam-yacht and a four-in-hand. The good old days have gone forever, and there is weeping and gnashing of teeth where of late there was joy and much accumulation. There is not business enough for all the promising young men who are stock-brokers already, and the youth of promise must turn elsewhere.