Analyzing Character, page 89 by Katherine M.H. Blackford
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e tragedies of our commercial and financial age. While the section-hand may become a section boss, a roadmaster, a division superintendent, a general superintendent, a general manager, and, finally, the president of a railroad; while the stock boy becomes, eventually, a salesman, then a sales manager, and, finally, the head of the corporation; while apprentices to carpenters, bricklayers, and plumbers may become journeymen, and then contractors, and, finally, owners of big buildings; while the farmhand may become a farm owner, then a landlord, and, finally, perhaps, the president of a bank; while a workman in a factory handling a wheelbarrow may afterward become the president of the greatest corporation in the world, the clerk, toiling over his papers and his books, is almost inevitably sentenced to a lifetime of similar toil, with small opportunities for advancement before him.
There are men fitted by inheritance and training for clerical work and what lies beyond and above it. They are so constituted that they have the ability to take advantage of opportunities, to forge to the front from such a beginning, and to rise to commanding positions. But this is not true of the men who have aptitudes which would make them successful in active work with their hands, and afterward with hand and brain. These men of inherent activity and skill of hand, men whose bones and muscles were made for work, whose whole nature calls for the out-of-doors, are doomed to stagnate, grow discontented, and finally lose hope, if compelled by pride or bad judgment to undertake the "white collar man's" job.
SOCIAL VALUE OF THE "WHITE COLLAR MAN"
Regarding the social deficiency of this class of worker Martha Brensley Bruere and Robert W. Bruere, in their excellent book, "Increasing Home Efficiency," have the following to say:
"The output of their domestic factory so far is two sons able to earn living salaries, who are useful to the community undoubtedly, but as easy to replace if damaged as any other standard pro