Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 September 1875 — City Clerking. [ARTICLE]

City Clerking.

Boys, says the Kansas Farmer, don’t lie afraid of manly, lionest, hard work. If Veil directed by judgment and intellig < - T ' /, e it will bring its certain reward. Web., v there is a temptation to leave the farm lor the glitter and style and apparent ease of the city. Thousands of young men, discontented with the farm work of tlieir fithers, haye an ideal city life in their ninds, where the young man, gayly trigged out with fashionably-cut clothes ana jewelry, makes a stunning appearance and seems to be free from ordinary human cares. A recent letter from Chicago to tie Courier-Journal gives a picture of cjerical life which has a valuable hint in it to those who long for such employment to enable them to escape the more laborious work of the farm. A short extract is riven to show how thoroughly the individuality and the manhood must be crushed out to give place to the mechanical obsequiousness of the clerk: “ It is estimated tjiere are 20,000 in Chicago. The salaries of these animated au■omatons range from six to fifteen dollars, leldom as high ,as eighteen dollars, per veek; and how under heaven they make !he legendary ‘ two ends’ meet is one of the mysteries. The salaries of those who gain their livelihood by their ‘shape’ rather than by brains and brawn have been cut down since the fire fully 100 per cent. There has been no reduction in livng expenses consequent upon high rent, vliicli. has been very generally maintained. These clerks are compelled to bse their individuality completely, and lave become, in consequence of their virtial slavery, veritable puppets. Supposing tlere was not the constant terror of loss of situation —and there is, for an advertisenent in the Tribune for any manner of aclerk will bring from 500 to 1,000 appicants, each able to bring the ‘ very best o' references’ —anu we may say the clerk receives the munificent pittance of twelve ddlars per week, which is certainly the average salary. To get board at as low a puce as six dollars per week, and this will orly procure the vilest of hash, he must Ire from two to four miles from his place ofbusiness. As he must be behind his gergeous counter—money is put in furniihings, not salaries, in Chicago—at 7 :t0 o’clock promptly, it necessitates the expenditure of sixty cents a week tor car fa:e. His lunch is not often included in ths dyspepsia-producing boaraing-liouse rejime, and one dollar and fifty cents at feist must be expended during the- week foi restaurant dinners. His washing will cust one dollar more, for his linen must be spotless, and his absolutely necessary imidental expenses will swell his total to tei dollars, leaving two dollars per week wih which to array himself in costly apoarel, for he must be faultlessly dressed. Wien it is true that more clerks receive tec than twelve dollars per week, and the fact that many have families to support is colsidered, a picture ofexquisite misery is furnished that should prompt some artist to achieve renown by portraying these naileries and making the clerk ‘ their embocied type. ‘ But these are not all liis miseries. The ‘ flmr-walker’ or foreman has an eagle eye fordelinquents, and the slightest derelictioi is visited with a stinging reprimand, a hssed curse or that consummation of all hoirors, dismissal; and so fearful of this do hese clerks become, and so groveling arethey obliged to be in consequence, that I have stood by in disgust and seen then chew prints in proof of their ‘ fast colcr’ at the suggestion of ladies( ?). Manlings, sentiment;, consideration are all, evoked. Labor is valued in these huge establishments at just what it will bring, and 500 employes are morally so much maciinerv; The caprices of women with time on their hands to kill; the petulance of wmien who carry tlieir shrewishness intotheir inquiries for tape and tarletan; the whimsicalities of grandmothers and the virulence of spinsters; the torment of wonen who want forty dozen samples ‘ to senl to a sick cousin in the country,’ but' wh,|j are really making patch-work and quilts; the thoughtlessness of girls who end a raid on a department with the remark: ‘ Guess nia’ll have to come;’ snickering women, terrible women; handsome women, ugly women; holy women, thieving women; and all the countless conteinptible little exhibitions of - snobbishness on the part of all women who mistake then for evidences of womanhood and caste —all have to be overcome and smoothed away by the despairing clerk, or judgment day comes.”