THE THRIFTLESSNESS OF PROFESSIONAL MEN.
H. W. E. FORSTER, in his speech at Otley on Saturday, ill said that, excepting the capitalists and trading class,— the class of "men of business" of various kinds,—there is probably no class in England which is more disposed to thrift, —to saving,--than the so-called working-clam, the class which lives by wages, and that it would certainly bear favourable com- parison with the class of professional men, who are less thrifty and frugal in England than any other class of society. We believe that to be quite true. Unquestionably there are no people in England who spend so freely what might be saved as what Mr. Forster means by the members of the professional classes,— in other words, those who live by educated labour of a high kind, —clergymen, lawyers, surgeons and physicians, artists, literary men, civilians. Considering how small the margin of income is out of which working-men could save as compared with the margin of income out of which professional men might save, there can be little doubt that the professional classes are as much less thrifty than the working-classes, as the trading or capitalist classes are more thrifty than they. Nor is the reason, we think, very recondite. First, it is easy enough to see why the most dis- posed to save of all classes should be the capitalist classes. For a capitalist properly means a man all whose gains are, to him at least, reckoned and measured by the proportion they bear to the capital he has invested in his trade. Of course economists tell us that a good part of these gains ought not to be so reckoned,—tbat a very large part of them are as much the wages of educated labour, and of a very exceptional sort of talent, as is the fee marked on the barrister's brief or the guinea deposited in the hand of a physician. The sagacious trader will probably gain a great deal more by his sagacity than he ever could by his capital only. The shopkeeper who is master of his business will turn over his capital twice, where the shop- keeper who is not master of it cannot turn it over once. But though this is so, the capitalist always weighs what he is worth by the proportion which his gains bear to his accumulated pro- perty. The unit by which he measures is the property with which he started. By the rate at which that increases, and by that alone he gauges his success. Unless he adds to his property, he does not really add to his prosperity ; unless he adds largely to his property, he does not add largely to his prosperity. The scale on which he measures his success, is a scale of which his accumulated property furnishes the unit. He cannot do well without seeing the way to extend his operations ; and he oannot extend his operations without sinking more capital in them. Hence, to the capitalist, saving is as much the essential -condition of gaining as gaining is of saving. Unless he can save much, he has not the means of gaining more ; and thrift becomes to him as much the condition of success as success is of thrift. But this is not at all true of the professional man, the man who makes a hundred guineas by an able legal argument, or by a jour- ney of 150 miles to see a patient of whom the local doctor despairs. In cases like these, the measure of success is not the profit on capital invested, but the yearly income earned. No fresh in- vestment of capital will, as a rule, procure the professional man larger gains. The lawyer's learning and brains are his capital; and money saved will not extend his learning or improve his brains. The doctor's-experience, his quickness of sight, his half-uncon- scious appreciations of the meaning of particular symptoms, and his knowledge of remedies, are his capital ; no money-savings twill sensibly increase the value of these qualifications. Again, the literary or artistic touch of the author or the painter is in general altogether beyond the reach of the magic of thrift to im- prove or to spoil. These men know that the qualities which bring success are not qualities the yield of which can be doubled by saving, or halved by failing to save. In all these cases, the measure of success is not capital, but income ; and it is not by the increase to his capital, but by the increase to his income accordingly, that the professional man gauges his position. This may sufficiently explain why the capitalist is so much more thrifty than the professional man. If the former makes 20 per cent, on. his capital, the motive for investing at least 10 per cent, of it in the extension of his operations is overwhelming. But if a barrister makes 1,5,000 a year, there is no motive at all of the same kind for saving /2,500 of it. For in the transactions with the utility and profit of which to himself he inmost familiar, the saving of this money would be of little or no use to him ;—it would not bring him numberless fresh opportunities, as it would to the trader, of displaying his professional skill ; it would not get him new clients, or raise the estimate of his medical opinion. It would be simply provision for his family, or for his own old age, and nothing more. Now nothing is more certain than the limi- tation of men's imagination by their individual experience. What a successful author thinks of is how to gain a new success of the same kind as his last ; and if saving would help him in that, as it does the banker, he would save. But as it will not do so, but only help him in a quite different way, with which perhaps his thoughts are seldom engaged, there is no constant force press- ing upon him which induces him to save.
Well, but how has the working-man any more motive to save than the professional man ? He, too, measures his success by his wages, not by his invested capital. He, too, knows that it is in- creased dexterity and skill which will bring him a larger income, rather than any addition to the sum standing in his name in the savings-bank. This is indisputable, but it is also true that, as a rule, the step from the work of the skilled labourer to the work of the employer of labour of the same kind, is a very obvious and natural step, which it must enter into the mind of every ambitious workman of real ability to take ; and that there is no such step from a less profitable to a much more profitable mode of employing the same order of faculties, possible in the case of the professional man. The labourer who has saved money is better fitted perhaps than any one to employ to advantage the kind of labour in which he himself is versed. But the lawyer or the author who has saved money has no way open to him of turning, at the same time, both his knowledge and his money to account by the successful employment of the talents of other lawyers or other authors in undertakings like unto his own. Perhaps, indeed, something of this kind happens when a very popular author like Dickens turns editor, and collects roun.d him a staff of clever writers, who admire his genius and are even disposed to copy his mannerisms. But the case is exceptional, and as a rule it so seldom turns out that the very successful author happens to have the qualities of a successful editor and journalist, that exceptions of this kind may be put aside as irrelevant. No doubt one of the great reasons why professional men are, on the whole, so thriftless in proportion to their gains is this, —that the occupation which absorbs their energies is not one the gains of which can be ex- tended by the help of judicious saving and investment. A man cannot be successful in commerce, nor, indeed, very successful even as a skilled labourer, without a strong motive for saving in order to secure more success, either of the same sort, or at least of a closely analogous sort. But a professional man who is very successful rarely has a strictly professional motive for saving. The more his heart is absorbed in his work, the less he thinks of providing for himself in directions which are in no way bound up with his work.
And no doubt there is still another reason why professional men are, in proportion to their chances of saving, relatively even less thrifty than the working-classes themselves. The tastes of profes- sional men are sure to bring them into close and equal intercourse with very much wealthier men, and not unfrequently to give them even some advantage in delicacy of judgment over these wealthier men, and so to present temptations to them to which, if they once fall into the error of measuring their resources by their in- come, and not by their accumulated property, they may fancy
themselves justified in yielding. Working-men, on the contrary, have this great advantage, as far as the growth of thrift is con- cerned, that if they resist the temptations to extravagance pecu- liar to their class,—which are no doubt much more urgent from the very fact that hitherto the limits of their pleasures and tastes have been so contracted,—they have hardly any temptation at all, to live up to the standard of a richer class. If they are proof against the temptations of the gin-palace and the beer- house, they are by no means likely to be much beset by the temptations of the book-hunter or the china-collector. Pro- fessional men, on the contrary, are always being tempted by their association with intellectual equals of much greater wealth, but probably not always greater income, to spend at least as large a proportion of the income which has no accumulated wealth behind it, as the capitalist spends of an income all of which has accumulated wealth behind it.
Further, it is, we imagine, one reason why professional men do not usually save, in proportion to their means of saving, anything like as much as artisans, that the former, of all classes, are most accustomed to lay stress on those elements of success in life which no sort even of thrift or education will buy. The skilful workman has, no doubt, also much in him which no education will buy ; but the elements of his success are so much simpler, and so much more nearly attributable to good teaching and training, that he is much more apt to look at education, which can be bought, as the only investment needful to command success, than is the successful professional man, who is perfectly well aware that very many indeed of the greatest failures of his profession, are men who had been just as well educated, and perhaps just as earnest in their efforts to turn their educa- tion to account, as himself. It is the habit of dwelling on " luck " which makes the gambler, and it is the habit of seeing large fortunes earned by qualities which no investment of money, or time, or training can at all secure, which makes the lavishness of the professional man. He sees clearly that his peculiar gains come not from saving, not from careful foresight and what the economists call abstinence,—since those who save more, and fore- cast more, and abstain more than he has ever done, are often com- parative failures,—but from the possession of a monopoly of special qualities the origin of which is hidden from all eyes. And so, the proverb which says that what is easily gained is lightly prized, probably explains as much of the comparative lavishness of suc- cessful professional men as any other consideration to which we have adverted.
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