COMPETITION. 129 



Thus not only have the poor an increasing chance 

 of rising into the upper ranks of life, but the upper 

 classes are beginning to regard occupations, at one 

 time beneath their notice, as, after all, most suited to 

 the less bright and capable of their children, so that 

 there is a greater passing up and passing down of the 

 ladder of life than was the case some fifty years ago. 

 The surgeon and medical practitioner were at one 

 time looked down upon and classed with the shop- 

 keepers, and trade in all its branches was viewed as a 

 necessary occupation, but only to be undertaken by 

 the uneducated and unrefined. But nowadays parents 

 are taking what appears to be a more commonsense 

 view of the question. Their sons cannot all of them 

 be landed proprietors, clergymen, lawyers, or soldiers, 

 and they are, therefore, sent to banks and offices and 

 breweries, or may be they are exported to grow 

 oranges or to mind sheep in one of the colonies. 

 Positions in life once looked down upon are now 

 thought better of, for men and women do not speak 

 ill of the positions which may be occupied by their 

 children or by their near relatives. 



But while it would appear that we are beginning to 

 give fuller play to individual power and industry, no 

 one would be prepared for a moment to assert that 

 these qualities have as yet free scope for their action. 

 Still the tendency has recently been in the direction 

 of a breaking up of the more artificially imposed 



