Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

CLERKS. Photo ; Cassell & Co., Ltd. a barrister’s CLERK. \S Great Britain enjoys . the commercial su- premacy of the world, it follows as a matter of course that her manufac- turing cities and towns provide a field of extra- ordinary range for clerical employment. An ever- increasing army of Eng- lishmen are engaged in keeping the ledgers which are literally detailed charts of our gigantic trade. And their ranks are annually supplemented by an influx of foreigners, principally Germans and Frenchmen, who remain here only long enough to master the language, our methods of doing business, and the nature of our world-wide commercial connections, before returning to their own country to use the knowledge thus acquired against their instructors. Boys destined to become clerks generally enter offices at any age from twelve to fifteen. Every class supplies its quota of recruits. The public school lad is often sent into the City in the hope that a business training, backed by social influence, may secure him a dignified and lucrative position in the higher walks of commercial life. The Board school, however, furnishes the majority of embryo clerks. The office-boy stands at the foot of the ladder, so far as the clerical industry is concerned, and his services are generally valued at about five or six shillings a week. The day may come when his income will be reckoned by hundreds, even by thousands. But the ladder which he has to climb has many gradations. He begins by acquiring a knowledge of office routine. He is expected to reach the counting house in the morning before his seniors. He indexes the letters, takes charge of the stamps, and goes on errands if required. It is all very simple, very monotonous, but the discipline is priceless in preparing him for a life in which brilliancy is useless in com- parison with accuracy, honesty, punctuality, neatness, and character. In every office, even those devoted to the same line of trade, the daily round of duties differs in details. But sound business principles, like Euclid’s axioms, are a fixed quantity. There are, in round numbers, 150,000 clerks in London, or practically twice as many as in any other European city, and the proportion probably also holds good even in the case of New York. Economic causes suffice to explain the rush for clerkships. British trade is now represented by an annual turnover of about ^900,000,000 sterling. In proportion as trade expands, as the figures, neatly arranged in the form of national export and import returns, attain to more and more bewildering dimensions, employment for clerks multiplies. For it must be remem- bered that the petty totals, which in the aggregate amount to these colossal millions, have to be cast up, and cast up again, checked, and audited by hundreds of thousands of youths and men, ere they flow through one channel or another into the hands of Board of Trade officials, to be thrown into the form of Blue-books. The from every other in that no form of trade is inde- pendent of it. The world - wide contractor, the millionaire com- pany-promoter, the West - End shop- keeper, the East- Encl huckster, as well as the thousand types who fill the gaps between these strongly marked representatives of the commercial classes, all have to clerical industry differs Photo : Cassell & Co., Ltd. A “WALK” CLERK.