Banking employments also carry a suggestion of large ownership,
and this fact is doubtless accountable for a share of the
prestige that attaches to the business. The profession of the law
does not imply large ownership; but since no taint of
usefulness, for other than the competitive purpose, attaches to
the lawyer's trade, it grades high in the conventional scheme.
The lawyer is exclusively occupied with the details of predatory
fraud, either in achieving or in checkmating chicanery, and
success in the profession is therefore accepted as marking a
large endowment of that barbarian astuteness which has always
commanded men's respect and fear. Mercantile pursuits are only
half-way reputable, unless they involve a large element of
ownership and a small element of usefulness. They grade high or
low somewhat in proportion as they serve the higher or the lower
needs; so that the business of retailing the vulgar necessaries
of life descends to the level of the handicrafts and factory
labor. Manual labor, or even the work of directing mechanical
processes, is of course on a precarious footing as regards
respectability. A qualification is necessary as regards the
discipline given by the pecuniary employments.
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