The Importance of the Mechanic.
EACH ensuing day makes more prominent the fact that we have come upon the time when the mechanic is master. We have crowded professions and ill-filled trades. A chance to fill the position of sub-assistant clerk in a wholesale house is eagerly grasped at by a hundred applicants, though the wages received be scarcely more than 'a chance to learn the business.' Let a master workman try to obtain an apprentice at three times the salary offered the clerk, and his applicants will be poor alike in quantity and quality. A skilled workman in any trade need never want for hire; he is eagerly sought after by a hundred employers; he is independent of the condition of the market; the skill and cunning of his hand and eye are too valuable to lose, and must be paid whether the products are slowly or rapidly consumed. If business ceases, the master hand is eagerly seized by some rival house, which knows and values the product of his skill. He who would crush down the obstacles to success in our own days must have, as well as the wit to see the crevice, the strength to deal the blow. This is an age of the steam engine, and it is the engineer, not the conductor, who is master.—Sel.