when a scotchman’s parents decide that he shall be neither a minister nor a journalist, or when a wee laddie who has been dedicated to one or other of these offices kicks over the traces, or turns out something of a failure, there are still splendid openings for him. far away to the south stretches that land of milk and honey—“england”—and there is scarcely a square mile of it whereon you do not find either a shop or a bank or a factory, or some other hive of industry created, of course, for the special benefit of scotchmen. donald, the hobbledehoy, that would not be a minister, and was not intended for a professor, and had not shorthand enough to be a journalist, is packed off south to wear an[164] apron, to shovel gold behind bars, or “to work his way up” in an engineering establishment, as the case may be. furthermore, he is understood to make an excellent gardener, and not a few english noblemen like to keep him about their places weeding and pruning, and feeding hogs. in the main, however, he rather tends to become a clerk in an office. there is something about being able to keep your coat on while you work and to be in the confidence of mr. foozlem’s books,—of holding, in short, a “position of trust,” at thirty shillings a week, which is peculiarly attractive to the scottish mind; and employers of clerical labour appear to be firmly convinced that donald is the man for them. they like him because he is never late, he is always putting a bit by, and he is as cheap as horseflesh. his slowness and want of sagacity are no great matter. the fact that he can only work in grooves also does not matter. thrift and punctuality, not to mention cheapness, clothe him with virtues like a garment, and when higher posts[165] fall vacant, your employer—good, easy man—has a way of turning a hopeful eye on “that steady young scot.” the late remarkable case of mr. goudie, who was as scotch as you make them, and, perhaps, the greatest and stupidest rogue that has adorned the annals of modern banking, shows what a scotch clerk can do when he tries. the genius of his country asserted itself in the matter of mr. goudie, and we saw what we saw. in banks, at any rate, to be scotch will not be to rank with c?sar’s wife for quite a little time to come. of course, we shall be told that the raking up of goudie is unfair. it always is unfair to say anything to the detriment of scotchmen. but the point i wish to insist upon is that scotch clerks and scotch managers and scotchmen at large are no more trustworthy and no more to be depended upon and no less human than englishmen. the scotch themselves spare no effort to have it believed that if you want men of true probity, you must go to scotland for them. employers have taken them at[166] their word and continue to take them at their word, and, all other things being equal, if there are two applicants for a position in the average commercial house, and one of them is english and the other scotch, the scotchman gets the preference, simply because he is scotch.
among dr. maclaren’s drumtochty marvels, there is an old couple who have a son who is a professor. that son, being, of course, a model of what a son should be, writes home to his good mother once a week, and the letter is invariably forthcoming in the kirkyard on sundays, so that all who care to read may be informed as to the professor’s condition and progress. many touching things are said by the admirers of this honest couple as to the honour their son has conferred upon “the glen,” and the general prodigiousness of his character and position. but it never occurs to dr. maclaren to put into the mouth of any of his people a single word as to what is thought of the professor by the persons with whom he is dealing.[167] what do his fellow professors think of him? what do his students think of him? we all know that professor from drumtochty, and we all wish that drumtochty had kept him. not only in universities, but wherever there is a modest living to be made, there you will find him in full bloom, and the more authority he has, the less possible is he to get on with. as a colleague, too, he is equally objectionable. when a certain scotch lady was informed during the time of the indian mutiny that her son had been captured by the enemy with other prisoners and that he had been put into a chain-gang, she said with emotion, “god help the man that’s chained to oor sandy.” and this is precisely the trouble. to work amicably with a scotchman in any commercial capacity is well nigh an impossibility. he is eaten up with a squint-eyed envy; the fear that for some inscrutable reason you wish to oust him out of his occupation is ever with him, and it is part of his creed and code to shoulder out any fellow worker who happens to be[168] getting a little more money or a little more credit than himself. in fact, when he comes to take up any sort of a berth, it is with the consciousness that, as a scot, it is his duty by hook or by crook to make himself master of the situation, and, if needs be, to turn out in the long run his own employer. if you ask a scotchman how it comes to pass that so many of his compatriots hold positions of influence in commercial houses, he will reply, nine times out of ten, “well, you see, we just drop into them.” if this were so, nobody would mind, but as a matter of fact, your scotchman is far too calculating to drop into anything. his great game is the game of grab; he will move heaven and earth to get what he wants, and, as dr. robertson nicoll has told us, he is not over-scrupulous in his methods of getting it. every commercial man could give instances of this over-reachingness which is such an essential feature of the policy of the scotch employee. live and let live is not at all in his way. of gratitude for help rendered he knows nothing. he[169] begins life with sycophancy, and the moment he meets with any sort of success, he assumes a truculent over-bearingness which he is pleased to call force of character. when you hear of men being deprived of their positions by sharp practice and shiftiness, no matter whether it be in a draper’s shop or in a gilt-edged bank, you will find that nine times out of ten there is a scotchman in the case; that it is the scotchman who has got up the bother, and that it is the scotchman who is to take the post the other man vacates. dr. nicoll, who is a veritable encyclop?dia of scotch character, wrote some time ago a number of articles which he called firing out the fools. he asserted very properly that in most business houses there are always a number of fools who are a dead weight on progress. the capable men who are not quite capable enough are the plague of most heads of commercial concerns. you want a man to do such and such things; you look round your staff; you consider the merits of this and that person, and you feel that none of[170] them is exactly the person you want. what are you to do? if you endeavour to get a man from outside, the chances are that he will be no better than the men you have. dr. nicoll, of course, knows exactly what you should do. he does not say, “send for the nearest scotchman,” because that would be a little too explicit; but he does say that plod is the great quality which distinguishes competence from foolishness, and, as everybody knows, the scot is nothing if not a plodder. plod, plod, plod, with plenty of divagations into plotting and scheming, is the essence of his life. and when all is said and done, plod may be counted about the meanest and least desirable of the virtues. it is to the plodders that we owe pretty well everything we wished we had not got. the very word plod is about the ugliest and the most nauseating in the english language. your plodder may plod and plod and plod, but he never does anything that is more than middling. in the arts this is a fact beyond traverse. the plodding artist is still a student[171] at fifty; the plodding writer is a fool to the end of his life; the plodding actor says, “my lord, the carriage waits,” till the workhouse or the grave claims him for its own. this being so, why should the plodder be the only ware in commercial matters? brilliancy and imagination are nowadays just as much wanted in business as in any other department of life. tact and a reasonably decent feeling for your fellow-man are also wanted. your scot, on his own showing, does not possess these qualities. he even goes so far as to disdain them and to assure you that they are not consistent with “force of character” and “rugged independence.” the moral is obvious, and i should not be surprised if english employers of labour have not already begun to take it to heart. fire out the fools! is a shibboleth which comes ill from a scotchman, because in the large result it may easily mean, fire out the scotchmen.
