uccessful lawyer, preacher,
engineer, or business man will influence the choice of vocations for the
children of many of his admiring friends and acquaintances.

Multitudes of parents have foolish prejudices against any kind of work
which soils the hands or clothing--even against the dinner-pail. On the
other hand, hard-fisted parents may have prejudices against any vocation
which keeps the hands soft and white, and the clothing clean and fine.

Thus, in many ways do the prejudices of parents, based upon ignorance,
work tragedy in the lives of children. Either through a sense of duty and
loyalty or because they have not sufficient solid masonry in their
backbones, children follow the wishes of their parents and many all but
ruin their lives as a result.

"THE LEARNED PROFESSIONS"

One of the most disastrous prejudices upon the part of parents is that in
favor of what are called "the learned professions." To make a lawyer, a
physician, or a minister of one's son is held to be the highest ambition
on the part of large numbers of otherwise intelligent fathers and mothers.
The result of this kind of prejudice on the part of so many parents is
that the so-called learned professions are over-crowded--and overcrowded
with men and women unfitted for their tasks, both by natural inheritance
and by education and training. There follows mediocre Work, poor service,
low pay, poverty, disease, and misery.

FAMILY TRADITIONS

There are traditions in some families which carry their curse along with
them down through the generations. There are families of preachers,
families of soldiers, families of lawyers, families of physicians,
families of teachers. Many a young man who would have otherwise been a
success in the world has toiled along at a poor, dying rate, trying to
live up to the family tradition and make a success of himself as a
teacher, or lawyer, when he ought to have been a mechanic, an actor, or a
banker.

Another form of parental prejudice is a father's desire to have his son
become a success in the vocation which he himself longed to enter, but
could not. "My father is a successful business man," said a young man to
us not long ago. "When he was a young man he wanted to enter law school
and practice law, but because of lack of funds and because he had to
support his widowed mother's family, he did not have the opportunity. All
his life he has regretted that he was unable to realize his ambition. From
my earliest y