第59章 CHAPTER IV(5)

Phenomena that come into view in the later and maturer growth of the retail trade, as seen, e. g., in the larger and more reputable department stores, are perhaps nearer the point. There are formal "openings" to inaugurate the special trade of each of the four seasons, desired to put the patrons of the house on a footing of good-humoured familiarity with the plant and its resources, with the customs of the house, the personnel and the stock of wares in hand, and before all to arrest the attention and enlist the interest of those classes that may be induced to buy. There are also occasional gatherings of a more ceremonial character, by special invitation of select customers to a promised exhibition of peculiarly rare and curious articles of trade. This will then be illuminated with shrewdly conceived harangues setting forth the alleged history, adventures and merits, past and future, of the particular branch of the trade, and of the particular house at whose expense the event is achieved. In addition to these seasonal and occasional set pieces of mercantile ceremony, there will also run along in the day' s work an unremitting display of meritorious acts of commission and omission. Like their analogues in academic life these ceremonials of trade are expensive, edifying, enticing, and surrounded with a solicitous regard for publicity; and it will be seen that they are, all and several, expedients of advertising.

To return to the academic personnel and their implication in these recurrent spectacles and amenities of university life. As was remarked above, apart from outside resources the livelihood that comes to a university man is, commonly, somewhat meagre. The tenure is uncertain and the salaries, at an average, are not large. Indeed, they are notably low in comparison with the high conventional standard of living which is by custom incumbent on university men. University men are conventionally required to live on a scale of expenditure comparable with that in vogue among the well-to-do businessmen, while their university incomes compare more nearly with the lower grades of clerks and salesmen.

The rate of pay varies quite materially, as is well known. For the higher grades of the staff, whose scale of pay is likely to be publicly divulged, it is, perhaps, adequate to the average demands made on university incomes by polite usage; but the large majority of university men belong on the lower levels of grade and pay; and on these lower levels the pay is, perhaps, lower than any outsider appreciates.(3*)With men circumstanced as the common run of university men are, the temptation to parsimony is ever present, while on the other hand, as has already been noted, the prestige of the university -- and of the academic head -- demands of all its members a conspicuously expensive manner of living. Both of these needs may, of course, be met in some poor measure by saving in the obscurer items of domestic expense, such as food, clothing, heating, lighting, floor-space, books, and the like; and making all available funds count toward the collective end of reputable publicity, by throwing the stress on such expenditures as come under the public eye, as dress and equipage, bric-a-brac, amusements, public entertainments, etc. It may seem that it should also be possible to cut down the proportion of obscure expenditures for creature comforts by limiting the number of births in the family, or by foregoing marriage. But, by and large, there is reason to believe that this expedient has been exhausted. As men have latterly been at pains to show, the current average of children in academic households is not high;whereas the percentage of celibates is. There appears, indeed, to be little room for additional economy on this head, or in the matter of household thrift, beyond what is embodied in the family budgets already in force in academic circles.

So also, the tenure of office is somewhat precarious; more so than the documents would seem to indicate. This applies with greater force to the lower grades than to the higher. Latterly, under the rule of business principles, since the prestige value of a conspicuous consumption has come to a greater currency in academic policy, a member of the staff may render his tenure more secure, and may perhaps assure his due preferment, by a sedulous attention to the academic social amenities, and to the more conspicuous items of his expense account; and he will then do well in the same connection also to turn his best attention in the day's work to administrative duties and schoolmasterly discipline, rather than to the increase of knowledge. Whereas he may make his chance of preferment less assured, and may even jeopardize his tenure, by a conspicuously parsimonious manner of life, or by too pronounced an addiction to scientific or scholarly pursuits, to the neglect of those polite exhibitions of decorum that conduce to the maintenance of the university's prestige in the eyes of the (pecuniarily) cultured laity.

A variety of other untoward circumstances, of a similarly extra-scholastic bearing, may affect the fortunes of academic men to a like effect; as, e.g., unearned newspaper notoriety that may be turned to account in ridicule; unconventional religious, or irreligious convictions -- so far as they become known; an undesirable political affiliation; an impecunious marriage, or such domestic infelicities as might become subject of remark.