Boys and Young Men in Relation to Business. CHAPTER I. _BOYS._ If there were no boys there would be no young men and no old men. To this truism add the saying, “The boy is the father of the man,” and our subject has dignity and greatness at the outset. There may be aspects of it that provoke merriment; but there are more of a different character, and we are kept sober-minded in view of them. The boy on shipboard is the “monkey.” The boy among types and presses is the “printer’s devil.” The boy at school is “Jack,” or “Bill,” or “Dick,” “hail-fellow well met,” and a peer among peers. The boy in college, if any boys go to college, is a “Freshman,” bound—if not happily emancipated of late—to serve the learned “Sophomore,” or take a ducking, or something worse, for his disobedience. In business the boy is just what his character, his companions and his employers make of him. He may be a butt of ridicule, or a greenhorn to be ripened into smartness and wickedness by those who are older and wiser and worse than himself. He may be a poor drudge, to sweep and run of errands, which may be all right; or to suffer untold indignities and cruelties, with no uplifting to a better future and very little pay for very much work, which is all wrong. Or, by way of contrast, he may be treated from the start as having in him the germ of real greatness, the undeveloped qualities of a man yet to be acknowledged as the peer of those he serves, and the possible superior of them all. No one but God knows what may be hid and struggling for opportunity and recognition and reward in the obscurest little fellow who takes the lowest place in any store or office or shop. CHAPTER II. _EMPLOYERS IN RELATION TO BOYS._ I do not think the first thing to be considered is what a boy may do for his employers, but rather what they may do for him, and so, at last, for themselves through him. In all ordinary circumstances they can mould him to their will. They are the masters, he is the servant. They are strong, he is weak. If they do not recognize their obligation to him, in the relation to which they invite and receive him, they ought not to complain of his failures in duty to them. As well expect a son to know and meet his duties to his parents while they utterly fail to recognize theirs to him. If an employer requires a boy to do what in his home or the sanctuary he has learned he must not do, and if he requires him to do the forbidden thing on pain of losing his place or his pay, the requirement is not only a grievous wrong in itself, but an outrage upon the inalienable rights of the boy. Children are required to obey their parents only “in the Lord.” No man is great enough to lord it over his own child’s conscience. And this great principle holds in the relation of employers to their servants of all ages and grades.