Who ain't a slave? Education & Work & Salvery or "paid conscription" (AGTD.103)

[alice wellintown]

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a
broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to,
weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the
archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly
and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who
ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains
may order me about- however they may thump and punch me about, I have
the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else
is one way or other served in much the same way- either in a physical
or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades,
and be content.


In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish
the fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not
accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions. If
a stranger were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan
society, it would but slightly advance the general opinion of his
merits, were he presented to the company as a harpooneer, say; and if
in emulation of the naval officers he should append the initials S. W.
F. (Sperm Whale Fishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure would
be deemed pre-eminently presuming and ridiculous.
…
And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet
undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real
repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be
unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon
the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if,
at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any
precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the
honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College
and my Harvard.
from Moby-Dick, Chapter xxiv - THE ADVOCATE

Of course, the business of whaling is oil. And, if we turn to P’s
AGTD, say pp. 93-103, 300-305, just to take two easy examples, we find
that the business of oil, Standard Oil & Co. is smack in the middle of
a plot developing around characters that are solicited by a man who
claims to be Scarsdale Vibe but who is only his Civil War Substitute,
Foley Walker. The characters, Jack and Kit are looking to labor. The
Substitute is sizing up these young men, fresh out of the house, for a
Scholarship Program: “How does Yale College sound to you?” (100).
Education, as P notes in his Slow Learner Introduction, and in his
Introduction to Farina’s BDSL, isn’t something Gatsby, an Ogsford man,
gets in school. But what choice has Gatsby got. He tries that Good
Will Hunting gig at the community college, but he’s too ambitious, too
talented, for that. And, the poor or working class, when they chase
the American Dream up the Ivy League ladder are often subjected to
exploitations by Education and the folks who dish out those
scholarships, grants, and loans. Again, who is paying for your
education and who are you working for? Speaking of Civil War
Substitutes, Adams and his old man head over to England in “Diplomacy”
only to discover that the Brits are supporting the South in the
American Civil War because it pays; all the Education in New England
and Europe taught nothing about the industrial economies would turn
their backs on principles, like the opposition to slavery, when money
energy resources came into the picture.