"Before the Civil War, the man who worked with his hands was despised by the leading element in the South. Supplied with an army of slaves to wait upon him, the average planter was spared the necessity of exertion. He hunted in the season, raced sometimes and sometimes played an athletic game; but he held the theory, broadly speaking, that no man could be a gentleman (as most foreigners believe also) who engages in trade or pursues any mechanical occupation.
"The war changed all that. Many of the richest planters had to go to work. Some of them had even to enter menial servitude in order to earn bread for their families. Then they found out that it was possible to preserve their scholarship, their refinement and their gentle manners, though they worked hard every day. It was an epochal discovery.
"From that time, the dignity of labor was established in the South, as the Pilgrim Fathers had long before established it in New England, and as it must eventually be established throughout the world, if the world is ever to rise to the full glory of the democratic ideal."
The chief, and almost the only argument of the advocates of Child Labor in our fields and factories, is that the children thus become early used to work,—a habit which is productive of the best results in later life.
Carlyle's great essays upon work have inspired thousands; and in Professor Carl Hilty's wonderful volume called "Happiness," there is an essay on "Work," which every parent should read. He shows how laziness,—the inherent aversion to work,—has been a chief obstacle to progress in all ages; how hard labor was so universally relegated to slaves during early times that even to philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, any social system was unthinkable, which did not include a slave class.
One of Professor's Hilty's incidental remarks is worth mentioning. He speaks of the many excellent women who observe scrupulously the injunction in the Fourth Commandment to keep the Sabbath Day holy; but who seem to fail to observe the opening sentence of the commandment, "Six days shalt thou labor"; often apparently thinking that one day out of the seven, or even none at all, is enough for that purpose. He feels that the progress of the world depends upon the combined and strenuous labor of every living man and woman for six days out of the seven,—with only occasional vacations!
We are all probably agreed that every citizen should know how to support himself.
One of our truant officers went to a poor home to find out why a boy who lived there had been absent from school for several days. The mother reported that the father was in the hospital, and that her only support was the small pay which this boy received for holding horses, doing errands for the corner grocer, and so on.
The teapot stood on the stove, and the officer said, "But your boy will grow up ignorant if you keep him out of school like this. Don't you want him to know about tea,—where it grows and how it is prepared for the market?"
"Oh," responded the poor woman, with a practical common sense which disconcerted her hearer, "I'd a dale rather he should know how to airn a pound of it."