Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 December 1879 — Why Boys Should Choose Hard Wort. [ARTICLE]

Why Boys Should Choose Hard Wort.

There are boys and boys. They are the advance guard of every generation, and their courage and self-assertion constrains society to look out for places for them. Every boy expects to be a man, and a successful one. If the history of a century has convinced him that only about six men in every generation can be President of the United States, he has learned that there are other positions, in abundance, as worthy of hfa ambition, and a good deal more permanent, and always within the reach of him who makes a brave and judicious push forthem. But he does not know that success seldom comes by luck, and that those who have reached the upper rounds of fortune’s ladder have had the longest and weariest climbing, and often the heaviest loads* to carry. To boys who have their fortunes to make, we would offer the advice to learn a trade. And if we had the choice to make for a boy, we should select for him the most laborious in the list of successful and remunerative trades. We would do this for the boy’B good, our reason being that the easy ana’ genteel occupations are over-crowded. A friend tells us that he once advertised for a boy to do chores in a store, in one of the interior cities, .offering the pittance of two dollars a week. In three days he received over two hundred applications, including boys of all ages up to twenty-one. They Were generally American boys, who had been reared to the, idea that labor was degrading. Then he advertised for a boy to learn a blacksmith’s trade, doubling the rate of wages, and in a week received six answers, all of them from boys whose names showed that, they were of foreign extraction. It fa this dread of hard work by our boys that is filling the best places with those who are born and reared to the idea that it fa their first duty to labor. They take up their task and perform it faithfully and successfully, while those who watch for the shifting chances of easy employment sink into dissipation and idleness, and are soon lost sight of in the great vortex of moral and physical ruin that fa always open in large towns and great cities. Or even if now and then one succeeds among the many who fall, there fa nothing attractive in hfa occupation save the opportunity to keep away from grease and dust, and wear fine clothes. Life fa made for something nobler than a constant dodging of the unpleasant conditions that attend a well-earned and honest living. The professional man pays the penalty of hfa unwise choice in poverty and early death. There are ministers preaching good sermons in all parts of the country for less than S4OO per year. There are well educated and able lawyers who do not collect a hundred dollars in their professions, and eke out a living by engaging in insurance, real estate, teaching, literature and anything that turns up. The way of the young doctor to success is through a hard experience of want and penury, unless he has the good fortune to step into some dead or retiring practitioner’s shoes. But the blacksmith finds an anvil always ready, and the shoemaker needs not to look longforan empty scat. Every trade has its period of depression, it is true, but what is this to the waste of a whole lifetime in an unremunerative profession, which racks the brain and brings early death? There is nothing so ruinous to health as mental wear and tear. Gov. Andrew, ’of Massachusetts, Senator Morton, of Indiana, Editor Raymond, of the New York Times, and the late Editor and Publisher of the Patriot, all successful men in their professions, passed away before passing three-score years. They were great workers—not for greed—but to advance •society, civilization, and to benefit their race and generation. > The boy that takes up the trade that imposes the hardest labor, and pursues it with industry and earnestness, has chosen the shortest route to success. Others may win or fail, but he is sure. His work fa always in demand-, for his occupation is never likely to be crowded. And with prudence he will have his competence earned, and pass into the enjoyment of it while those that choose gentecler occupations go on with their life struggle against poverty until Death joins the ranks of the enemy.— Woonsocket (R. I.) Patriot.