Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 July 1875 — Work Not Disgraceful. [ARTICLE]

Work Not Disgraceful.

Closely connected with the rush cityward is the growing aversion to manual labor. The mechanic tries to get his boy into a store; the farmer wants his son to be a lawyer or a doctor—he is too. smart to he a farmer; and the young men think that to get into business or to be somebody’s bookkeeper or clerk, or to have an office with a sign on the door: “John Smith, M. D.,” or “ John Smith, Attorney-at-Law,” would afford them an easier and more respectable way of living than plowing the soil and taking the golden grain to market. Failing to find a place in a store or to get education enough for professional life (and what is deemed enough is little enough in some cases), they read the advertisements of “ agents wanted” in the newspapers. They get a hook, or a patent medicine, or a new fly-trap to carry about, boring sensible people with their solicitations and finding now and then a silly fellow who buys the thing. So they eke out a precarious living. But they have soft hands (heads, too, for that matter). They wear their Sunday clothes all the time. They are not laborers, but gentlemen. And alas! liow-many of our young women despise the hand of honest toil when offered to them—take rather the soft hand of some fellow who is too lazy to work, and wake up ere long to find that their gentleman husband is a miserable shirk" who treats all of life’s duties and claims as he does the primal one. of labor. I have often thought liow the good people who'preach about tlie Apostle Paul, and regard him as the greatest luminary of the church, would feel if lie should come into their town just as he used to go to Corinth and Philippi eighteen centuries ago—on foot and inquiring for a tentmaker’s shop that he might work at his . trade. Would the ministers and elders call on the journeyman tent-maker? Would he be invited to speak in the fashionable churches? Tlte whole spirit of the Bible is opposed to this growing feeling of our age in regard to manual labor, and political economy teaches that productive industry, which adds to the real wealth of the nation, ought to be honored. Without it we would soon become a nation of spendthrifts and then of paupers. God is a great worker. He is making something—nay, ten thousand things —all the time. The man who toils to develop the resources of the earth, to beautify it, to make it a pleasanter home for any portion of the race, is a co-worker with God, and whoever despises him because lie works would despise for the same reason the Creator. Away then with this silly idea that idleness is more genteel than toil — that the soft hand which indicates uselessness is more honorable than the hard hand of industry. — C. E. 8., in Herald and Presbyter.