West-Jersey pioneer., 1865-12-09
ALEssnN TO BE LEARNED.


TThe Columbia IS. CO. Phor'io, edited
by the well-known novelist and poet'
William Gilmore Simms, reads the toF
lowing lesson to the people of the South,
Who will despair of the Republic Wnen
such sentiments are promulgated BY
South Carolina press? The lesson may
we'll be needed elsewhere, and is not un-
called for even in the Northern States.
How events teach the successive gen.
erations who yet refuse to learn HOW
the ancient laws of God reassert their
utility and necessity after thousand
years of false and frivolous convention
'sThou shalt earn thy bread in the sweat
of thy BROW" is the decree. The decree,
delivered as penalty, duly obeyed, pe-
comes the secret of innumerable perma-
nent blessings. Neglected, denied, repu,,
dated, the law finally asserts itself ana
compels respect from the offender but
day ago worthy citizen said to US
"What cruel thing it is that | was not
trained to some good handicraft that
was not educated or taught as carpen,
ter, bricklayer, or blacksmith: should
not now be destitute. l should have my
secret of employment and existence at my
fingers ends, and should not now be
looking around me in vain, seeking what
to do" Exactly! The great effort OF
mankind in its blindness is to escape IA
bor-to escape law Men rush into the
professions, or become accountants, pook-
keepers, clerks, collectors, agents, factors
until the country is covered at this mo-
ment with swarms seeking easy work, as
they fancy, or work which shall not SOIL
the fngers-all of whom are IN eacn
others way. 1t was sufficiently EVIL
feature in this practice that, IN the
case of the professions, two out OF every
three were out of their proper places, and
intruders into the places of better men.
The professions are properly the fountains
of authority and sacred opinion. They
are guardians of society. Let them be
inferior and incompetent, and they de-
grade the professions and deprive society
of its best securities. The evil consequen-
ces follow inevitably in general misrule
and ruin. We owe no small portion OF
the evils which now find us PROSTATE to
the incompetence and worthlessness OF
professional men to the wretchedness OF
legislation in wretched hands; 10 the
terrible dispropertion of these classes to
the physical laborers in the community.
And the just Judgment of God avenges
upon society this usurpation of position
by the worthless, and this overcrowdlng
Of certain occupations to the neglect OF
others, which, in the exigencies OF society,
as at present, become the only useful
At this moment the vast number of per-
sons bred up as book-keepers, account
ants, clerks, ETC., to say nothing Of pro
fessional men seeking employment in the
cities, seeking agencies of business where
there can be no business sitting upon
hungry benches, looking right and left
for the means of food-presents the spec
tacle of very army famishing in the
country which they have plundered of all
its food-happy he, Of these classes, who
has an occupation at his fingers ends
who can build house of brick or wood,
make coat, pair of boots, a box, cask,
horseshoe, or do any work for which
the necessities of society compel contin-
ual demand. Let parents take warning
from this condition of things. Let them
put their sons to honest trades, which in-
volve labor in the acquisition of some use
| full craft Let them abandon the foolish
vanities which made them strive to keep
them from hard labor. If the boy is one
| of superior talents, endowed for profess
sion by the Deity, the habit of work and
painstaking will not hurt him for the pro-
fessions-will be help-since labor is
one essential element of all educational
training. Let him be put, at fourteen,
to a trade for five or seven years, and he
will not be found at loss for the means
of life, whatever the convulsions of soci-
ETY.. And let the thousands who go about
asking where to go and what to do, go to
the farmers and take up the plow, and,
| stripping cheerfully to their tasks, they
will discover that their banks of potatoes,
corn, and peas are banks of unfailing re-
sources, which never delude with prom
ises never to be paid in the hour of
| trouble.