Gold Hill daily news. [volume] (Gold Hill, N.T. [Nev.]) 1863-1882, 1866-03-20
ON LABOR.

lecture in Boston on the subject Of labor.
The address is an admirable production,
written in Mr.. Beecher's usually felicitous
style, nobly indicating the dignity Of
labor, and giving a merited rebuke to that
morbid sentiment Of fashion that affect q
repugnance to labor. We subjoin the fol-
lowing interesting passages =
In view OF the dignity Of work, I say
that all men in this country ought to be
taught to work with their hands. That
they should be taught TO think that their
brain should be educated, it is to be in
ferred. But I hold. since work IS digni-
fed and noble. creative and beneicent in
its uses, that American education should
always include in it a sufficient training to
make every man a hand-worker as well as
a brain-worker. The Jews have a proverb
that he who brings up his children with
out a trade brings them up to steal. I am
half a Jew on that point. (Laughter.) It
is certain a boy is neglected Of his parents
who does not know how to work and feels
above work. Whenever you see a man
whose duty it is to work, who feels above
his work, you may be sure that man is
not fit to 60 any higher ; for no man is
ashamed to do that which God puts him
TO do, If he be q fit instrument to do the
Divine work in this world. There is no
feeling SO peculiarly un-American as
shame Of work. II is a foreign vice it is
vulgar ; it has no business here. The man
who does not know how TO work is the
man who ought to be ashamed-the man
who does know how ought to be proud Of
it. It is noble for a man to carry himself
up. Any man who inherits wealth is like
q man who breaches his fathers sermons,
where a man who makes his wealth is like
the man who makes his own sermons.
daughter and applause.) If one inherits
wealth, he may excuse himself for being
ashamed Of work. I have noticed that
men who are born wealthy are seldom
troubled with that shame. They are
usually men who have good sense in the
matter of work, and are quite willing
themselves to toll where it is proper.
Every American child should know how
to use his hands ingeniously. No Ameri-
can boy is educated, nobody deserves the
honorable appellation Of Yankee" who
cannot use the axe, the spade, the
plough-who cannot yoke and unyoke
oxen, harness and drive q team, who
has not sufficient knowledge of tools to
perform any common act of necessity. A
true Yankee never sees anything done that
he does not steal the trade with his eyes,
and imagine how he would do it himself
at a pinch and improve upon it. He will
do anything-sew on buttons, shave q sick
man, cook q beef.steak, write a sermon,
listen to one, or any other drudgery that
society may impose upon him. This fer
tility and facility in work dignifes the
American, and universal thrift follow uni
versal industry and ingenuity. This ne
cessity and propriety Of work has peculiar
relations to US in the growing exigencies
Of our civilization, for we stand at a,time
when the household is displaced from one
tendency and state in society, and has not
fairly settled on another. When service
was a class necessity. then the household
wa blessed in faithful servants /; and when
all from the bottom to the top Of society
shall be thoroughly intelligent, then sub
ordination Of work will give to US again
useful and Trustworthy assistants. But
we are living at a period when work as
pires, but has not affair ed ; and the result
is that in every household complaints are
uttered Of the difficulty ofprocuring work.
The bes, remedy that I can PROFOUND is
to 20 back to the doctrine and practice of
our mothers and sisters. I remember the
time when the morning woke with the
mothers voice-the sweetest bell that ever
rang at the stairs to call the children up ;
when the table was spread by her hands
or her daughters and when sometimes
the boys themselves were put to the same
task and all through the morning still she
toiled and sang and conversed upon
themes worthy Of womanhood, of Christian
~womanhood and when the noon meal was
cleared away and the bright afternoon sun
poured its full light upon the door yard
and the kitchen, mother and sisters sat
reading or sewing ; and after the transient
evening meal, the lamp sitting on the table,
the hearth-stone glowing Of it was w~fnter),
again she gathered around her the circle.
Those were the days when there was health
among women, and 4 virtue and woman
hood OF which we have no occasion TO be
ashamed even in these days, among our
mothers and our sisters : and if there was
more work in the household o .day, think
there would DO fewer complaints against
foreign servants and fewer complaints for
homo doctors. daughter and s~pplauss.)