Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1868-03-24
Aversion TO Labor-Young America
Refuses to Work-Parents Indulge
them.

" boys. Put him to the blacksmith
ing. That will insure him strength
and next farming is the best bust
ness. Store keeping will insure aver.
sion TO hard and wholesome indus
try, give him weak constitution and
ten to ono make him a bankrupt at
time in lie when he ought to be
well enough off on a snug farm"
We can asnre our readers that eve
ry merchant who has been quite a
while in business has had scores of
just such applications, and that he
has diimssed them just so or sub
stantially thus and 50.
One OF the worst features OF the
times is this growing disposition of
American boys to get their living in
an easy way BY their wits, and espec>
tally to turn away from the farm and
workshop-leaving these TO be mo-
nopolised by foreigners, indeed too
often by our southern friends but re-
Gently in bondage
The villages and cities are over
/ powering entertainments TO our giddy
young men. Big stories are told of
town life stories half true, gilded and
only their bright edges shown
Whereas, Of all the terribleness of
life, city and town existence is the
most unbearable to country brought
up youth, insuring for him want and
destitution, envies, hatreds ,iealousies
all that contributes To mental and
physical misery.
Tie country is filled with young
mon in hunt of "Something to do" by
which phrase is always meant, some
easy work, semi-idleness, with just
enough pay to tempt one to stay
and grind in the mill.
We do not see that a knowledge Of
these facts amounts TO much in re-
straiuing boys, and keeping them
from the criminal mischiefs Of city
life AS beetles seeing light into
which they rush to certain destruc
ton, SO Of boys when the decoy lights
of the city are before them, They
rush in and are singed and dismem-
bered. first of their moral nature,
then Of their physical powers, and in
while n0thingis left but the wrecks
of animal vessels-the mere hulks of
gone up men.
The allurements of the city are de
ceitful above all things. Wealth
however held on to, takes wings once
in three years and flies away, whilst
but about one in forty ever acquires
wealth at all. 1t is country made
wealth which builds up cities and
/ fills the city stores with rich wares;
usually the farm makes the dollars
which start every business; not once
in a hundred is the order reversed
We hear Of city made fortunes, but
If so made they fly away as chaff the
very next panic that comes along.
Land speculations, 1t is very true,
il themselves of doubtful wealth, very
often contribute to the building up of
cities and city men from the country.
But the farmer boys are almost the
only successful land spectators, and
certainly the only successful opera
tors in farm stock enterprises. And
so it Is the farm gives rise to the man
of substantial fortune, the city hard>
" ever.
And as To the enjoyments of city
life, they are illusions and as transi>
ent as illusory-mere bubbles in the
great ocean of lite that may be
boundless in happiness when tied to
the farm, Pastoral life, the pillow and
herd tor companions, how certain to
yield only happiness City life, in
which there is nothing real or sincere,
how far away from nature and all
that is lovely
Father, have you presented these
views to thy sons of sixteen, already
secretly entertaining notions OF ad-
venturing to the city If not, make
such topics family affair; have the
boys read this article from the Her
aids and tell them it is faithful re-
port upon a subject oflife Importance
, 1t is your duty to anticipate what is
in the boys heads, and their heads
are most sure to be either too empty
Mt sixteen to eighteen or else filled
too full of evil And thus anticipat
ling You may surely set them right
after few lessons of the kind sug-
gested. Be honest with the boysa
truthful. Speak to them OF the NOR
oil and physical death of city life
where things are only fine outside
al bogus within The fine store
fronts are sham, the snowy thing:
All unreal, the gold stuffs all brass,
1he diamonds all quartz rock, the
iks fraud from head to foot, and
z0en no better, bGt worse, IL
Ias there is no true God, nc
sud women, but only false
<ten humanity. In til,
IS Is God and humanity
the truest friendship