The Highland weekly news. [volume] (Hillsborough [Hillsboro], Highland County, Ohio) 1853-1886, 1871-03-02
BeeeheF on Manual Labor.

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, two OF
three Sundays ago, discoursed on man-
ual labor. An abstract in the New
York World reports as follows
''Mr. Beecher was sorry to see that
the tendency of the age was to drift
away from this, aud to look down
upon ali manual labor With contempt.
There was too much desire on the
part Of Young men to get rich too rap
idly and without giving the necessary
equivalent of labor, and a steady cur
rent of young men were setting i'm to
the large cities, all bent upon the ac+
QUESTION of wealth without manual
labor. They crowd the professions.
Professional men are drugs in the
market. There was almost one doc
tor for every sick man, and the law is
so full that If you distributed the busi-
ness there would not be one fee to each
lawyer, and so half of them have to
become mere commercial agents and
all this time the country needs labor,
and also needs educated mechanics.
Theu, too, there is a feeling in the
community among parents that their
sons would be degraded by embracing
any mechanical pursuit. and their
sons will not tan their faces on the
farm, or tar their fingers on the ship,
or harden their muscles at the forge.
He then drew a picture of the horror
of a respectable parent at finding that
his boy wished to become a machtn-
ist, and the disdain of the buys moth
er when informed Of this choice, and
the father resolves that it will not do
to directly oppose the boys wishes,
but resolves that he will go to Europe
and take that boy with him, and 50 he
grows up and gets to be thirty or for
ty years old, and has dabbled a little
in banking, and the father dies and the
estate does not turn out so we'll az was
expected, and the boys have to shift
for themselves, and then WneIs will
this boy 60? "Why," said Mr. Beecher,
with emphasis, she will go straight to
the devil. The fatheF-with the best
of intentions-has lost his boy, when,
if he had allowed him to follow his
natural bent he would have saved him.
That was not an OverdraWn picture,
for (pausing and looking at the eougre-
gatiOn) you know how it is yourselves,
laughter and 1 put it to you if sOms
Of you do not feel exactly like this in
regard to manual labor"
Mr.. Beecher paid an eloquent trib-
ute to New England thrift and indus
try, and said that it was owing to the
necessity they were under of working
hard for a bare subsistence. They could
not get living out Of those barren
rocks without work. Put an easy
going people in New England and
they would starve, and wherever you
went if there was bank to be run or
railroad to be built, niue times out
] Of ten there was a Yankee in it. No
other part of the community are SD
much cursed or 80 universally blamed.
They are the Jews of America. All
over the world the Jews persevere in
spite of persecution. They build them
selves up, that grand old race, and bid
fair to carry the politics of the world
with them, and the Yankee is the Jew
of the western continent I; they have
been brought upto work-to put the
whole of their manhood into their
business, and you see the product Of it,
Mr.. Beecher, in conclusion, earnestly
besought his hearers if they valued
the future of their children, to bring
them up to some trade which should
make them independent and self reli-
ant under any adverse circumstances.
Why Republicans Should be
EOmfFum0G IN PnWAF