The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1873-04-04
Educated Labor.

The time we trust is coming when law,
medicine, and theology will cease to be
regarded as the /" learned professions !"
when false notions in regard to the adj
vancement of American youth. particularly
those of wealthy parentage, will give place
to higher appreciation than that of a
false pride and false education, and when
educated and intelligent labor will be di-
rected. not SO much to fancy" positions
in society as to the manlier pursuits of
practical science, the mechanical arts,
agricultural industry, and manufacture
ing greatness. The worst feature of
slavery. and that in which its malignant
influence was felt in Virginia, as well as
throughout the entire South, was, that it
degraded labor and industrial manhood to
the low level Of ignorant and unskiled
pursuits, and blocked the path Of individual
achievement with so much of obstruction
that none dared to overlap the obstaelesin
the way of investing labor, the foundation
of all true greatness among people, with
its own proper honors and distinctions.
The result Yves that the young men of
the South, especially the class named, were
crowded into the legal, medical and cler-
cal professions, for which many of them
were entirely unsuited, while the higher
and grander industries, which develop ply
steal, intellectual, and moral manhood,
were left to the chance pursuit Of those
who might find their way among us with
less of this false pride in regard to labor
than our own industrial system inculcated.
We have among us, however, men who are
making the largest possible amends for the
past, and who have daredtto challenge the
highest honors of wealth and parentage in
the pursuits oflabor, and especially in those
branches Of it demanding the highest order
Of intelligence, skill, and scientific attain
inent. The Tredegar Iron Works in this
city underits highly skilled and intelligent
management, is doing more to lift labor
out Of its unnatural conditions Of degrade
tion in the past, than any or all of our
educational institutions put together. 1t
stamps the skilled workman with an inde-
pendence of character and nobility Of
manhood which can never be reached by
inherited fortune nor by any third or fourth
rate position in the ''learned professions, .
50 called. G
In the past, our young men have regard
Ell the learning of trades as implying some-
thing Of this degradation of pursuits
something approaching the labor Of the
slave and the hireling and those who had
not the prospect ola plantation with plenty
of negroes to work it, either crowded the
professions we have named or sought effem-
mate positions in our cities, where clerk
ships and places of small labor, and still
smaller emolument, invited to more hon
orable pursuit! What a wretched appre-
citation was this! Labor, educated and in
telligcnt labor, is the foundation the true
cornerstone of all national greatness and
prosperity. 1t is the foundation, also Of
all individual Success and achieve
ment inlife; tits the element, in fact, of
all true greatness in the individual. as it is
of all national advancement and power in
the state. The history Of all great nations
incontestibly shows this. So long as every
thing tends to develop the physical, intel
lectual, and industrial manhood of PEG.
plc,aiaso long does the state continue in its
march to true greatness and power. This
was more strikingly the case, perhaps,
with Rome than with any of the other
states of antiquity. While labor was
everywhere deemed honorable in the en-
pire, from the. sovereign to the humblest
peasant, none Of the surrounding nations
dared dispute. her sovereignty and power.
Itwas only when manual labor fell into
.disrcpute, by reason Of the more splendid
pursuit Of arms, and when the mothers Of
Rome thought to make senator's or centu-
rions of their sons, that the harder races
Of the North defantly challenged her
supremacy, and ultimately crushed her
beneath the iron heel Of destiny. q
To lay the foundations of state on any
other. basis than that of an industrial man
hood, is to build only upon sand. 1t is
entirely false and erroneous idea to sup
pose that there is anything like degradation
or dehasement in labor. All labor which
the conditions Of society demand, is homer
able for pursuit; with this difference only in
degree--that those branches of it requiring
the highest order OF skilled labor, and the
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