Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1876-02-23
WafrlImap e gonrTaL
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY %, 1870.
Thoughts on Work.

we thlnk man is TO be blamed u he does
not love IT, We have known work done as a
necessity, as a duty as habit, as punish
ment, as an evil which clings to our es.
tate but men may be pardoned for not loving
II, and pursuing IL as pleasure. There is
all the difference between work and play
that there is between earth and heaven. We
do the one because we must we engage in
the other because we delight in it.
But then, necessity or duty though it be,
il is never disgrace. Only foolish people
regard it so. And there are good many
foolish people. Young men--the children Of
honest parents, who, earning their bread
with toil-hardened hands aud the sweat OF
their brows and eating itwith tbankfulness,
too-are ashamed of their fathers employ
ment, and forsaking the farm, the shop,
or the forge, seek a livelihood in what they
think to be more respectable vocation.
They mean to earn their money with less
hard work than their fathers did. This
working with their hands they do not like,
and so they seek an occupation less of the
hands, and quite often less of the head, than
their parents hardy craft. 1t is quite often
that imbecility drives men from the farm or
the mechanics bench, and their antipathy
to work has its seat in the brains, rather than
in the hands Girls too, are sometimes dis
danful of the blue frocks Of the brothers
who toll with the saw or the axe and beg
their lovers TO be arrant coxcombs, and get
their living by their wits rather than by
their hands. They would rather marry
man who stood behind a counter and sold
peanuts and candy, than one who stood be
hind pillow and turned over the earth to the
sun, and reaped the harvest that the cox
comb only has a mouth to eat.
Now this idea of work, of hard manual
labor as degrading, is one that the laboring
classes only can successfully contend with
They are in great measure chargeable with
whatever of disrespect or disgrace have
fallen upon their callings, and upon the vari-
Gus departments of manual industry Every
avocation in life is worthy of honor, just as
1t contributes TO the general welfare, and its
duties are met with diligence and fidelity.
But hand laborers of all descriptions seem
to act on the opposite theory, and society it.
self seems TO have an idea that manual labor
is mental and unworthy. The man with the
gold ring and the fine broadcloth receives the
most notice. The woman with silks and
velvets on her back exacts the most atten-
ton. The working man dreams of the
time when he shall lay down the shovel and
ride in his easy carriage, and the working
girl looks forward TO the elysium Of fine
clothes and gallant attendance. Society
pays its respect to the man of means more
than to the man of integrity to the man of
dollars more than TO the man of sense.
Hence the eager haste to be rich in all classes,
which throws the humber empoyments,
the producing avocations of life into the
shade, and exalts those whose temptations
TO dishonesty and fraud are so rife and so
successful. The Ponds, the Winslows, the
Tweeds of the world are the fruit of the
ideas of modern society in respect to the
worth of wealth, and the unworthiness of la
Dor. They, and their like, desert the call
ings TO which they were born, or for which
they were educated. They quit what they
can do well, for what they cannot do at all.
They leave labors for which they were fitted,
to engage in the less arduous labors for
which they have no competence, and which
attract them only by the promises of
larger remuneration with less toll. We
find the lower walks of commerce crowded
with those who have deserted the hum
bic positions to which they were native.
We are informed that in certain town
two advertisements appeared in the local
paper on the same day, one from black
smith and another from a small shopkeeper,
for an apprentice Forty-nine young men
answered the haberdashers call, and not one
the blacksmith's. And forty-eight young
men were disappointed at the outset. They
sank in actual responsibility when they tried
to rise out Of laborious callings into one re-
quiring less care and less brains. We know
of a place which has a small station at the
junction of two railroads. At either end of
the station, scarcely fifty feet from each
other, two able bodied men of forty or fifty
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