The Newberry herald. [volume] (Newberry, S.C.) 1865-1884, 1883-05-10
miscellaneous.
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BRAINS AND MUSCLE.
Bill ARP in the Constitution.

SOmeDOQy SalQ IllaG The juice Vi
liberty was the blood Of the brave,
or words to that effect, aud so the
juice Of prosperity is the sweat of
the laboring man. was rumina,
ting over this the other day as ]
looked at a gang Of men digging in
an iron mine. Machinery is good
thing but there are many things
that nothing but the human hand
and the human arm can do. Ma
chimes can't dig ore, nor shovel dirt
on a railroad, nor pick cotton, nor
split rails, nor build fence, nor
pull fodder, nor load wagon. Ma
chimes may make brick, but they
can't lay -'em in wall, nor frame
a house nor plaster it, nor nail the
shingles on. There are thousands Of
things the muscle has got to do, and
will always have to do, and the time
will never come when all men can
play the gentleman or live by brains
alone. It's contrary to reason and
scripture. Brains rank muscle but
muscle is the most honest. Brains
are tricky and shifty and put on
many airs. Muscle does the work
and brains get the benefit, and it
struts around like big Ike, There
was a railroad built not long ago
and brains took the job at sixty
thousand and that man sub-let it
again for thirty thousand, and then
it was cut up into sections and let
at 28e. a cubic yard, and then sub
let again at 25c., and the last
man hired laborers to work for
dollar a day, and one man would
grade six yards in a day and take
pay in goods at one hundred per
cent profit. So the work cost &C
tually about ten cents a yard. Sweat
and muscle got ten cents and brains
about so and that's about the way
with most Of the work that farmers
and mechanics and laboring men
do. If the tariff protects the man
ufacturer he puts the protection in
his pocket and hires his labor at
the same old price. 1t is protec-
ton to capital only. The poor are
kept poor and the rich get richer,
and that is the reason why labor is so
unpopular. 1t don't pay. Our young
men are ambitious. They come
home from school and from college
and begin to look round for a liv'
ing, and they see that muscle don't
pay and they begin to draw on their
brains. They 60 to trading and
scheming or hunting for an office
or clerking in store or bossing
little job, or they study law or med
icine, or haul round sewing ma
chimes, but they won't work. A
smart, shifty man can make more
in one day at trading than in six
months at hard work, but when he
has done it he has not added one
dollar to the value of anything. He
has cenefted nobody but himself.
What he made somebody has lost,
and after all the profits Of trading
and speculating generally come out
of the laboring man-the producer
and the manufacturer, who sweat
and toll and bear the burdens and
like the tabled Atlas, carry the
world on their shoulders. Men get
rich and powerful trading in stocks
and bonds and railroads and cor
nering in wheat and pork and they
splurge around awhile but, sooner
or later they have to let 60 and I
reckon they have mighty little COM
fort on their last bed when they
think how little they have done for
humanity. Well some of 'em about
that time do give off a lot of money
to colleges and asylums and ex-
pect to get credit for it up yonder
on St. Peters books, but they won't.
It is a sort of conscience money
and comes too late-a little too late
they kept it to the last and
squeezed it tight and would have
kept it longer if they could. Can't
balance St. Peters books that way.
Rather than work, the majority OF
mankind would steal if it wasn't
against the law, and they come
mighty nigh doing it any how
There are ten thousand ways to
get another mans money without
robbing him according to law. I
was looking over the advertisements
of patent medicines in a northern
paper and noted the different ways
in which thew fooled the suffering