Year: 1878

The phrase which we have chosen as
the title for this article is something
more than phrase 1t is fallacy-and
very pernicious fallacy at that. 1t has,
for long time, beguiled the judgment
in private conversation and vitiated the
reasoning in public discussion. Now it
has made its way into politics, and "the
laboring classes, from California to
Massachusetts, are organizing work
ingmen's party" introducing into Ameri-
can politics caste distinctions which, bad
as they have notiously been, they have
not hitherto known-the basis of which
is the quiet assumption that those only
labor who labor with their hands that
they do not work who work with their
brains.


Against this monstrous fallacy we de-
sire briefly, but most emphatically, to
protest. The phrases which embody it
"the laboring classes" "the working
mems party want to put at once
and forever on our indec erpurgatorius.


No man more highly honors manual
labor than do we. No man would do
mere than we to vindicate the interests
and main tain the rights of him who Ia
bors with his hands. But we protest
against that senseless misconception
which regards the mechanic or the far
mer as the only workingman and
would, even by a thoughtless expression,
seem to concede to him rights, and de-
mand for him privileges, which other
toilers do not share


So far from manual labor being the
only labor, we are convinced, from o
little experience of both that the hardest
work which man performs is that per-
formed by the brain-that the brain
laborer is, in the truest and fullest sense
the toiler. HIS labor puts strain upon
the nervous system of which many a man
who labors with his hands is happily
ignorant. Once in a while, when every
thing goes wrong on the farm and in the
shop, he has touch of that worry and
care to which many brain-laborers are
constantly subject; but happily not
often and not long. That brain-labor
taxes the brain more severely than man
ual labor is, of course, truism but it
must not just now, he overlooked Many
men who labor with their hands faith
fully, honorably and efficiently, hardly
know what mental exertion is Their
work comes to them cut and basted, as
it were, by some master-mind That ex-
ercise of muscle and intellect by which it
is performed has become habitual-al-
most automatic. Their work may be
said to do itself. To hold the wearied
body up to its task and prevent it from
tagging or Sinking puts, of course,
strain upon the system but it is as no.
thing in comparison with the effort re-
uuired to drag the wearied brain through
new and unsolved problems and compel
it. enfeebled by sheer exhaustion, stoutly
to grapple with the facts which it en-
counters and wiring from them coordina-
ted truth And does the brain laborer,


-, L
cular system2 Ask any intelligent ply
sician and he will tell you that there is
more waste of muscular tissue during
severe mental than during severe manual
toil-that the man who works with his
head needs more nutritive diet and
ampler opportunities for rest than the |
man who labors with his hands.


1t is no part Of our present purpose to !
compare, so far as benefit to the world is |
concerned, the results of mental and |
physical toll. Nor do we care to insist !
on the fact that physical toll is often per-
formed, as in the case of the farmer
pretty uniformly, under pleasanter and
more healthful conditions than mental |
toll: and can be summarily suspended, !
not to be resumed even in thought, when |
the hours appointed for labor are over.
We simply wish to enter our protest |
against the groundless assumption that |
only the physical toiler is Lahore" "a |
"workingman" within the meaning of |
the platform eloquence of our day.


All yes. One thing more. Amid all |
this agitation in favor of "a reduction of |
the hours of labor" when ten hours
make days work for mechanic and |
he is indignant that he cannot get full |
days wages for working eight hours
only, we should like modestly to suggest |
some reform-say a fourteen hours Laa0-in
the interest of the overtaxed brain-labor |
ers. To many of them such law would !
be not unwelcome BOOM Examip er
and Chronicle.