EAST AND WEST. 389 



sonal one. For ourselves, we seek what we call ease, — relief 

 from labor. 



But is this a wise social and national view ? There may be, 

 we know there are, systems of labor so oppressive that all manly 

 aspirations and efforts for progress are destroyed. But sucli is 

 not a necessary result of our New England system. Men may, 

 if they choose, avail themselves of many opportunities for self- 

 improvement. Our farmers, our mechanics, our laborers in 

 every department, have leisure. But leisure is nothing without 

 the habit of industry first formed. It is important to the indus- 

 trial classes that they have leisure ; but without the habit of 

 industry, the love of labor, leisure becomes a mere name for 

 idleness. A lover of idleness has not the first manly quality in 

 him. Recreation and variety in labor are necessary ; but positive 

 and systematic idleness is a degrading vice. Now ought any 

 man to fiee from New England, that he may be idle elsewhere ? 

 Admit what is probably true, tliat the inhabitants of the West 

 perform less labor than the inhabitants of the East, — does it by 

 any means follow that we are more burdened than they ? The 

 burden of labor is not determined by the amount of work per- 

 formed, but by the measure of strength of body, buoyancy of 

 spirit, and the ability we have to make the task take the place 

 of a servant, rather than allow it to become our master. 



There are but few days in New England when abstinence 

 from labor is a physical necessity ; and three hundred days' ser- 

 vice would be no more of a burden here than two hundred and 

 fifty would be in some parts of the West, north even of the river 

 Ohio. I say, then, with great confidence, that a man should 

 not leave New England to avoid the burden of labor. Idle men 

 should be where the necessity for labor presses the hardest. 

 But it is not to be denied that a young man of small means in 

 money, but of fixed habits of industry, may wisely emigrate to 

 the West in search of a home. Every man very properly de- 

 sires to possess land and secure a home. This may be done 

 even in New England ; but it often requires several years of 

 labor and economical life. A man of energy need not despair ', 

 yet he can advance to that position more readily in the West 

 tlian here. 



But ought farmers to emigrate who have land, homes, fixed 

 habits of industry, and the opportunity to render their labor 



