EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF LABOR. 363 



The hard-working American people want to know something about 

 our continent, our life-work, our bodies, and bones, and souls, our 

 duties and destinies in the great republic in which we live. Com 

 pared with this, all other knowledge is of little importance to us. 



I look to the agricultural and industrial classes to lift us out of 

 this rnonkeydom of precedent, into the true freedom of American 

 citizenship. The common school must be their chief instrument. 

 All that is needful is that every man should quietly set about im 

 proving his own school, in his own district, as fast and as fully as 

 he can. 



Few men have done better service to the cause of industrial 

 education than Hon. B. G. Northrup, the State Superintendent 

 of Schools in Connecticut. He says; 



Every child s education is deficient who has not learned to work 

 in some useful form of industry. Labor aids in disciplining the in 

 tellect and energizing the character. Especially does farm work 

 task and test the mind, by leading a boy to plan and contrive, to 

 adapt means to ends, in a great variety of ways, and under con 

 stantly varying circumstances. With all our improved gymnastics, 

 none is better than manual labor, when it is cheerfully and intelli 

 gently performed, and especially farm work. The ambition for 

 easier lives and more genteel employments, and the silly but com 

 mon notion, that labor is menial, that the tools of the trades and 

 the farm are badges of servility, have greatly lessened apprentice 

 ships. These pernicious notions ought to be refuted in our schools, 

 and our youth should there be taught the dignity and necessity of 

 labor, and its vital relations to all human excellence and progress, 

 the evils of indolence, the absurdity of the prevalent passion for 

 city life, and the wide-spread aversion to manual labor. A practi 

 cal knowledge of some industrial pursuit is an important element in 

 inteUectual culture. Every man should have one vocation, and as 

 many avocations as possible. Let us imitate the Hebrews, among 

 whom labor is always honorable; and no matter what a man s rank, 

 he must be trained to work. 



And I would add, let us imitate the Germans, whose training 

 schools for girls include every subject required to be under 

 stood by the mistress of a family, employing either a very lim 

 ited, or the most ample income. It is my opinion that the best 

 influences which can be brought to bear upon the minds of 

 boys and girls, will be found in early recognizing them as a 

 part of the productive wealth of the home. The withdrawal 

 of our scholars from the performance of daily duties and ser 

 vices, is an education in shirking and shiftlessness, just at the 

 period when the opposite habits should be formed. 



It is not to be supposed that farmers sons will all desire to 



