524 HISTORY OF THE GRANGE MOVEMENT; OR, 



" Again I say, we work too much and think too little. 

 A farmer rises at four o'clock, goes out and does the 

 chores among the stock, chops wood for the day, mends 

 the harness, and is very industrious. By breakfast 

 time, he has got all ready for the day's work. All 

 hands then pitch into severe labor till noon. Dinner is 

 called and dispatched in haste, and labor renewed till 

 supper. This unavoidable but neccessary hindrance to 

 labor is hurriedly performed, work resumed until dark- 

 ness compels a cessation of labor in the field, and then 

 the laborers return to the house. A lantern is pro- 

 cured, by the aid of which the milking and other 

 chores are e done up,' and by nine or ten o'clock at 

 night the day's work is closed, and the family, tired 

 and stupid, retire to bed, only on the following day to 

 repeat the same routine of slavery. And yet such men 

 are called good, thifty, industrious farmers. It is a lie ! 

 a base slander to call such stupid slavery of body, such 

 starvation of mind, good or thifty, or in any wise 

 commendable. 



" Go into the country, and you will find numberless 

 cases of men with poor health, crushed energies, ruined 

 constitutions, and stunted souls, and women the slaves 

 of habits of excessive labor, more fatal than the per- 

 nicious and much-comdemned customs of fashionable 

 society. You will find children prematurely old, with 

 the bright light of happy childhood extinguished, 

 and everywhere a lack of that life and cheerfulness 

 which gives to life its greatest charms. Most of these 

 evils can be traced directly to overwork. Is such work 

 necessary or even profitable for a famer? Most cer- 

 tainly not. Such work is a losing business, and far- 

 mers who adopt that course of labor will find at the 



