HOW TO GO TO WORK. 231 



working at loggerheads with his team and with his plough, and 

 the result is a poor, miserable piece of work — hard work for the 

 man, terribly hard work for the team. You men who own 

 teams, have you not seen this ? And would you not rather 

 have a man who knows how to guide a plough take a pair of 

 your oxen and plough three days, than have an unskilled man 

 plough two days ? Will not the two days' work wear your team 

 more than the other three ? It seems to me it will. The man 

 who knows what a plough is, and has the skill to use it, takes 

 it, not as something to be held, but simply as an implement to 

 be guided. He does not pull his plough, first one way and then 

 another, in a frantic manner, but, with his eyes on the team, not 

 immediately on the plough, but ten, fifteen or twenty feet in 

 advance, he simply holds his plough^ upright and lets it move 

 on with steady, even pace, holding it steadily, evenly, with no 

 frantic motions either to the left or to the right, in or out ; and 

 you will find that his team and plough work together as with 

 one motion, the work is perfectly executed, and done easily for 

 himself and his team. The only difference between the two is 

 that one knows, as an artisan, how to hold and guide his plough, 

 and the other does not know anything about it. 



That is one illustration of the difference between a man really 

 versed in his art and one who is not. But take another instance, 

 and one still more common. I will make the, statement, and 

 run the risk of being laughed at, that not one-half the men 

 employed in the work know how to use so common and simple 

 a tool as the hoe. They cannot use it as it should be used, and 

 do not know how it should be used. Just pass by a corn-field 

 or a tobacco field, and see the different manner in which the 

 men use their hoes, and the different manner in which they 

 leave their work behind them. One man uses his hoe as a 

 butcher uses his scraper in taking the bristles from swine, and 

 you would suppose it was made for the same purpose — to scrape 

 the soil. Look at his work, and you will find that this man who 

 does not know what he is about, or what his instrument was 

 made for, touches but one-half the ground ; he does not draw 

 his hoe through it — he simply chops over half the land, and 

 covers the other half with it, and the weeds are left in first-rate 

 condition to grow again after he has passed over the land. Such 

 a man works hard, and accomplishes nothing. On the other 



