LABOR AS AN EDUCATOR.

Every child should learn to work. A practical knowledge of some industrial pursuit is an important element in intellectual culture. The son of affluence who is conscious that he could maintain himself by honest labor, can the better use his wealth, as well as appreciate the condition and needs of the poor. Froude, the historian, well says: "The ten commandments and a handicraft make a good and wholesome equipment to commence life with. A man must learn to stand upright upon his own feet, to respect himself, to be independent of charity or accident. It is on this basis only that any superstructure of intellectual cultivation worth having can possibly be built. It hurts no intellect to be able to make a boat, or a house, or a pair of shoes, or a suit of clothes, or hammer a horse-shoe, and if one can do either of these, he has nothing to fear from fortune. Spinoza, the most powerful intellectual worker that Europe had produced for the last two centuries, waving aside the pensions and legacies that were thrust upon him, chose to maintain himself by grinding object-glasses for microscopes and telescopes.'

It is a partial view of education which assumes that books and schools, indispensable as they are, do the whole work. Every thing which the child sees and hears, and still more, what he does, educates. This practical training begins in the cradle, and runs on through life. The educating value of labor has not been duly appreciated. Whatever compels one to think and decide on practical business questions, awakening conscious responsibility and self-reliance, develops mental power. Business pursuits frequently discover and draw out great talents. A degree of foresight, sagacity, practical wisdom and executive ability are often displayed in the management of commercial, manufacturing or agricultural interests, which would win the highest eminence if devoted to either of the professions.

Every child's education is deficient who has not learned to work in some useful form of industry. Labor aids in disciplining the intellect 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 constantly varying circumstances. The necessities and struggles of the farm demand patience and perseverance, develop force of character and energy of will, and teach the needful lesson, “Where there is a will, there is a way." How many of the leading men of our country, like Washington, Webster, Clay and Lincoln, grew up on the farm and gained there an invaluable discipline for the conflicts and achievements of life.

Labor develops inventive talent. The exigencies of the farmer, remote from villages and shops, compel him to be something of the carpenter, joiner, blacksmith and harness-makera man of all work-" handy at anything." His business varies with the seasons, and sometimes changes every day. A farmer's boy myself, early trained in practical industry and familiar with all forms of farm work, I have ever valued highly these practical lessons learned among the rough hills of grand old Litchfield County.

I counsel even the sons of affluence to spend at least one season at hard work on the farm or in the shop. The practical business drill there gained, the knowledge of nature and domestic animals, will amply compensate for the consequent loss in book learning, to say nothing of the health and physical training thus secured. With all our improved gymnastics, none is better than manual labor, when it is cheerfully and intelligently performed, and especially farm work. The habits of industry, once formed on the farm or in the shop, may shape all the future, teaching one to value time, to husband "the odd moments," to scorn sloth and love labor, or at least to practice ""diligence in business."

The pupils who luxuriate in the wealthiest homes of the city would profit by one year in the country, with its peculiar work and play, its freer sports and wider range of rambles by the springs and brooks, the rivers and water-falls, the ponds and lakes, over the hills and plains, through the groves and forests;

in observing nature, searching for wild flowers and curious stones, learning to recognize the different trees by any one of their distinctive marks, viz., the leaf, flower, fruit, form, bark and grain, watching the ant-hills, collecting butterflies and various insects, noticing the birds so as to distinguish them by their beaks or claws, their size, form, plumage, flight or song. Studying nature in any one or more of these varied forms, each so fitted to charm children, would refresh their minds as well as recreate their bodies, and stimulate that curiosity which is the parent of attention and of memory. Nature is the great teacher of childhood, and with her the juvenile mind needs closer contact. Facts and objects are the leading instruments of its early development. We do violence to the child's instinctive cravings for natural objects if we give it books alone, and confine it exclusively to the city. When I once found over three hundred children in a city Grammar School, who had never visited the country, I did not hesitate to say that, shut out from nature, and shut in by brick walls, with all their ample apparatus and able teachers, and superior school-house, these children cannot possibly gain here a full and symmetrical development of their various faculties. More needs to be done to combine the advantages of country and city life. With poorer schools and shorter terms, and with far less apparatus, but under the kindly and invigorating influence of rural scenes and employments, the country sends forth its full share to the professions, and into posts of most commanding influence in the Commonwealth and nation. Some of the retired rural districts. and small hill towns have been exceedingly fertile in the richest treasures of intellect. "Little Lebanon," for example, has raised up five governors of Connecticut. The Litchfield County Jubilee showed a proud array of her sons among the most eminent men in our country.

Idleness and vice are twins, and while idleness is always a curse, work may be a blessing. Certainly, industry is essential to thrift and virtue, to the culture of the mental as well as moral nature. The Devil tempts everybody, but the idler tempts the Devil, who gives plenty of work to all whom he finds with nothing to do. "There are but three ways of living; by working, by begging, or by stealing. Those who do not work, dis

guise it in whatever pretty language we please, are doing one of the other two! Every man should have one vocation, and as many avocations as possible."* Men of mark are men of work. The most industrious individuals and races are the most intelligent and powerful; the most elevated morally as well as mentally. In whatever land man can subsist in indolence, he droops in intellect, and there is the greatest demoralization in those tropical climates where leisure rather than labor is the rule of life. Man rises in the scale where his necessities compel constant industry, as he sinks where his wants exact no labor. Where industry becomes habitual and skillful, it not only supplies mere necessities, but stimulates demands above absolute wants. Every pure enjoyment gained by labor prompts the desire for other and higher gratifications. Theodore Parker well said: "The fine arts do not interest me so much as the coarse arts, which feed, clothe, house and comfort, people. I should rather be a great man as Franklin than a Michael Angelo; nay, if I had a son, I should rather see him a mechanic who organnized use, like the late George Stephenson, in England, than a great painter like Rubens, who only copied beauty."

The waning of the old system of apprenticeships is a serious evil. The limitation fixed by the "Trades Unions" on the number of apprentices allowed to each shop or master mechanic is working mischief. It is a gross infringement of the rights and privileges of thousands of minors. It deprives them of that thorough training in the several trades which is essential to the attainment of the highest skill and success. Multitudes of boys anxious to learn trades and to become skillful mechanics, are thus unjustly oppressed and prevented from becoming trained artisans and valuable members of society. They are defrauded of the true means of personal improvement and permanent prosperity. The system of apprenticeship lies at the foundation of skilled industry, and should be encouraged to the utmost as an indispensable part of the practical educa tion of our future artisans. Otherwise, our youth must be forever debarred from the most lucrative positions, or surrender them to skilled mechanics imported from abroad. This plan is short-sighted and suicidal. It cripples our future

* Froude.

mechanics. It seeks a temporary gain at the sacrifice of their permanent prosperity. This plan of temporary protection to themselves at the expense of the rising generation, and, as often happens, of their own children, is a delusion. The plan is arbitrary and inconsistent with the first principles of a Republican Government. I have known many a father trying in vain to put his boy to a trade where his services were desired, and the employer was reluctantly compelled to refuse the applicant, because "the Union permits only one apprentice to five or seven journeymen." This rule is unreasonable and ought to be illegal. Last October the Pennsylvania Council of the Order of United American Mechanics wisely resolved "to take active measures for the restoration of the good old system of apprenticeship, in order that the children of the members of this order may be enabled to learn trades thoroughly, so as to compete with foreign mechanics," and also petitioned the Pennsylvania Legislature to pass a State law "to prohibit any art or trade association or combination of mechanics, or others, from making limitations upon the number of apprentices that may be employed by any master or association, for the purpose of carrying on any art, trade or manufactory."

The ambition for easier lives and more genteel employments, and the silly but common notion that labor is menial, that the tools of the trades or of the farm are badges of servility, have greatly lessened apprenticeships. These pernicious notions ought to be refuted in our schools, and our youth should there be taught the necessity and dignity 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 wide-spread aversion to manual labor. The popular distaste for mechanical pursuits should be early counteracted, and more should be done in our schools to dignify labor, and render mechanical pursuits attractive and reputable. The Industrial Schools for girls as well as boys, so numerous and useful in Germany, Switzerland and other portions of Europe, will be described in full in a volume on "The Schools of Europe," soon to appear. The influence of these Industrial Schools is as important in dignifying labor, as in increasing its efficiency and productive value. Boys and girls are early taught in the