AVERSION TO MANUAL LABOUR.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 152, 31 March 1876, Page 15

AVERSION TO MANUAL LABOUR.

-t-+ An American exchange says :—": — " The practice of educating boys for the professions, which are already overstocked, or for the mercantile business, in which statistics show that ninety.five in a hundred fail of success, is fearfully on the increase in this country. Americans are annually becoming more and more averse to manual labor ; and to get a living by one's wits, even at the cost of independence and self-respect, and a fearful wear and tear of conscience, is the ambition of a large proportion of our young men. Tho result is that the mechanical professions are becoming" a monopoly of foreigners, and the ownership of the finest farms, even in New England, is passing from Americans to Irishmen and Germans. Fifty years ago a father was not ashamed to put liis children to the plough or to a mechanical trade ; but now they are " too feeble" for bodily labor; one has a pain in his side, another a slight cough, another " a very delicate constitution," another is nervous ; and so poor Bobby or Billy or Tommy is sent off to the city to measure tape, weigh coffee, or draw mol isses. " It seems never to occur to their foolish parents that moderate manual labor in the pure and bracing air of the country is just what these, puny, wasp-waisted lads need, and that to ttrnd them to the crowded and unhealthy city is to send them to their graven. Let them then follow the plough, swing the sledge, or shove the foreplane, and their pinched chests will be expanded, their sunken cheeks plumped out, and their lungs, now " cabined, cribbed, and confined," will have room to play. Their nerves will be invigorated •with their muscles ; and when they shall have cast off their jackets, instead of being thin, pale vapid coxcombs, they shall have spread to the size and configuration of men. A lawyer's office, a countingroom or a grocery is about the last place to which a sickly youth should be sent. The ruin of health there is as sure as in the mines of England. Even of those men in the city who have constitutions of iron, only five per cent, succeed, and they only by " living like hermits, and working like horses ;" the rest, after years of toil and anxiety, become bankrupt or retire ; and having meanwhile acquired a thorough disgust and xmfitness for manual labor, bitterly fcemoan the day when they forsook the peaceful pursuits of the country for the excitement, care and sharp competition of city life.''