Horace Greeley,1811-1872, perhaps the most famous editor of America, was
born in Amherst, New Hampshire, of poor parents. His boyhood was passed in
farm labor, in attending the common school, and in reading every book on
which he could lay his hands. His reading was mostly done by the light of
pine knots. At fifteen he entered a printing office in Vermont, became the
best workman in the office, and continued to improve every opportunity for
study. At the age of twenty he appeared in New York City, poorly clothed,
and almost destitute of money. He worked at his trade for a year or two,
and then set up printing for himself. For several years he was not
successful, but struggled on, performing an immense amount of work as an
editor. In 1841 he established the "New York Tribune," which soon became
one of the most successful and influential papers in the country. In 1848
he was elected to Congress, but remained but a short time. In 1872 he was
a candidate for the Presidency, was defeated, and died a few days
afterward. Mr. Greeley is a rare example of what may be accomplished by
honesty and unflinching industry. Besides the vast amount which he wrote
for the newspapers, he published several books; the best known of which is
"The American Conflict."
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Every child should be trained to dexterity in some useful branch of
productive industry, not in order that he shall certainly follow that
pursuit, but that he may at all events be able to do so in case he shall
fail in the more intellectual or artificial calling which he may prefer to
it. Let him seek to be a doctor, lawyer, preacher, poet, if he will; but
let him not stake his all on success in that pursuit, but have a second
line to fall back upon if driven from his first. Let him be so reared and
trained that he may enter, if he will, upon some intellectual calling in
the sustaining consciousness that he need not debase himself, nor do
violence to his convictions, in order to achieve success therein, since he
can live and thrive in another (if you choose, humbler) vocation, if
driven from that of his choice. This buttress to integrity, this assurance
of self-respect, is to be found in a universal training to efficiency in
Productive Labor.
The world is full of misdirection and waste; but all the calamities and
losses endured by mankind through frost, drought, blight, hail, fires,
earthquakes, inundations, are as nothing to those habitually suffered by
them through human idleness and inefficiency, mainly caused (or excused)
by lack of industrial training. It is quite within the truth to estimate
that one tenth of our people, in the average, are habitually idle because
(as they say) they can find no employment. They look for work where it can
not be had. They seem to be, or they are, unable to do such as abundantly
confronts and solicits them. Suppose these to average but one million
able-bodied persons, and that their work is worth but one dollar each per
day; our loss by involuntary idleness can not be less than $300,000,000
per annum. I judge that it is actually $500,000,000. Many who stand
waiting to be hired could earn from two to five dollars per day had they
been properly trained to work. "There is plenty of room higher up," said
Daniel Webster, in response to an inquiry as to the prospects of a young
man just entering upon the practice of law; and there is never a dearth of
employment for men or women of signal capacity or skill. In this city, ten
thousand women are always doing needlework for less than fifty cents per
day, finding themselves; yet twice their number of capable, skillful
seamstresses could find steady employment and good living in wealthy
families at not less than one dollar per day over and above board and
lodging. He who is a good blacksmith, a fair millwright, a tolerable wagon
maker, and can chop timber, make fence, and manage a small farm if
required, is always sure of work and fair recompense; while he or she who
can keep books or teach music fairly, but knows how to do nothing else, is
in constant danger of falling into involuntary idleness and consequent
beggary. It is a broad, general truth, that no boy was ever yet inured to
daily, systematic, productive labor in field or shop throughout the latter
half of his minority, who did not prove a useful man, and was notable to
find work whenever he wished it.
Yet to the ample and constant employment of a whole community one
prerequisite is indispensable,--that a variety of pursuits shall have been
created or naturalized therein. A people who have but a single source of
profit are uniformly poor, not because that vocation is necessarily
ill-chosen, but because no single calling can employ and reward the varied
capacities of male and female, old and young, robust and feeble. Thus a
lumbering or fishing region with us is apt to have a large proportion of
needy inhabitants; and the same is true of a region exclusively devoted to
cotton growing or gold mining. A diversity of pursuits is indispensable to
general activity and enduring prosperity.
Sixty or seventy years ago, what was then the District, and is now the
State, of Maine, was a proverb in New England for the poverty of its
people, mainly because they were so largely engaged in timber cutting. The
great grain-growing, wheat-exporting districts of the Russian empire have
a poor and rude people for a like reason. Thus the industry of
Massachusetts is immensely more productive per head than that of North
Carolina, or even that of Indiana, as it will cease to be whenever
manufactures shall have been diffused over our whole country, as they must
and will be. In Massachusetts half the women and nearly half the children
add by their daily labor to the aggregate of realized wealth; in North
Carolina and in Indiana little wealth is produced save by the labor of
men, including boys of fifteen or upward. When this disparity shall have
ceased, its consequence will also disappear.
[Illustration: A chained man in prison reclining against the wall. He is
gazing down at a sleeping young boy.]