owels, no
rough scaffolding there, to be sure, and life goes on very quietly; but
there is the foul air of slow and sure decay.

"Republican institutions in America are in a transition state; they have
not yet separated themselves from foreign and antagonistic ideas and
traditions, derived from old countries; and the labors necessary for the
upbuilding of society are not yet so adjusted that there is mutual
pleasure and comfort in the relations of employer and employed. We still
incline to class-distinctions and aristocracies. We incline to the
scheme of dividing the world's work into two orders: first, physical
labor, which is held to be rude and vulgar, and the province of a lower
class; and second, brain labor, held to be refined and aristocratic, and
the province of a higher class. Meanwhile, the Creator, who is the
greatest of levellers, has given to every human being _both_ a physical
system, needing to be kept in order by physical labor, and an
intellectual or brain power, needing to be kept in order by brain labor.
_Work_, use, employment, is the condition of health in both; and he who
works either to the neglect of the other lives but a half-life, and is
an imperfect human being.

"The aristocracies of the Old World claim that their only labor should
be that of the brain; and they keep their physical system in order by
violent exercise, which is made genteel from the fact only that it is
not useful or productive. It would be losing caste to refresh the
muscles by handling the plough or the axe; and so foxes and hares must
be kept to be hunted, and whole counties turned into preserves, in order
that the nobility and gentry may have physical exercise in a way
befitting their station,--that is to say, in a way that produces
nothing, and does good only to themselves.

"The model republican uses his brain for the highest purposes of brain
work, and his muscles in _productive_ physical labor; and useful labor
he respects above that which is merely agreeable.

"When this equal respect for physical and mental labor shall have taken
possession of every American citizen, there will be no so-called
laboring class: there will no more be a class all muscle without brain
power to guide it, and a class all brain without muscular power to
execute. The labors of society will be lighter, because each individual
will take his part in them; they will be performed better, because no
one will be overburdened.

"In those days,