l life, impresses
his family and neighbors quite as does the prominent city man when he
comes back to dazzle his native town. The children of the working people
learn many useful things in the public schools, but the commercial
arithmetic, and many other studies, are founded on the tacit assumption
that a boy rises in life by getting away from manual labor,--that every
promising boy goes into business or a profession. The children destined
for factory life are furnished with what would be most useful under
other conditions, quite as the prosperous farmer's wife buys a
folding-bed for her huge four-cornered "spare room," because her sister,
who has married a city man, is obliged to have a folding-bed in the
cramped limits of her flat Partly because so little is done for him
educationally, and partly because he must live narrowly and dress
meanly, the life of the average laborer tends to become flat and
monotonous, with nothing in his work to feed his mind or hold his
interest. Theoretically, we would all admit that the man at the bottom,
who performs the meanest and humblest work, so long as the work is
necessary, performs a useful function; but we do not live up to our
theories, and in addition to his hard and uninteresting work he is
covered with a sort of contempt, and unless he falls into illness or
trouble, he receives little sympathy or attention. Certainly no serious
effort is made to give him a participation in the social and industrial
life with which he comes in contact, nor any insight and inspiration
regarding it.

Apparently we have not yet recovered manual labor from the deep distrust
which centuries of slavery and the feudal system have cast upon it. To
get away from menial work, to do obviously little with one's hands, is
still the desirable status. This may readily be seen all along the line.
A workingman's family will make every effort and sacrifice that the
brightest daughter be sent to the high school and through the normal
school, quite as much because a teacher in the family raises the general
social standing and sense of family consequence, as that the returns are
superior to factory or even office work. "Teacher" in the vocabulary of
many children is a synonym for women-folk gentry, and the name is
indiscriminately applied to women of certain dress and manner. The same
desire for social advancement is expressed by the purchasing of a piano,
or the fact that the son is an office boy, and not a fact