the supreme glory of ’the sweating brow,’ and how magnificent the suit of coarse homespun which covers a form bent with overwork."...  “I tell you, my brother-workers of the soil, there is something worth living for besides hard work.  We have heard enough of this professional blarney.  Toil in itself is not necessarily glorious.  To toil like slaves, raise fat steers, cultivate broad acres, pile up treasures of bonds and lands and herds, and at the same time bow and starve the god-like form, harden the hands, dwarf the immortal mind and alienate the children from the homestead, is a damning disgrace to any man, and should stamp him as worse than a brute.”

Thus the farmers have joined the great strike of labor against drudgery, and it will never end until it is fully recognized that, while every unproductive life is a dishonorable life, drudgery is no less degrading than pure idleness.  To be sure, the sages in all times have taught that there was a time to sing and dance as well as a time to labor, but it is not fifty years since it was generally accepted by the masses that a person might spend every day of his adult life in monotonous manual labor, and yet, other things being favorable, be just as intelligent, just as polished in manner, and graceful in bearing as if his occupation was varied and the more laborious portions of it never continued long at a time.  To-day this fallacy is beginning to be generally recognized.  Go into any farming district, and you will find that the farmer’s sons who are regularly engaged in one kind of labor all day, as ploughing, planting, mowing, are great, awkward, heavy-mannered youths, while his daughters are, in comparison, easy in their movements and agreeable in their address; and simply because, though their labor has been as unremitting, it has been far less monotonous.  As a general rule, they go from one thing to another, and through a great variety of muscular exercises from hour to hour.

It is no wonder, then, that the farmers’ sons, to get rid of the terrible monotony of farm-labor as now organized, find peddling tin kettles an acceptable substitute, or turning somersets in a third-class circus a fortunate escape.  The reason why our country youths are so impatient of farm-labor is not that they are less virtuous than formerly, but that they are wiser; and the railroad has opened a thousand fields for their ambitious daring undreamed of as possibilities in the olden time.  Not even the combination of attractions afforded by the granges, with their libraries and reading-rooms, their processions and picnics, the decoration of grange halls in company with the ladies of the order, the working of degrees, the music, social reunions, balls and concerts, can keep young men on the farm unless something is done to render the labor less monotonous and disagreeable.