The son of a workingman who is successful in commercial 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 factory hand.  The overcrowding of the professions by poorly equipped men arises from much the same source, and from the conviction that “an education” is wasted if a boy goes into a factory or shop.