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.