IMPORTANCE OF VOCATIONAL LIFE

While young people are spending most of their time at school or at play, their fathers and other grown people are usually chiefly occupied in the business of making a living or “earning money.”

[Footnote:  Gold and silver and paper and wood are forms of wealth.  Out of wood we make a yardstick or a peck measure with which to measure quantities of cloth or grain.  In a similar manner, out of gold, silver, paper, and other materials, we make money, and for a similar reason, viz. to measure the value of wealth.  When we speak of a fifty-cent knife and a twenty-five cent purse, we measure the value of these articles.  It would take thousands of dollars to measure the value of a well-stocked farm.

When we say that a boy earns a dollar, or that a man earns $4.00 a day, we measure the value of his work or his service.  If a man works for a farmer, he very likely receives his “board and lodging” in part payment for his services; he makes a direct exchange of his services for food and shelter.  But he also probably receives in addition an amount of money, because with the money he can buy clothes and other things that the farmer cannot give.  He takes the money and buys with it these other things that he needs to supply his wants.  Thus money becomes something more than a measure of wealth or of services; it is also A means of exchanging wealth or services.

These are the two uses of money.  Money has value only because of what it represents in wealth, and wealth is useful because it enables us to satisfy wants.  These things are mentioned because it is quite important that we should never forget that “money” and “wealth” are worth working for only because of the “living,” or life, that they help us to attain.]

Children are, as a rule, wholly dependent upon their parents for their living.  But during their period of dependence they are gaining skill and experience, in school and otherwise, that will later enable them to earn their own living and that of other people who may, in turn, become dependent upon them.

As adult life approaches, there comes an increasing desire for independence of others, to have possessions, own property, or accumulate wealth.  Our vocations, or occupations, by which we earn a livelihood, come to occupy a prominent place in our thought, and to a large extent control our activity.  Doubtless most of those who read this chapter have begun to think more or less seriously about what they are going to do for a living.  Some may be already doing so, in part, or helping to earn that of their families.  Boys and girls who live on farms are especially likely to have a share in the work by which the family living is provided; but most boys and girls have more or