East Saginaw Courier

The Education Most Needed—Learn To Labor.—The question is often asked, why is it that so few people are successful in business, and why property finds such an unequal distribution? This man, they say, received the advantages of a good English education, and that man was educated at one of our best colleges. Both have been industrious, honest, and economical; and yet neither of them has been successful in business.—Why is it? asks the New York Express; and that journal proceeds to point out the cause, and, in the course of its remarks, observes:

"The idea too commonly prevails that a mere knowledge of books is the beginning and ending of education. The sons and daughters, especially of the rich, grow up with little idea of the responsibilities which await them. Their natures revolt at the mention of 'labor,' not dreaming that their parents before them obtained the wealth they are so proud of by industry and economy. How many young men college-bred though they may be, are prepared to manage the estates which their fathers possess, and which it may have required a lifetime to acquire? How many young women, though having acquired all the knowledge and graces of the best schools, know how to do what their mothers have done before them, and which the daughters may yet be compelled to do at some period of their lives? The children of the poor have to labor or starve, and as far as that goes they are educated to be practical.

"The education that scoffs at labor and encourages idleness is the worst enemy for a girl, man, or woman. Instead of ennobling, it degrades; it opens up the road to ruin. The education which directs us to do what we are fitted to do, that respects labor, that inculcates industry, honesty, and fair dealing, and that strips us of selfishness, is the education we do need, and that which must become the prevailing system of the country before we can be as a people either happy or prosperous."