The University Courier.
Vol. II. — DECEMBER ,20 1883. — No. 8.
CONTEST PRODUCTIONS.
LABOR.
ORATION, DY GEORGE B. WATSON, OF THE OROPHILIAN SOCIETY.
Our Nation calls itself practical and progressive. We proudly point to our great cities as products of honest toil, we look at our vast field of grain, we listen to the hum of busy wheels and say that we are a nation of workers. Everywhere we hear the clashing arms of peaceful labor and challenge the world to produce an equal marvel. 'Tis impossible; the picture is truly American. Yet a recent critic has said that, "We are an industrious people—we are in our attempt to keep out of work; that we are not living in a golden age, nor an iron age, nor a stone age, but in an indolent and shoddy age." This criticism seems undeserved and harsh indeed, but perhaps there is more truth in it than we think.
On looking about us we see the American youth already beginning to abandon the time-honored ways that lead to success; by those routes progress is too slow. They begin to hate honest, plodding work. They were not intended to earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. There are lucrative positions and professions awaiting them somewhere which will enable them to join,
without special effort, the indolent, wealthy pleasure-taking aristocracy of the land.
That there is a true aristocracy everywhere, a class of persons in every country who, by virtue of native talent and well directed energy, are superior to the rank and file, is proved by universal experience; but the idea that there is room here for a nation of shoddy aristocrats cannot for a moment be entertained. Yet on every side young men are leaving the farms and work-shops and rushing to the cities to enter some genteel business or profession. What are the reasons for such a calamitous procedure?
A score of years ago we were a nation of slave-holders—we had been such for a century—and is it any wonder that the curse still weighs upon us, that we are trying to produce a nation of masters? No,it is but natural that posterity should still have the same longing to crack the whip that so long disgraced our country. Moreover our country is receiving a vast immigration from the old world. They do not come as fugitives from political persecution; they are not the wealthy class fleeing because of civi-
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