Balance
Young girls should have been instructed to manufacture wearing apparel, to cut, make, and mend garments, and thus become educated for the practical duties of life.
For young men there should be establishments where they could learn different trades, which would bring into exercise their muscles as well as their mental powers. If the youth can have but a one-sided education, and it is asked, Which is of the greater consequence, the study of the sciences with all the disadvantages to health and life, or the knowledge of labor for practical life, we unhesitatingly say, The latter. If one must be neglected, let it be the study of books. There are very many girls who have married and have families who have but little practical knowledge of the duties devolving upon a wife and mother. They cannot cook, but they can read, and play upon an instrument of music. They cannot make good bread, which is very essential to the health of the family. They cannot cut and make garments, for they did not learn how to do these things. They did not consider these things essential, and they are in their married life dependent, as their own little children, upon some one to do these things for them. It is this inexcusable ignorance in regard to the most needful duties of life which makes very many unhappy families.
The impression that work is degrading to fashionable life, has laid thousands in the grave who might have lived. Those who perform only manual labor frequently work to excess, without giving themselves periods of rest, while the intellectual class overwork the brain, and suffer for want of the healthful vigor physical labor gives. If the intellectual would share the burden of the laboring class to a degree, that the muscles might be strengthened, the laboring class might do less, and devote a portion of their time to mental and moral culture. Those of sedentary and literary habits should exercise the physical, even if they have no need to labor so far as means is concerned. Health should be a sufficient inducement to lead them to unite physical with their mental labor. CE 18-19
