TEACH YOUR BOY TO WORK
“ACCORDING to the United States cen-
sus,” writes Missouri’s state pardon at-
torney, Thomas Speed Mosby, in Suc-
cess, ‘considerably more than one half
of those convicted of crime are ignorant
of any kind of trade.” Parents must
not only teach their children to work, he
says, but to love work. In some fur-
ther statements regarding the relation
between idleness and crime, Mr. Mosby
says :—
‘“ Not once, but many, many times has
the typical gray-haired father stood be-
fore me, pleading for the pardon of his
wayward boy. The story has always
been and still is the same: —
“‘He had a good home and a Chris-
tian mother. I gave him a fair educa-
tion. There is not a drop of criminal
blood in his entire family. He is the
first of his name to wear the prison
stripes. He is not a criminal at heart—
it is not in him; it was cigarettes, drink,
bad habits, bad women, bad companions,’
etc., etc.
“Ah, how often have I heard that plea!
True? — Yes, every word of it. But
it was not all the truth. The boy had
never learned to work. He may have
‘had a job.” He may have worked in
a shop, or clerked in a store or in a bank.
But he had two masters. He loved the
one and hated the other. His heart was
not enlisted with his hand and brain; his
soul was not in his labor, and therefore
he knew not work. There was no joy
in his task. Therefore he did not work;
he only half-worked.
“A boy does not always work when he
swings a hammer or balances a set of
books. If he finds no joy in his task,
if he looks upon his employer merely as
a “boss,” and upon the day’s duties as a
period of slavery, from which ‘relief’
comes only after business hours — he
does not work, he shirks. To such a
boy the wine cup will be a temptation.
THE WATCHMAN
Ly on Pes
Hol
He will seek his ‘relief’ in dissipation,
and will soon be found, with others of
his kind, evolving schemes for getting
rich quickly and without the usual drudg-
ery. He may gamble, he may play the
races, or what not. He is deeply im-
bued with the impression that the world
owes him a living ; and the more he pon-
ders the subject, the less scrupulous he
may become as to how he gets that liv-
He does not think of what he
owes to the world. He may end in forg-
ery or embezzlement—if in nothing
worse ; but whatever the route he takes,
the general tendency is downward, and
the penitentiary is yawning for him.
ing.
“ “Tell me,” said an old church deacon,
his voice quivering with grief as he dis-
cussed the case of his own convicted son
— “tell me why it is that the sons of
preachers and deacons always turn out
so badly!’
“They do not always turn out so
badly, I advised him, but they are not
exempt from the operation of those laws
which govern human nature. A boy
may be well schooled in creed and
dogma, and still fall. In all such cases,
there is the same vital defect in the boy’s
education.
“The joy, the beauty, the utility, the
glory of honest work, and the disgrace
of indolence, even in the smallest things
— these should be among the first les-
sons impressed upon the youthful mind,
and the father who so instructs his son
at home may save the state the trouble of
attempting to do so later. The boy who
is taught to love his work for its own
sake, who learns to excel in it as a mat-
ter of pride, and who thinks more of
what he owes to the world than of what
the world owes to him, will not long be
without an honorable, useful, and profit-
able occupation. The prisons are not
made for him, and you will not find him
there. ‘Teach the child to love his work,
and he will understand it. Once he un-
derstands that meaning in its fulness and
grandeur, once he realizes the sweet-
ness and glory of a well-loved task, the
boy is safe; you need feel no concern
as to his future; you have saved the boy
from crime.
“ Criminality seems to be now increas-
ing in the United States. One great ju-
rist has attributed it to a defect in our
appellate court procedure. Ah, no, no;
that is not the thing that is filling our
prisons with young men — far from it in-
deed. Go to the prisons, and find them
there, and talk with them, as I have
talked with hundreds. The young man
in prison garb is the one who knew not
his work. Here is recorded the failure
of church and school and home, for they
taught him not the simple truth implied
in the ancient Persian maxim: ‘ He who
sows the ground with care and diligence
attains a greater merit than he could gain
by the repetition of ten thousand prayers.’
For honest work is worship, and
‘ faith without works is dead.” ‘The old
saying that an idle brain is the devil's
workshop is literally true, as shown by
the prison records. Close the devil's
workshop, and you will close the prison
doors to the great majority of young
men who are daily donning the felon’s
garb. This is the ‘ closed shop ’ that will
close the principal avenue to crime.
“Let the child be taught that idleness
itself is a crime. The boy who dreads
his task, who shirks useful service, is de-
veloping the germ of criminality. It is
no answer to this, to say that such is the
disposition of most boys. Perhaps it is.
But it is also true, most fortunately, that
most boys overcome it; and woe be unto
those who do not. Indolence, procras-
tination, shirking, half-work — through
these a boy first learns to steal, for in-
dolence 1s itself essentially dishonest. It
is the tap-root of crime. The boy who
habitually steals time from his employer
is in a fair way to steal something of
more tangible value. He covets that
which he does not earn. He does not
recognize his obligation to give to his
work the best that is in him; to give to
the world service for service —and to
give it first. In short, he has not learned
work. He is not interested in the task
before him, in the business immediately
at hand. His mind is elsewhere, in
dreams, perhaps—but beyond the dream,
though he cannot see it, there lies the
shadow of the iron bars.”