“Old Bill” Suggests—

To urge the value of hard work is never popular. Yet there is no blinking the fact that for practically all of mankind work is an acquired taste. Nobody starts with any particular predilection for routine tasks.

After years of driving will power, the system becomes so habituated to vigorous labor that anything else seems a sin. The building mechanic and the business man alike get out of sorts when too long deprived of their tasks and usefulness.

The objection to much of the “boondoggling” methods of relief used at the present time is that they do not require the full energies of anyone concerned. Halfhearted work is also a habit, easily acquired and considerably harder to shake off.

“He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster.” A nation that is wasteful and slothful, no matter how favored by natural resources or protected by tariff barriers, is going to have a hard time holding world markets.

But whoever favors the discipline of harder work than seems pleasant, which is the only work that can provide discipline, will never be elected to public office in the present state of public opinion.

ROYAL F. MUNGER.