em to be, or they are, unable to do such as abundantly
confronts and solicits them. Suppose these to average but one million
able-bodied persons, and that their work is worth but one dollar each per
day; our loss by involuntary idleness can not be less than $300,000,000
per annum. I judge that it is actually $500,000,000. Many who stand
waiting to be hired could earn from two to five dollars per day had they
been properly trained to work. "There is plenty of room higher up," said
Daniel Webster, in response to an inquiry as to the prospects of a young
man just entering upon the practice of law; and there is never a dearth of
employment for men or women of signal capacity or skill. In this city, ten
thousand women are always doing needlework for less than fifty cents per
day, finding themselves; yet twice their number of capable, skillful
seamstresses could find steady employment and good living in wealthy
families at not less than one dollar per day over and above board and
lodging. He who is a good blacksmith, a fair millwright, a tolerable wagon
maker, and can chop timber, make fence, and manage a small farm if
required, is always sure of work and fair recompense; while he or she who
can keep books or teach music fairly, but knows how to do nothing else, is
in constant danger of falling into involuntary idleness and consequent
beggary. It is a broad, general truth, that no boy was ever yet inured to
daily, systematic, productive labor in field or shop throughout the latter
half of his minority, who did not prove a useful man, and was notable to
find work whenever he wished it.

Yet to the ample and constant employment of a whole community one
prerequisite is indispensable,--that a variety of pursuits shall have been
created or naturalized therein. A people who have but a single source of
profit are uniformly poor, not because that vocation is necessarily
ill-chosen, but because no single calling can employ and reward the varied
capacities of male and female, old and young, robust and feeble. Thus a
lumbering or fishing region with us is apt to have a large proportion of
needy inhabitants; and the same is true of a region exclusively devoted to
cotton growing or gold mining. A diversity of pursuits is indispensable to
general activity and enduring prosperity.

Sixty or seventy years ago, what was then the District, and is now the
State, of Maine, was a proverb in New England for the poverty of its
people, mainly becaus