The training of young men in the use of tools would, at the same
time that it educated them in "common things," teach them the use
of their hands and arms, familiarize them with healthy work,
exercise their faculties upon things tangible and actual, give them
some practical acquaintance with mechanics, impart to them the
ability of being useful, and implant in them the habit of
persevering physical effort. This is an advantage which the
working classes, strictly so called, certainly possess over the
leisure classes,--that they are in early life under the necessity
of applying themselves laboriously to some mechanical pursuit or
other,--thus acquiring manual dexterity and the use of their
physical powers. The chief disadvantage attached to the calling of
the laborious classes is, not that they are employed in physical
work, but that they are too exclusively so employed, often to the
neglect of their moral and intellectual faculties. While the
youths of the leisure classes, having been taught to associate
labour with servility, have shunned it, and been allowed to grow up
practically ignorant, the poorer classes, confining themselves
within the circle of their laborious callings, have been allowed to
grow up in a large proportion of cases absolutely illiterate.
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