the rich, and the powerful are not to labor with the hands, as Christ
did, and as Paul did when he would "not eat any man's bread for naught,
but wrought with labor, not because we have not power "[to live
without hand-work,]" but to make ourselves an example."(2 Thess. 3.)

Instead of this, manual labor has been made dishonorable and unrefined
by being forced on the ignorant and poor. Especially has the most
important of all hand-labor, that which sustains the family, been thus
disgraced; so that to nurse young children, and provide the food of
a family by labor, is deemed the lowest of all positions in honor and
profit, and the last resort of poverty. And so our Lord, who himself
took the form of a servant, teaches, "How hardly shall they that have
riches enter the kingdom of heaven!"--that kingdom in which all are
toiling to raise the weak, ignorant, and sinful to such equality with
themselves as the children of a loving family enjoy. One mode in
which riches have led to antagonism with the true end of the family state
is in the style of living, by which the hand-labor, most important to
health, comfort, and beauty, is confined to the most ignorant and
neglected members of society, without any effort being made to raise
them to equal advantages with the wise and cultivated.

And, the higher civilization has advanced, the more have children been
trained to feel that to labor, as did Christ and Paul, is disgraceful,
and to be made the portion of a degraded class. Children, of the rich
grow up with the feeling that servants are to work for them, and they
themselves are not to work. To the minds of most children and servants,
"to be a lady," is almost synonymous with "to be waited on, and do no
work," It is the earnest desire of the authors of this volume to make
plain the falsity of this growing popular feeling, and to show how
much happier and more efficient family life will become when it is