Many spend a third, and
others half their entire earnings, in drink. It would be considered
monstrous, on the part of any man whose lot has been cast among the
educated classes to exhibit such a degree of selfish indulgence; and to
spend even one-fourth of his income upon objects in which his wife and
children have no share.
Mr. Roolmck recently asked, at a public meeting,[1] "Why should the mail
who makes L200 or L300 a year by his mechanical labour, be a rude,
coarse, brutal fellow? There is no reason why he should be so.
[Footnote 1: Meeting of the Mechanics' Institutes at Dewsbury,
Yorkshire.]
Why should he not be like a gentleman? Why should not his house be like
my house? When I go home from my labour, what do I find? I find a
cheerful wife--I find an elegant, educated woman. I have a daughter; she
is the same. Why should not you find the same happy influences at home?
I want to know, when the working man comes from his daily labour to his
home, why he should not find his table spread as mine is spread; why he
should not find his wife well dressed, cleanly, loving, kind, and his
daughter the same?... We all know that many working men, earning good
wages, spend their money in the beerhouse and in drunkenness, instead of
in clothing their wives and families. Why should not these men spend
their wages as I spend my small stipend, in intellectual pleasures, in
joining with my family in intellectual pursuits? Why should not working
men, after enjoying their dinners and thanking God for what they have
got, turn their attention to intellectual enjoyments, instead of going
out to get drunk in the nearest pothouse! Depend on it these things
ought to go to the heart of a working man; and he is not a friend to the
working man who talks to him and makes him believe that he is a great
man in the State, and who don't tell him what are the duties of his
position.
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