Everybody who wants
work finds it. I hope you will be at my place next summer. Then
you'll see how I positively sweat blood in harvest-time trying to
get the necessary number of laborers together, and what I have to
put up with from the rascals only to keep them in good humor. Don't
try on any of these windy arguments with a landowner--people that
want work and can't find it indeed! Let me tell you, my son, neither
I nor any one of my country neighbors can scrape together as many
people as we need."
"But everybody cannot work in the fields."
"There, at last, you have hit the bull's eye--that is where the shoe
pinches. Agriculture offers a certain means of livelihood to all who
can and will work properly. But that does not suit the lazy beggars.
The work is too hard, and, more particularly, the discipline on an
estate is too strict for their fancy. They would rather be in the
town, rather starve in a workshop, or ruin their lungs in a factory,
because there they have more freedom--that is, they can go on the
spree all night and shirk their work all day, if they like--they can
play the gentleman, and think themselves as good as any general or
minister. Under these circumstances, it is no wonder that they soon
come to want, and instead of admitting that it is entirely the fault
of their own pigheadedness and perversity, they go and turn unruly
against the government.
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