LABOR DAY.
SEPTEMBER FIVE.
Opening Song—Help It On.
Recitation—Tribute to Genius and Labor.
Concert Exercise for the Little Ones—Two Little Hands
Reading—The Moral Dignity of Labor.
Song—Make Hay while the Sun Shines.
Recitation—Working and Shirking.
Reading—Labor.
Recitation—Ho! Bonny Boy.
Song—This World Is What We Make It. (School join In chorus.)
Recitation—True Nobility.
Recitation—The Village Blacksmith.
Oration—Free Labor.
Recitation—The Working Man’s Song.
Song—Work For the Night is Coming.
Exercise For Two Little Girls—The Scissors.
Recitation—Toil’s Grandeur.
Reading—The Toilers.
Closing Song—Work and Reward.
(All the songs except the last are in the "Song Knapsack," and it will lend interest to the program to have the school join in singing most of them.)
FREE LABOR.
Our Government was not established that one man might do with himself as he pleases, and with another man too. I say that, whereas God Almighty has given every man one mouth to be fed, and one pair of hands adapted to furnish food for that mouth, if anything can be proved to be the will of Heaven, it is proved by this fact, that that mouth is to be fed by those hands, without being interfered with by any other man who has also his mouth to feed and his hands to labor with. I hold, if the Almighty had ever made a set of men that should do all the eating and none of the work, he would have made them with mouths only and no hands; and if he had ever made another class that he intended should do all the work and none of the eating, he would have made them without mouths and with all hands.
WORKING MAN'S SONG.
Who lacks for bread of daily work
And his appointed task would shirk,
Commits a folly and a crime;
A soulless slave—
A partly knave—
A clog upon the wheels of Time.
With work to do and stores of health,
The man’s unworthy to be free
Who will not give,
That he may live.
His daily toil for daily fee.
No; Let us work! We only ask
Reward proportioned to our task;
We have no quarrel with the great;
No feud with rank—
With mill or bank—
No envy of a lord's estate.
If we can earn sufficient store
To satisfy our need,
And can retain,
For age and pain,
A fraction, we are rich indeed.
No dread of toil have we or ours;
We know our worth, our weight, our powers.
The more we work, the more we win;
Success to Trade!
Success to Spade,
And to the corn that's coming in;
And joy to him who, o'er his task,
Remembers toil is nature's plan;
Who working thinks,
And never sinks
His independence as a man.
Who only asks for humble wealth.
Enough for competence and health,
And leisure when his work is done,
To read his book
By chimney nook,
Or stroll at setting sun;
Who toils, as every man should toil.
For fair reward, erect and free;
These are the men—
The best of men—
These are the men we mean to be.
