THE AMERICAN.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 1990, 14 May 1885, Page 2

THE AMERICAN.

The native-bom American hates drudgery; and all the mechanical arts, when pursued without some kowledge of science to employ and interest the mind while the hands are active, are more or less drudgery. _ Accordingly we find that the American is scarcely ever to bo found as a mere workman. It lias indeed passed into a proverb that the real American never takes off his coat to work. The railway porters, the pointsmen, the navvies on the various railroads of the country, are foreigners.;.the conductors are American. Call at the pointsman's cottage, and you may find him Irish or French Canadian, certainly not American. The porter at the railway station may be Irish or German. The navvy may be English, or Irish, or Canadian, or even Italian—he may possibly be German or Scandinavian : American he nover is. The factory operatives of Fall River or of Providence, of whose 'strikes' we heard so much four or five years ago, may be Canadian, or Irish, or English, it is certain they are not Americans. The pianoforte makers of New York—another 'striking' trade-may be German, they are not American. The men employed in the heavy work of the mines and iron works of Pennsylvania—among the Alleghanies, or in that ' black country' of which Pittsburgh is the centre—are of many different countries, not a few being Belgians, but they are not Americans.