Certainly no serious effort is made to give him a participation in the social and industrial life with which he comes in contact, nor any insight and inspiration regarding it.
Apparently we have not yet recovered manual labor from the deep distrust which centuries of slavery and the feudal system have cast upon it.

To get away from menial work, to do obviously little with one's hands, is still the desirable status.

This may readily be seen all along the line.
A workingman's family will make every effort and sacrifice that the brightest daughter be sent to the high school and through the normal school, quite as much because a teacher in the family raises the general social standing and sense of family consequence, as that the returns are superior to factory or even office work.

"Teacher" in the vocabulary of many children is a synonym for women-folk gentry, and the name is indiscriminately applied to women of certain dress and manner.

The same desire for social advancement is expressed by the purchasing of a piano, or the fact that the son is an office boy, and not a factory hand.