It is ranking oneself with a slave by doing a slave's tasks; as eating a beggar's crust with him would be a beggar's fellowship.
Henry Ward Beecher
The Public Record
Henry Ward Beecher was an American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker, known for his support of the abolition of slavery, his emphasis on God's love, and his 1875 adultery trial. His rhetorical focus on the love of Christ has influenced mainstream Christianity through the 21st century.
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To work is, therefore, prima facie evidence of degradation.
It does not stand, as with us, a symbol of intelligence, but a symbol of stupid servitude.
It is true, because labor is the peculiar badge of Slavery.
The presumption is always against a man who does not labor.
So that not only is work honored and honorable, but the want of it is an implied discredit.
Four spirits there are that rule in New England--religion, social virtue, intelligence, and work; and this last takes something from them all, and is their physical exponent.
And so great are the achievements of labor that everybody honors it.
It is wrapped up in the beggar's raiment, which unroll in our mills into paper--yesterday, a beggar's feculent rags; to-day, a newspaper, conveying the world's daily life into twenty thousand families.
But in New England, and the free inventive North, in the geology of industry, gold is found everywhere--in rye straw and bonnets, in leather and stone, in wool, felts and cloths; in wood, in stone, and in very ice.
It is the glorious exercise of mind upon nature.
But with all this industry, you shall find nowhere on earth so little drudging work as in the North.