One of the commonest sights in the city is that of the people going to work in the early morning; the streets are thronged with men carrying dinner pails, and girls and women carrying bundles. Many are hurrying with a worried look on their faces as if fearful of being a minute or two late. At night the same people are again on the streets with their faces turned in the opposite direction going home after the day’s work. A few hours’ rest, then a new day, and the same people may be seen in the same streets, hurrying to the ever unending tasks. The country holds the same urge of work. Nothing is more interesting than a trip through the country early in the morning. With the first hint of dawn you see a thin pencil of smoke begin to stream from the chimneys of the farmhouses. Bobbing lanterns appear by the barn. You hear the clanking of chains and the rattle of harness as the teams are being made ready for the day’s toil. As the morning grows older, you meet the workers out on the road with their faces set sturdily toward the field of their labor. All night long from a thousand centers massive trains are rushing toward other centers. In each engine two men, with nerves alert and eyes peering out into the darkness ahead, guide the power that pulls the train. Every few minutes the door of the firebox is opened and a gleam of light makes an arc through the darkness of the night as the fireman mends his fire. During the daytime thousands of trackmen have inspected the rails; other thousands have been at work repairing the ties, putting in new rails, and improving the grade. Telegraphers are continuously flashing their messages along the wires; their invisible hands guide these flying trains. In factories, workshops, mills, mines, forests, on steamships, on the wharves, wherever there are human beings, there is work being done. Work is as ceaseless and persistent as life itself. =The Song of the World of Work.= You remember, perhaps, the first time that you visited a big city. From your room in the hotel you could hear the roar of the streets. That roar is made up of hundreds of separate sounds. It is the voice of work from the throat of the city. It changes with each hour of the night. Just before dawn there is a lull and the voice is almost quiet but only for a short period; then it takes on a new volume of sound and grows in intensity to the full force of its noonday chorus. What is this voice saying? It is telling the story, and pouring out the complaint, and singing the song of the world of work. The idler or the parasite is the exception. People can live without working, but such is human nature that the person is rarely found who is willing to bear the odium of being a member of the class that never toils.