Podcast Excerpt: Industry is one of the important helps to happiness. All else being equal, the industrious person is the happiest. Take a look at the farmer at the plow, the mechanic at the bench, the merchant at the counter, the lawyer at the bar, the doctor in the sick room, and the minister in the pulpit; are they not the happiest of people?

Some writers have well said: “Those who would eat the kernel must crack the nut.” “No pain, no gain.” “No sweat, no sweet.” “They that do nothing are on the way to doing worse than nothing.” “The parent who gives their children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them a fortune.”

How strange it is that so many people have the belief that work is a burden and that idleness means happiness. Many are longing for the day that they will possess sufficient money to quit work and take life easy. They imagine that when that time comes their happiness will be complete.

Alas, how many have reached that period of life to find themselves greatly disappointed! Idleness fails to give the happiness they expected and time drags on more heavily than ever. The hardest job I ever tried was that of doing nothing. Humankind is so constituted that we must have something to engage the mind and exercise the body, or we will not be very happy.

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