4105. JEFFERSON (Thomas), A Nailmaker.—
In our private pursuits it is a great
advantage that every honest employment is
deemed honorable. I am myself a nailmaker,
On returning home after an absence of ten
years, I found my farms so much deranged
that I saw evidently they would be a burden
to me instead of a support till I could regenerate
them; and, consequently, that it was
necessary for me to find some other resource
in the meantime. I thought for a while of
taking up the manufacture of potash, which
requires but small advances of money. I concluded
at length, however, to begin a manufacture
of nails, which needs little or no
capital, and I now employ a dozen little
boys from ten to sixteen years of age, overlooking
all the details of their business myself,
and drawing from it a profit on which I
can get along till I can put my farms into a
course of yielding profit. My new trade of
nail-making is to me in this country what
an additional title of nobility or the ensigns
of a new order are in Europe.—
To M. de Meunier.
Ford ed., vii, 14.
(M.
1795)
