Once while my grandsons (six and three at that point) were visiting from Georgia, we had an interesting event to take place.

We were sitting on our back porch. The boys had been tracking grass and leaves onto the porch, as little boys will do. After a while I told the six year old to get the broom off of the deck and sweep off the grass and leaves.

The reply that I heard shocked me.

He said, ‘Pa Pap, I don’t work, I am little”. My reply to him was, “Well everyone around works”.

After awhile and a few words, he swept the grass and leaves off of the porch.

I was raised in a home with three older sisters. We were all taught to do our fair share. My sisters knew how make the beds, do the dusting as well run the sweeper, put meals on the table and do the dishes. Also, they knew how to run the ringer type washer machine, and do the ironing.

I was taught at a young age that before I left for school in the morning, I went to the chicken coop, fed the chickens and gathered their eggs.

Next, I went to the barn and turned the horses out to go to the creek to get a drink. While they were at the creek I would clean their stalls and put down clean straw, put grain in their feed boxes, as well as hay in their mangers.

I then would take buckets to the creek and fill them and carry them back to the stalls for the horses to drink during the day. After school, I did a repeat of these chores, as well as went to my parent’s grocery store to help deliver orders to people who did not have cars and to put merchandise on shelves.

In the summer I had two acres of grass to cut with a push mower, trees to keep trimmed. Not to mention the huge garden that was my responsibility.

I was unaware of it, but my parents were helping me to get prepared for life. I have never regretted being taught to do my fair share. And it did hurt me a bit. There is pride in work, but many in our land is missing

The following needs to be taught and should be in every book in every school room in every city in our great USA. Our educators should make a lesson plan on these statements and instill these words in the minds of all students.

1. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation.

The eternal Word of God continues to say in II Thess 3:10, “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: If a man will not work, he shall not eat.” NIV

Expecting someone to “keep us,” unless we are physically or mentally incapable, is wrong.

Socialism has never worked because God created us to labor and be productive and to not attempt to live off of others.

Hoyt W. Allen, Jr.

Ironton