OVERWORK

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 18, 1872

The complaint is quite universal that in our American life we overstrain the muscle, over-wear the brain, and over-burden the heart. Men at the hottest point of enterprise give out, and consumption takes the body, lunacy the mind, avarice the affections. Prominent men drop suddenly here and there, when they are all aglow with perspiration, and dilated eye, and absorption of success. The epitaph is “Died of overwork.” It should be, “Died of mismanaged work.” That wheel on the car is not hot because it rolls faster than the other wheels, nor because it is weaker or stronger; but because its journal was not packed as well—because some unusual friction has heated it. Here is a sewing machine with which a woman has flung thread enough to baste the two hemispheres together at the equator, and reach to the north pole, and make a spool of it. And yet it has needed little repair as it has sung the dollars together with its monotonous buzz. Here is another that is returned, broken in pieces and radically injured. Lack of lubrication, misguiding in feeding caused an injury, and then it has been up-hill work ever since, till it has become absolutely worthless.