Every man should make his son or daughter learn some useful trade or profession, so that in these days of changing fortunes of being rich today and poor tomorrow they may have something tangible to fall back upon. This provision might save many persons from misery, who by some unexpected turn of fortune have lost all their means.

Struggles and Triumphs: Or, Forty Years' Recollections of P. T. Barnum (ed. 1869)