The daily Minnesota pioneer. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1854-1855, 1855-02-24
The Pioneer Correspondence.
From our Regular New York Correspondent.
Matters and Things in New York.

New YORK, Feb. ID, 1855.
If the last issue of the country press had not
come to hand, groaning under mountains Of
snow and variously stiflened with frigidity
ranging from % to 40 degrees below zero, We
should feel inclined to write at large upon the
wonderous height of our urban snow drifts
and the wondrous descent Of the mercury In
our urban thermometer. But having read,
among other statements almost as startling.
how for days. railway train in Illinois stuck
fast in snow drift higher than itself,while the
passengers supported life by eating the dogs
who were unfortunate enough to be their fel-
low travellers, we feel how common place are
the weather items of New York, with only
two feet of snow, 9 degrees below zero, and one,
only one stage driver frozen to death. We
have no heart to offer these as anything extra
ordinary. We may be allowed to suggest
perhaps, that good old BishopV alentine, whose
advent is close at hand should dof his unsea-
sonable mitre and encase his venerable poll in
the stout deerskin of his cousin Santa Claus,
and that he furnish the thin-skinned Cupids in
his charge with wooden blankets, and the ten
der hearts that must needs leave the breasts OF
signing SWANS during his brief reign for the
purpose of exchange, with double pericordi-
um apiece And although the low state of the
mercury and stocks must perforce abate some
what, the observances due the high festival OF
the worthy saint, the shop windows are blaz-
oned with the soft suggestions and dainty de-
vices appropriate to the season amorous doves,
affairs crowned with flowers, lackadaisical
rhymes and red hearts skewered upon particu-
larly dreadful arrows. Just opposite one win
dow are two maidens whose daily care it has
been for many months past to forge these deli
cate yet potential arms Of Cupid; the one
a brunette with closely gathered hair of black,
the other O sunny faced blonde, with brown
cue flowing loosely. Doubtless Venus will en-
due with an especial potency the gentle 60
betweens begot under such influences, and ma
ny heart will be set aching and many anoth-
er fine blissful case from their so potent art.
But we are growing sentimental.
What shall be done with and for numerous
and constantly increasing class of pauper pop
ulation, is riddle which the present time is
thrusting into our faces. The most obvious
solution perhaps is the old one newly urged by
Mr.. Peter Cooper, the well known philanthro-
pist that the city should provide employment
for those destitute of it. But such relief as
this plan proposes, can at best be only tempo
rary, without leading to anything better.
The penniless foreigner, who is detailed into
Mr.. Cooper's stone quarry, or set to build our
piers, or rear our public buildings as relief
from starvation, is just as far from independ-
ence at the end of six months as when he first
took up the stone hammer or the hod. He is
the same needy mechanical dredge as at first,
moving only at the beck of authority, without
foresight or selfreliance. The only cure we
think possible for this sore disorder is to induce
newly arrived immigrants to pass directly
through our labor surfeited city into the broad
interior, where all kinds of employment are
waiting to receive them. That benevoence is
surely short sighted, which nourishcs in idle
ness or with brief employment able bodied men
and women, whose only wealth is two willing
hands, when the same charity properly be
slowed would place them in command of the
means of honorable selfsupport. To be sure,
the wild freshman and the stolid Dutchman
come to a free country, and can insist upon
starving in the city, and violate no law; but
the greater part of the immigrants who land
at our ports, are ignorant Of the demands for
labor, and its privileges throughout the coun-
try. How should they know them? Nothing
of the kind existed in the countries they left !!
Let them be informed how easily the willing
laborer finds remunerative employment in the
country, in the shop on the farm or in the kit
chen, and what is still better, the independence
of landed property, SO cheaply attained in
our new States, and the desire of something
better, which drew them from the father land,
would catch eagerly at the benevolence which
would start them on the road to these blessings.
Who of your readers who have visited New
York and received short sixpences and suspi
cious quarters from the till of the rascally ON
nibus driver but have heard of "Kipp and
Brown'-well they have failed, and the
Chelsea Line" even as 1 write, is passing in
to other hands. Kipp and Brown were pio-
neers in the stage business and immensely
rich.
Mr.. Theodore A. Gray, the funny gentleman
who whilome amused himself with squirting
vitriol upon ladies' dresses, for which innocent
recreation he has been lying some months in