The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1855-01-14

Our city reporters note that Mr.. A. T. Stewart
supplies from nine to twelve hundred people
daily with soup. Mr. Lindenmlller does the same
thing in Chatham street. and charitable COM
mittees discharge a like duty in each of the
populous wards of the city. Three days ago q
long procession, composed of able bodied men,
paraded up and down Broadway, bearing
banner on which were inscribed the words:
"We want work" The same day, hundreds OF
ship carpenters caulkers, and other hands en-
ployed on board ship were discharged by their
employers, partly because they would not con-
sent to o reduction Of wages, and PARTLY be-
cause there was no work for them, at any rate
OF remuneration at all. In several of the large
prinkng offices all unmarried men have been
discharged and those who have been retained
work only three days week, turn about with
others. The chances are that if the reader of
this will step up to the Park he will see
crowd of angry men, complaining of want and
misery, and muttering fierce denuaciations
against somebody.
These are signs Of the times, by no means to
be carelessly passed over or neglected. Do
what you will with man, his nature remains the
same; he hungers, thirsts, shivers from cold,
loves his wife and children just as much in
hard as in flush times, in 1855 as in 1887 or in
any former year; and if the worst comes, he
will always run some risk rather than starve or
let his family starve. Men are not born riot
as: they become SO, under intolerable pressure,
and from misguided impulse. 1t is high time
for the public Of New York to inquire whether
the pressure now resting on the necks of the
poor is not intolerable, and their impulse mis-
guided.
That the existing pre- ssure Of want is cruelty
severe is beyond question. There has been no
approach toward fall in the price of pro-
visions, and the facts mentioned above show
how work has fallen off The poor would
starve now were it not for the soup kitchens.
Equally clear it is that the impulse of the
unemployed masses is in general radically
wrong We have already had occasion to no
tice the absurdity of several of their demands,
such as that calling upon Congress to prohibit
the export of -four. Others of more recent date
are equally at war with reason, sound policy,
and the law. The whole action of the unem-
ployed workmen is based on the grand fallacy
that it is the business Of the State to care for
them, to give them work when they want it,
and generally to relieve them of the RESPONSE
bility Of looking after themselves. This prin-
ciple, which is of French origin, has been
widely disseminated among the operative
classes by a set of political imoostors calling
themselves Fourierites and is still, in various
shapes and FORMS put forth in the columns of
the New York Tribune. Acting upon it, the
crowds who assemble in the Park and parade
Broadway, believe they have endured grievous
wrong at the hands of the State and So
cety, breathe vengeance, and demand present
relief, not as favor or charity, but as q
right. Assuredly more dangerous as well as
erroneous impulse never excited human beings.
To render any class or set of men responsible
for the existing state Of things is obviously to
ignore the first principles of political economy,
and to shut ones eyes to the process which has
been going on for the last six years on every
side; for the workmen to charge their suffer-
Dgs on this or that class or the State is to for
get that they bad their share in producing the
revulsion by accelerating and stimulating the
expansion, that they helped wages to fall, by
compelling them to rise formerly. Nor have
they shadow of right to shift their burtheu
from their shoulders to those Of others. If the
wOrkmen Of New York had not believed the
rant and trash circulated in the columns of the
Tribune, and relied more on themselves and
less on the State; if each man had looked to
himself for support and help and not at all to
the unions, associations and other vile 60 nbi-
nations which have been organized under the
advice of the Fourierites their distress would
have now been far less poignant and our danger
hardly perceptible.
Nor are these the only causes of peril that
surround us. While thousands of workmen are
unemployed and narrowly escape starvation,
Incredible to relate, a most buoyant state of
things exists in the higher financial circles.
What contrast Soup kitchens in Reade
street. and-if fnancers are to be believed
OVERLOOKING banks in Wall street Crowds pro-
menading broadway with woful banners call.
ing for work, and starving wives and chill
dren in novels on the East river-while
the magnificent bankers and merchants do gn
town carelessly put their hands in their pockets
and subscribe four millions to aid an embar-
raised railroad Only think-wthin a quarter
Of mile Mr.. Stewart feeds 1900 able bodied
starvelings, and twenty or thirty operators
agree to pay out in hard cash, without a pros
pect of return four millions of dollars-enough
Of money to relieve oil the distress The con-
trast beats fairy land hollow. Universal ruin
on one side-a plethora of money on the other
Starving workmen and overgorged bankers.
Fathers Of families, honest, steady men, vainly
begging for four dollars to buy bread; insolvent
railroads, fresh from one imposition on the pub
lie, and utterly lost in character and credit,
coming for ward and UettinU four y,;lI;ors ~ n