The Council Bluffs nonpareil. [volume] (Council Bluffs [Iowa]) 1857-1867, 1857-10-24

The failure 10 tho great maqufacturing
house Of LAwnEHcE, S7oxE CO., in Mas.
has come HE the victorious as
sault Of m invading army upon The two cit-
les Of Lawrence and Of louell. Those
towns have conferred the manufacturing in
terests of Massachusetts. They have liter
aly lived by the spindles. The mills Of Mer-
rimac, which have ground out gold for the
great capitalists BY whom they were built,
have ground out bread for thousands Of la
boring men and women. To check the rev.
olutions of their busy engines is to touch the
heart strings of hundreds of human beings,
and to paralyze whole communities. The
unseen and undiscribed consequences of
such failure, can only be likened to the
work Of a conaagration or bombardment.
Nay, conAagration or bombardment might
be less disastrous. For then there would
be the work of reconstruction to be COM
menced as soon as the worst of the calami-
ty was over. But upon the crash Of these
great mills follows silence Of stagnation,
and stagnation in such case means starva-
ton. Not metaphoical starvation; not such
starvation as MARIE ANToINErTE dreamed of
when she wondered why the want of bread
could not be made good with cake, but lit
eral staryation,--such starvation us the son
of MARIE ANToINETTE knew when he died by
inches in the clutches of the villain SAMSON.
The distress consequent upon the special
catastrophes of Massachusetts enterprises
will be felt with pecul ar bitterness in the
two cities we have named. For these cities
have subsisted upon one specific industry.
They have prospered upon spinning, just as
the people Of Ireland formerly fed them
selves upon the potatoe. And like the peo-
plo&of Ireland, they must now reap the con-
sequences of social economy so mista-
ken and so dangerous. These consequences
will doubtless be but temporary the one
case as they have been in the other; nor
should we anticipate for New England
population anything like the prostration
which in l847 made Ireland the Niobe ofna-
tions. But they will be very hard to bear,
and the near approach of winter makes the
contemplation Of them more somber.
Nor will Massachusetts be alone in her
sorrow. The shock has been felt in Rhode
Island with tremendous force; while in
Pennsylvania we hear OF the discharge and
ing operatives.
In this city, also, quite a large number
of publishing houses, foundries, and other
manufacturing concernes have greatly cur
tailed their business operations, and hun
dreds and thousands Of laborers lose the
employment by which they have hitherto
derived their support. .. .....t
These facts show precisely where those
frequent failures, the report Of which cre-
ates so much public excitement, are really
felt. 1t is not the great merchant or manu-
facturer, whose difficulty excites so much
public sympathy, that really feels the weight
of the catastrophe which has overtaken him.
1t is doubtless grievous thing to lose bu-
siness standing, social position, and the
name of being prosperous and wealthy
man. But many things yet remain to such
persons, in spite Of the reyerses. They will
still have the comforts of home, and very
few among them will experience any seri-
Gus deprivation Of the luxuries to which
they have been accustomed. Business fail
urcs seldom sadden the hearthstone Of the
business man. But when laboring men lose
their employment they lose everythir g.
They lose what has given them and their
families food and clothing. "Stopp ng"
to them is more than the suspension of pay
ment:-it is the supply of bread for their
wives and children, which stops. 1t is not
simply question Of reputation or of stand
ing, but Of life itself. Few of those among
them who have families have been able to
save from their earnings anything for such
contingencies, and 50 general and widespread
a financial whirlwind as now sweeps over
the country is for them a blasting simeon,
bearing death upon its wings. ...
The prospects Of the winter for the labor
ing classes are indeed gloomy enough. For
tunately the price of provisions is quite
certain to fall, and it will not cost SO much
to live rs it has done for two or three years
past. But where one has no money at all,
it matters little what the price Of the neces-
saries of life may be they are as really
beyond his reach when low us when high
And of the hundreds of thousands whom
the distress Of the times will throw out of
employment, the great majority have nothing
whatever to fall back upon, and must incv-
itably suffer beyond estimate during the
coming Winter.
1t is not easy to suggest any remedy for
such state of things, nor is it easy to say
that any can be found. But whenever a
large manufacturing establishment can 60 on
by reducing wages, it should be done. 1t is
far better that thousand men should con-
tinue work at even half pay, than that half
Of them should be sent adrift and deprived
of all resources. A general reduction in the
price Of wages would be preferable to the
dismissal of "a large portion of the laboring
classes from employment. This matter de-
serves the attention of the various Trades
Unions which exist in the country, and
which have good deal of influence over the
rate of wages. By a timely and voluntary
reduction Of the general scale, they may be
able to save the great mass of those they
represent from absolute privation and suf-
ferinp-N Y Tin,as