The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1866-09-21
COLUMBIA.
Friday Morning, September 81, 1866.
Social Changes.

ing from the losses and deprivations
where it has spent its fury and where
its ravages were most destructive.
This has been strikingly illustrated in
the South during the past eighteen
months. Men who have been, in
times past, large landed proprietors,
with their overseers and hundreds of
laborers; men also, who had held high
positions in society before the war,
may now be seen honestly and honor
ably accepting the loss of their pro-
perty and engaging in laborious in
dustry-the former holding their
own ploughs, and the latter sedu-
lousy engaged in callings, which, in
former times, would probably have
been nearly considered menial, or, at
least, below their stations in life.
But this honorable acceptance of
an altered condition is not confined
to the male portion of the popula-
ton. Southern women, upon whom
it might be supposed these reverses
of fortune would have fallen most
heavily, have been among the fore
most in accepting the new order of
things, and have amply refuted, by
their conduct, the oft-repeated SLAM
ders of the enemies of their section,
that they were inaolent and extrava-
CANT. 1t is not only in the instances
of the noble wives of Generals Folk,
of Tennessee, and Ransom, of North
Carolina, that we find these splendid
illustrations of true womanhood under
adversely; they may be seen in other
and humber walks of life, where al
honestly gained competency once af-
forded at least life of comfort; there
may be seen diligent fingers, plying
the needle, to aid in support of fami-
lies. All such instances reflect the
highest credit upon a people over
whelmed and bowed down under the
crushing calamities of war.
But we regret to say that there are
exceptions to this general rule. The
New Orleans Delta, in citing some of
the more prominent men and women
who have gone to work with will
if not wholly able to retrieve their
broken fortunes, at least to maintain
themselves and families-says and,
unfortunately, too truly:
''Still there are many-we wish the
number were less-who, from lack of
talent, OF energy, show that the
wealth that has passed from their
families has passed never to return
We think we could point to more
than one young man of superior edu-
cation, and perhaps of superior bust
ness qualifications, who yet live along
nobody knows how, and obtain their
supplies nobody knows where; who
have made up their mind to be any
thing, do anything, rather than hard
labor, and who are much more fami-
liar with bar-rooms and the rendeZ-
vous of the idle than with places OF
business"
This is too true. Such idlers are
not willing to labor at callings which
they regard degrading is, at
hard, downright toll; and unless there
is reformation wrought amongst
this class. OF until they die out OF
sink from the knowledge of their
former friends by their Incidence and
vice, they will feel that they are JUS
tilted in resorting to any shifts to
escape this fancied degradation.
But the instincts of patriotism, as
we'll as the considerations of indivi
nual self-respect. should effect {
wholesome change in this respect
Young men who tonight gallantly OF
many battlefield, in defence O.
the rights, as they conceived them
of their section, should learn that, OF
the grounding of their weapons o
warfare, they were transferred to an
other battlefield, in which their con
duct as much effects the welfare ant
interests of that section as it did amit
the clash of arms Young women who
patriotically disposed during the war