The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-08-14
TIE SUBSTANTIAL AND THE INDUSTRIOUS
CLASSES

A remarkable fact connected with Demo-
cratic organizations and displays in this city
is the eager interest and the active part which
are taken in them by men of substance men
of business and laboring men. In ordinary
times these classes were too much disposed
TO treat with indifference the political ques-
tons and contests Of the day. There pre-
vailed extensively among them almost a NOR
bid aversion to political excitements, demon
STATIONS and activities of almost every sort
They have learned by bitter experience that
IN free country, no citizen, however hum
Die his ayoeation and scant his possessions, or
however prosperous and strong he may seem
In respect to business and property, can afford
to act upon the assumption that politics do
not come home to his vital interests, and that
! they devolve upon him no corresponding
duty. Throughout the country the honest
masses OF both the rich and poor are finding
out that continuance of Radical policy will
bring them to utter and hopeless impoyerish-
ment and misery, and plunge the country
into universal and irretrievable ruin. But
1t is the laboring men especially who feel the
cramPing and pinching effects of Radical mis-
rule. They feel its deadly workings every
where and in all their RELATIONSHIP their
pockets in their pantries, in their parlors and
their kitchens, in their tolls and their pleas
ures, at home or abroad, waking or sleeping,
and whether they seek honest labor or whole
some recreation.
That the colored steamboat hands in this city
should organize in support of Seymour and
Blair, is the plain dictate of common sense
prohting by the sharp lesson of experience.
The steamboat business, to which these men
look for employment, depends mainly upon
the demand for Western produce in Louisi-
ana and neighbonng States, and this demand
depends upon the cultivation of few South
ern staples, cotton and sugar especially, to
the exclusion in great measure of the staple |
products of Western agriculture. Now,
under Radical policy, Southern agriculturists |
have been so impoverished and distressed |
that they have been forced, from sheer want |
OF the necessaries of life, to devote their
principal attention to producing at home
everything which it was once the custom to
receive from the West in exchange for cotton
and sugar or their proceeds. The result is.
perhaps, more injurious to agricultural inter
ests in the West than to agricultural interests
In the South. But be this as it may, there
can be no question that the continued opera
ton of Radical policy upon agricultural
industry in both sections would be death to
ihe bulk of the steamboat business between
New orleans and St Louis, Louisville and
Cincinnati. 1t would be easy to show that
he general business of the city, and conse-
Iuently the general demand for labor in the
ity, must fall off in proportion, and that the
oreign commerce of the country, which. ,
'hen prosperous, offers multiplying avenues
or profitable labor, must suffer correspond.
ng diminution. Hence, it is the clear duty {
nd interest of every honest laborer in the {
ountry to do his utmost to overthrow Rsdi. |
al power by the election of the Democratic
cket .