The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-12-23

Editorial Opinions of the Leading Journals
Upon Current TOpIcs-COmDiIed Every
DRV for the Evening Telegraph.
CITY AND COUNTRY LIFE.

boolS. Ood made them-ot course, Tor some
Eise and good purpose though we may not
be able to comprehend it for the next hun
Hred thousand years. They must be borne,
Ike any other inAiction, in the pious, irwin
bible trust that all is for the best
We anxiously, persistently urge all who
must sell their labor for a living to take it
where labor is scarce and in eager demand,
not attempt to sell it in glutted, stagnant
market. What is there remarkable in that?
We urge every one who must live by his
own exertions to work and save with fixed
resolve to be able to employ himself at the
earliest possible day. Then let him continue
to work for wages, if he can make more thus
than by working for himself Gas very many
CAM; but always ready to employ himself
whenever no one else wants his labor who
will pay him more than he can earn as his
own ''boss." What is there wrong in that?
We do not disparage working for wages.
Most of us began responsible life that way,
and could do no better. We honor the man
who earns dollar per day by digging good
ditch; we prefer that he should not be content
to live and die ditch-digger We want him
to dig out of that line of business in the
course of few years, and leave room in it
for immigrants coming over and boys coming
on. Let him use the highway, not choke it.
AS to going West, we think those who have
considerable means can do quite as well at
was, is still very cheap there; you can buy
suficiency of tillage, timber, and buildings
much cheaper there than at the West But
then school-houses more abound at the West,
and your neighbors there are more ready to
join you in providing the requisite roads and
bridges. For a man who must buy every
thing with his own labor, the West will do
while the South is not yet in order. If you
can chop, plough, plant, NOW, ETC., or can do
BOO l.
certainly find work and fair wages at the
West; these are by no means so sure at the
South. The West is still the poor mans
Eden.
-''But there are twenty thousand out of
work in Chicago alone"
We don't doubt it. Chicago is a Junior
New York. Omaha is a junior Chicago. The
multitude who want to live from hand to
mouth-that is, who want to eat as fast as
they earn-will crowd each other in Western
as we'll as Eastern cities. Men, says an an
cient poet in crossing oceans, change their
skies but not their hearts. 1t is no more diff
fcult to be poor creature in Chicago than in
New York
When we recommend going West, we mean
something quite different from migrating to
another city and hunting up a new ''boss."
We would have each emigrant resolve to
Secure a home of his own, though he be
-''But this involves privation and hard
ship"
Certainly. We are not familiar with any
safe road from poverty and dependence to
thrift and comfort which does not. 1t in
wolves hard work for fully six days per week,
plain food, coarse clothing, with any quantity
of patches, and very frugal habits If you
cannot stand this, you will hardly mend your
fortunes by going West.
-"What you propose can't be done with
out pile of money"
Yes, it CAM for it has been. Northern
Ohio was a dense, giant forest, whence the
12dians had Just receded, when it's pioneers
Dade their way to it from New England
practically farther off than Oregon now is.
Sery few of them had property, including
money, to the value of $780, many had little
Beyond the clothes they stood in. They had
30 pay more for their land than you need pay
now; and it was four months hard work for
diligent man to clear five acres of timber,
leaving the soil still covered with blackened
stumps and full of green, tenacious roots.
Many settlers gave out, and returned-needy,
Respondent fever -stricken-to their fathers
Eastern homes. The greater number fought
it out on that line-gladly worked as hirelings
for fifty cents per day, whenever they had a
chance; earning thus little meat and little
grain, which they often backed twenty miles
to a grist-mill, and (when ground) backed
home again. Many of them could not tell how
they lived; but they did live, reared log
cabin full of rugged children, dug out into
civilization, and died owners of good farms
with large, well-flled barns and comfortable
dwellings,, which their children and grand
children now enjoy.
''But you wouldn't have every one take to
farming?"
% no! We would have no one do that
who has anything to do tnat suits him better
We are not advising those who are fully en-
ployed and fairly paid at present; or, rather
our advice to them is, ''Stick to your work sc
long as it shall stick to YOU and thus save
the means for making flank movement
whenever work shall have left you. We are
counseling those who do need advice, no
those who don't.
-"But isn't farming poor business? Ism
the country oVercrowded as we'll as thu
cities?"
My dear sir, if you are inefficient you will
iot get far ahead, no matter which road yoy
lay travel. But what do you really mean by
'arming being overdone? ? Suppose you were
his day a sqautter on quarter-section (1Gt
,cres) of the national domain, which is to be
,ome yours when you shall have lived on i
five years and paid sixteen dollars as Ian
Office fees how are you to be harmed by wha
are called hard times? Is produce cheap
You will have to buy more than you sell 70
the next three years: how are low prices t.
hurt you? Is business dull Your business
for the present, is to get part of your Ian
broken up and seeded. Are many out of EN-
ployment? Your homestead proffers you wor
enough-amply enough-for every day of tn
next twenty years You will, for quite
while he moor and out of money Whethe