The union Democrat., 1870-07-02

The following article has been handed us
by.a confirmed lunatic. We give It place
not as an expression either Of our opinion or
that of the venerable and bald-headed UNION
DsxocRAr, but as literary curiosity.
A Strange People.
Once upon . time, there was country peo-
plei By O race, most of whom had brains
without knowing how to use them. 1t was .
country, wonderful in the productiveness Of
It's soil, the beauty of It's climate and the yield
Of it's minerals. One had but to touch the
earth with hoe and little water and there
sprang up oil of fruit and flower and vegeta-
bic that man could desire. There was every
variety of climate. If 10 the valleys the sum-
mer Sun shonc too warm, there were close by
on the mountains, shady pine groves, ice-wa-
ter, snow-banks and any climate one could
wish. from the bracing breeze of the North
ern Fall to the South Sea Zephyr. Every
thing said to man Enjoy. Enjoy all in
moderation. Don't Hurry. Give yourself
repose and time to realize what you are and
what fine thing life is if you only choose to
make it so."
In this country came some 1900 labor
saving machines. They could be set at al
most any kind Of work aud were very easy to
manage after ene understood theirus They
were sent to tighten the labors of superior
race or rather of a race who would have been
superior, had they not persisted in imagining
it to be an absolute necessity for them prema-
turely to fag out their souls and bodies by
eight, ten and twelve hours work in shovel
ling ssnd, digging bitches, and wearying
themselves to death in the hot valleys under q
burning Sun.
Blu. the race having brains, yet not know
ing how to make those brains gain them food
aud clothes made a terrible out-cry against
the machines and at length pitched them neck
and crop over the sea to the land of their
manufacture. Then they went on digging
and sweating and toiling, and making life a
mere scramble for food and clothes and half
cursing their Maker for bringing them into
calculating rich men who had found out how
to use their brains and who did use them
in accommodating to themselves full one
half the result of the simple peoples la
Dor laughed in their sleeves as they rolled
along in fine linen enjoying turkey, oysters
and champagne three times day if they
liked.
These simple people are working yet. If
one among them develops little more intel
lect than the rest, he sets it to work to gain
all he can from his fellows. So they
go from age to age toiling an hundred
times harder than the birds, yet being no
better off as to clothing or food and not
enjoying themselves near as much. You can
not persuade them that it is not q necessity
that they should so struggle through life.
They are slaves. Indeed many of them be-
ing brought up to no other style of life like
their slavery. They are unhappy out of it
since the powers and capacities within them
for other pleasures lie dormant. They are
slaves to their own prejudices, to custom, to
Capital and to Capitalists. The latter have
a web woven around them, the work of gen.
erations, which blinds their eyes to what
they Nigh: be. He who tells them their real
condition is often deemed disturber, or IN
impractical visionary. Each helps to rivet
his own chain. Those chains will yet last a
long time, but must gradually rust of in a
few more generations.