New national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1870-1874, 1872-07-18

Welcome. dear heart from the shadowy land
Shut the door softly and kiss her dear hand.
A PaInfal C0nirast-Wake Up.
Boys.
To a Southerner visiting the populous and
stirrinp centres of trade in the North, one
SIGHT strikingly contrasts with some things
he is accustomed to see at home. We aliude
to the active employment of boys and young
men in New York and other large cities.
The stranger meets with hundreds OF youths,
varying in age from fourteen to twenty, VINO
are engaged in the thousand different branch
es of manufacture, traffic, and business.
These bows move along the leading thorough
fares with an energy and directness which
give the most hopeful promise OF future sue
cess, With brows knit, lips compressed, and
ewes that look right onward, they urge their
determined course amid the eager thousands
that throng the streets. Here one bears an
order book or shipping list; another carries
bank deposit book; one has handful OF cir
culars for distribution; one an armful OF mat
ter lust received from the post-Ofiice third
a bundle of dispatches that have flashed over
the wires from the most distant portions OF
the world. Here parcel-boyi is delivering
purchases to distant purchasers; a brawny,
bare-amed lad pushing along a hand-cart
loaded with wares, threading his way among
hundreds of bustling vehicles that block up
the narrow street. A noble disciple OF Faust
tolls along under the weight Of huge form
Of type. which he is carrying to the neighbor-
ing press-room, while from the opposite
quarter his ink-bespattered companions come
bringing huge bundles of pamphlets or news
papers already printed and ready for the
hands of the mailing clerks and post-bags.
Here is q boy bent double, putting along with
q pyramid of paper boxes towering above his
head. At the corner we run against the
carpenter's apprentice with ladder upon
his shoulder and complement of tools
in his swarthy hands. There goes the bra
zier's boy with smoking furnace, and here
the tinman's boy with a staggering load OF
brightly polished pipes, ready for use. BY
the curbstone sits the street merchant, a
beardless lad, with glittering store of gaudy
trinkets, industriously assailing- the-eye and
ear of every passer-by. Here is your soda
water vender, a glib-tongued youngster who
seduces the thirsty wayfarer into a three cent
investment for questionable syrups of dubi-
Gus flavor. Within doors the embryo mer-
chant thrives and expands in every stage OF
struggling adolescence. Scores of cash boys
dart in and out between counters filled with
tempting goods. Young men stand ready
and alert to attend the customers slightest
wish. The news dealers distributing rooms
are alive with wriggling mass of noisy and
eager boys. The market stalls resound with
boyish cries of Here's your prime beef.'
In the immense storerooms of wholesale
houses, as well as the narrow quarters of the
thriving ragman, boys and young men are
installed as active and effective workers. In
machine shops and foundries they are found
showing the plane, or welding the axe and
swinging the sledge-hammer, fitting them
selves for the strenuous tolls of the busy
work-day world. You see but little loafing
around the street corners. The traditional
whistler, with his everlasting jack-knife, is
an extinct genius. Everywhere, on the con-
tzary, you find energy, activity, and exer-
ton. - s,a,ss9
= In the South, we are glad to know, hun
dreds Of boys and young men in the country
districts have aroused themselves of late
years to the necessities of the situation. An
increasing number have gone into the fields,
laying aside traditional pride and constitu-
d0nal indifferences; and with honest and
faithful toll have these worthy men vindicated
their claims to noble manhood. ALI honor
to these hardy pioneers who thus point out
the royal road 60 independence and pros
perity. ~. 'sa- a
But enter our Southern towns. The con-
trast is pitiful. Scores Of young men of eligi-
bic age and ample PHYSIQUE to make their
marx in the work of honest toll, are seen
idling and lounging about the streets. A few
are found measuring dry-goods across the
counters of merchants, who, when they sell
an average of ten dollars day, mark it
down as noble era in the years calendar.
Content to drivel away existence upon level
of Intellectual stagnation and physical tor
pof, they hunt down every store-keeper who
has five hundred dollars invested in ten-pen-
ny nails, shoe thread, coffee mills, and BAN
danna handkerchiefs, to besiege him for the
exalted position of chief clerk in his estab-
lshment. 1{s' ss
Still lower, they grasp at the contemplate
Office Of drink-mixer and billiard-marker in
some rum-sodden village bar-room, while
Bardolphian noses glow with full-grown
brandy blossoms over the maudlin insanity
Of stupid game. You may see the youth Of
the town, with his hat set jauntily upon his
head, smoulderng cigar stump thrust be-
tween his teeth, his hands stuck half elbow
deep in his trousers, summing himself upon q
knife-scarred goods box, the admired BObadil
of lazy group of idle compeers. Meanwhile
his beggared father, poor old man, bends his
aged back over the garden hoe, OF the barn
yard shovel, or holds with sweat-bedewed
brow and palsied hands the pillow handles,
that should he grasped by his recreant son.
And just out of the town limits lies ten thou
sand acres of fertile land, all fallOw, ard run
ming to waste into a second wilderness for
want of honest work. The cry is, "Oh, the
lazy niggerW The groaning threnody of
leisure cankered MawwOrlns IL, ssThe country
is ruined because the niger won't work. I"
Out upon your thriftless tribe!. You are the
real bane and cause of your impoverished
country. Your paunches must be lined
your backs must be clothed. You are
as hearty at meals as an English navy,
and as lazy afterwards as an anaconda that
has swallowed five.year-old babOOn Quit
your lounging and your box-whittling, and
your vulgar corner anecdotes, and your Shiny
paddles of disgusting expectoration. Quit
your lazy pretence OF reading the law that
you viii never understand and the medicine
that viii turn you out licensed quack. Get
out Of your silken stove-pipe beaver that has
not been paid for, and your sixteen dollar
boots that make the ill-paid shoemaker groan
with anguish when he lifts up his ewes and
sees you . great wayoff. F1yto the deserted
fields that implore your aid. Rebuild the
shattered fence; renoyate the ill-used soil
till the willing earth. So shall your barns be
filed with plenty, as the Scripture beauti-
fully hath it. Go to the workshop and learn
an honest trade. Let your faces be black
ened by SCOT and your hands be hardened by
<ooIs II will do you O6od -Haa3~~.o - e-o 70