, 1873-12-04

LABOR AND CAPITAL. The condition
CT the laboling classes at the East is de-
pIorable to the last degree. The sus>
pension Of the Spragne Company in
Rhode Island, it is estimated, will throw
ten thousand laborers cut of employ
ment. The New York papers estimate
the number who viii be thrown out of
employment in that city by the first of
December at fifty thousand. The NAM
ber out of employment in Philadelphia
at the present time is estimated at forty
thousand. Ths-pame condition of af-
fairs extends to all the manufacturing
Interests of the Eastern and Western
States. involving hundl eds of thousands
uf laborers deprived Of the means of
eel eining their daily bread, and millions
of helpless dependents. The misery,
destitution and crime which will inevi-
tably follow, is fearful to contemplate.
The cause of this terrible misery and
chine is logically traceable by any one
at all cenversaut with public affairs who
has the capacity to reason from cause to
effect. Tha Immediate cause, all attri-
butte, very properly. to financial embar-
barrassments the stringency of the
money; that in turn to over trading and
reckless specnlations. But the primary
of all this is bad government, which
favors capital and incites speculation.
Nearly all the manufacturing establish
ments which have thrown their men out
OF employment because they could not
meet their own money obligations. were
the recipients of special privileges and
favors from the Government. Under
he sophis1lcal pretsxt of protecting
home industry all the consumers and
all the other interests of the country
were put under contribution to them
they accumulated wealth rapidly, sstab-
llshcd monopclles, launched into wild
"HNSuA"NASAA' ABOh tbCAl lJ1uS Cd Ditdl,
extended their credit amorg the money
gamblers, and when the crises came,
they could not pay their gambling
debts, and their laborers, for whose
be.efit the protective tariff was ostensi,
bly, established, are thrown out of en-
pioyment, to starve, beg or steal. The
protective tariff put into the Golfers of
the Spragus family millions of dollsrs,
every cent of which was tax upon the
labor Of the country, and has resulted
in reducing to beggary ten thousand la
borers and their families, who, had Ia
boz and capital been left to open and
free competition would have found other
employment not subject to the chances
Of stock gambling. The protective tar
iff gave to Oaks Anes the large wealth
which enabled him to control the stock
Of the Union Pacific Railroad and found
that monstrous corruption, the Credit
Mobilier, of Infamous notorierv. Fif
cen millions of the peoples hard earned
dollars were paid to Jay Cooke for coln-
missions on Government jobs, and tht
with the savings of thousands of poos
families have been sunk in le u 6 stronI
of speculation incited by Government,
subsidies. Yhe whole tendency of the
system of special Legislation, special
privileges, grants and subsidies to capi-
tai and monopolies, which has been The
practice of the General Government for
some time past. is TO centralize wealth
and power in the hands of tie few, ana
reduce the mass Of the people to the
condition Of serts or beggars..
1t is sef evident proposition that
where the aggregate income of tn, peo
PIE would only afford reasonable conf