Whig and tribune. [volume] (Jackson, Tenn.) 1870-1877, 1874-10-24

"A
lingering warmth of summer yet
enables the jewellers in this latitude,
to forget that the sun has already
travelled far on his backward joun-
ney to Capricorn, the New York
press is wrestling with the problem
which the winter ever presents to
the people of the great cities of the
cast. The Ledger says:
at is going to be q hard winter,
a season of unusual suffering for the
poor. We cannot recall a time
when 80 many people were out of
employ. With Increase of idleness
there Is increase OF crime. People
will do we'll to guard their houses
with extraordinary precautions.
Bobberies and theft will be the or
der of the day-prisons and work
houses twill be filled, while there
will be unusual numbers of evil
doors outside. PTecaution against
depredators will be more effective
than expenditures in pursuit. Look
our for them (the theives)."
This is the Indian summer sigh
of one of the great New York jour
nails, and the strain will be sadder
yet before the winter is over and
the prisons are filed with "those
out of employ" The Ledger tells
how to guard against these unfortu-
mates when they attempt to break
through and steal, but it has not
one word to say as to how this con-
dition of things was brought about,
and suggests no plan by which the
phantoms that glide about the
touches OF !thc wealthy residents of
the metropolis, may at last be per-
manently dispelled. Why is it that
business is stagnant, and commerce
is suspended in the cast? Why are
the coal-miners striking for better
wages, and why are the mills and
factories and forgcs silent? Why
are working men idle and women
starving, in the chosen home of the
bankers and manufacturers of the
couatry? What has become OF the
charm and power of the Radical
tariff? Where is the prosperity of
the land, of which administration
orators and editors have talked so
much? One of the saddest of HUI
man spectacles is to see strong men
with skillful hands, vainly asking
for the privilege of honestly win
ming their bread, and yet hundreds
of thousands of such will have to
live at the metropolitan soup-houses
this winter, or else turn robbers
and brigands. AS to what dangers
lie in wait for their wives and
daughters VIC have not tie heart to
ask. Labor, the source of all real
values, land, the products of the
land, houses, the souls of men and
of women, all have been cheapened
in order to add to the value of the
almighty dollar, but the Ledger says
nothing of this. 1t has abused the
Democratic party without stint, but
that party in its day of power, new
or permitted the winter to become
the CHASTITY horror that it is now.
The mechanic of the eastern city, /
who could perform difficult labor,
in that day never dreamed of such
thing as that the well to do people |
about him would ever be warned
against his depredations aud thefts,
but this has como to pass.
The explanations OF this thing /
is easy, but our neighbors I
are slow 10 admit their mis-. |
takes. The pride of opinion has
made them bear with greater
outrages at the hands of the Rad
ical party, than were ever perpetra-
ted on any people claiming to be
free and enlightened. When the |
war ended the first thing done was
to lay q tax on the Iplow OF the
South, which of all things else should
have been made preferred debtor.
First we have a tax of three cents a
pound on the cotton grown in o
land struggling to relieve itself from
the losses of long war. Then the
plows of the great West are Grip
pied by tho tariff, and in little
while the capital of the country
was so organized through the ma
chinery OF banks, and favoring stat
utes, that labor which ought to have
been treated as its ally and equal,
was made its slave. This was bad
enough, but in addition, the legls-
lation of the country was directed |
against the South, seemingly with |
the sole object of promoting strife |
and poverty instead of prosperity |
and peace. A manufacturing peo-
pie like those of New England and |
the Eastern States, ought to have
known that their prosperity de-
pended on the prosperity of their
non-manufacturing neighbors, but
they either did not know it, or else
did not care to act upon the knowl-
edge. Every acre of land in the
Mississippi valley that was left I'M
cultivated, stopped a certain num-
Der of spindles. When great rail-
roads running from the Ohio to the
Gulf were made to run their trains
through wildernesses, only to stop
in the decaying cities of the South,
ofcourse men would be thrown out
of employment at Whistler in Ala
bama, at McComb city in Louisiana,
at Baldwin and Water Valley in
Mississippi, at Jackson, Tennessee,
and at Cairo and Columbus. But
this would not be all. After awhile
the mechanics in the car shops and
locomotive works OF Cincinnati,
Philadelphia and New York, would
be as idle as the discharged machin-
lists of Whistler or Water Valley.
The rich South having grown poor,
would first have no use Tor the
Eastern piano-maker, the glider,
the carriage-maker, the worker in
jewelry aud precious stones, and
these industries would stagnate.
Then the change would touch the
labor in the more useful trades. '
and at last it would extend to the
worker in brass and iron, to the en- :
gine builder and the moulder of pots
and skillets. The South and West
have been robbed to enrich the
moncy-changer of the East. Every
thing has been dwarfed and dwin-
died for his sake, and men groan
and toll and suffer and cannot fell
what it is that is battling them whom