The New York herald., 1875-03-25

be goaded TO madness by assaults Of which
that law takes no notice. There was no more
terrible death punishment than that by which
man was fastened in hollow tree, with his
feet and hands and head left out and anointed
with honey, that the insects might be attracted,
and that they might infict the infnitesimal
but infinite wounds that were to kill.
Before the small darts of . malignant
local chronicler every family is exposed
to an equal torture. In the case before us
there was perhaps more than common irrita-
bility-a susceptibility to nervous impressions
on the part of the wife that was inherited, but
that held over the family the possible doom Of
insanity us direct or necessary consequence
OF the continuation of such assaults-and this
circumstance makes the shot of the husband
almost as Legitimate rs if it were fired in the
night for the protection Of the wife from tho
upraised hand of the assassin.
Although this occurred in a small comnnu-
nifty where virulence of this sort is more effec-
tive because every one is known, the lesson is
equally opposite for great cities, where the
evil is only apparently-not really--less. Our
journalism is too personal and has bad ten
dency to grow worse and worse in that drec-
ton, and if the moral tone of public opinion
is not sufficient to correct this tendency the
press itself must seek protection from it's own
bad elements in more stringent libel laws.
The Restora ton OF the Balance OF
Labor-Work for tho Unemployed.
One of the gravest responsibilities of tho
journalist in times of industrial depression
is to call public attention to the real issues
involved and to indicate the true path of re-
lief. The great problem of labor and its read
justment in this country underlies the whole
question Of public prosperity, and it is high
time that the public mind should be diverted
from the delusive hopes of legislative relief to
the substantial reform in the application of
labor. 1t is not long since an eminent pro-
fessor of Harvard declared that ''to restore
the deranged balance of society its old honor
must be rendered back to labor"--a senti-
ment which should be stercotyped in illumi-
mated letters and displayed throughout every
land. There can be no question among
thinking men that the commercial condition
of the country to-day is ultimately to be re-
ferred to an unhealthy deficiency of produc-
tive industry. It has been said that modern
mechanical invention has superseded hand
labor and made it secondary to automatic
machinery. 1t is very true that all the
strong men in the world could not
do the work accomplished by steam
and water power in the single island
Of Great Britain, and the substitution Of ma
chinery for human hands is rapidly progress
ing. The time may come when the boosted
Briarean steam engine may be supplanted by
inventions of tentold or hundredfold indus
trial power. But to conclude from such facts
that manual labor is thus to be thrown into
the shade is one Of the most ruinous and fall
lacious errors of the age, and one which we
sorely need to be disabused of.
One of the causes of the dishonor now
cast on manual, and especially agricultural,
labor is traceable to the education of our
young. The academician is trained for the
college or the university, and the collegian is
trained with aspirations for the learned pro-
fessions, the bar, the pulpit, politics, medi-
cine or science. They feel that il would be
waste of talent and a dissertation of genius to
step from the university hall to the plough,
the loom or the anvil. Hence the crowded
professions, in which hundreds are reduced to
the starvation point and from which hundreds
are annually forced to seek for bread by re-
course to new and adventurous occupations
AS it has been SO forcibly said, the same re-
coiling from hand labor leads thousands to
rush into unremunerative and precarious
clerkships and paltry commercial enterprises
for which there is no demand, while the soil
Of the earth is left half TILED and its mines un-
opened.
In conjunction with these false allurements
from the slow but sure paths of agricultural
and mining industry the civilization of the
century has added another disturbance Of
labor The fascinations of the large cities,
their exciteIpents and their luxures have
attracted thither thousands who are useless
and dangerous because idle elements of So
cfety. One Of our city contemporaries has
strikingly remarked that there were many
men who would not leave New York for
scarcely any pecunisry inducement, and null
titudes who preferred scanty wages here to a
suficiency elsewhere 1t is safe to say that il
one-half of the young and able-bodied men
now engaged IN non-productive commercial
ventures and who overcrowd the mercantile
and professional vocations should turn their
toll and talent to tillage and mining the
whole aspect Of affairs in the country would
be speedily changed for the better. In time
of war tho hardy and the young go to the
front, end so in national situation like the
present the same classes must do the actual
battle with the rough forces of nature, leaving
TO the starving women and poor industrious
girls the minor and lighter crafts, which are
b.