Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1878-02-21
From the New York Tribune
The Army of tic Unc,nuloycd


One of the most terribly significant
incidents connected with tho loss of tho
Metropolis, last week, was the fact that,
one hour after the news that tho ship had
gonc down arrived in Philadelphia, with
all tho exaggerated horrors of first Dis
patch, the Office of the Mcssrs. Collins was
besieged with hundreds of hunger bitten,
decent men, begging for the places of
drowned luborcrs. In this city there have
been over thousand applicants at tho
agency for New South Wales, to be sent out
as laborers and mechanics Oh tho clipper
ship starting this month for Sydney.
These people represent but a fraction of
the great mass of unemployed poor in tho
cities, men who arc not paupcrs from incli-
nation any more than the most respectable
reader of the Tribune; honest, industrious,
frugal, in the majority of cases heads of
families, who are out of work, and arc
ready to 60 to the other side of the globe,
or to tho forests of Brazil, to get work to
keep their wives and children from starry
ing. 1t is useless to ignore this miserable,
gaunt fact, which starcs us in the face at
every corner 1t is not to be dispellcd any
longer by soup houses on the one hand or
organized precautions against tramps on tho
other. Wo have had enough discussion on
the relative advantages Of occasional and
organized charity. 1t is not charity that
is wanted; it is work. and the only work
which oifrs pow az a relief to the suffering
in the cities is farming How the unem-
ployed mechanics and laborers have gotten
through this winter, God only knows-they
have been greatly helped by tho mild
weather But in thrco weeks spring will
open, and what is then to be done? Tho
revival Of business will be too slight to
afford them any tangible help. Are they
all to sink down permanently into tramps
md paupcrs? Or, in case of revival of
the labor troubles Of last July, arc VIC to keep
them rs q reserve corps, ready, as then, to
join, with terrible effect, the side of disor-
der, riot and rapinc?
Last September the Tribune called at
tcntion to the unemployed waste lands of
the upper Southern States as being cheap,
easy of access and hcalthful. Our sugges-.
.ione, as we have learned, have been followed
in several instances in tho establishment Of
colonies in these districts. We learn, too,
that certain capitalists in Pittsburg propose
to open up the wild region of the Cheat in
West Virginia, aud aid poor colonists in
problem in tho only way it can be solved.
There are idle men and women starving by
the thousands in New York and Philadel.
phia. while wit in twenty four hours dis.
tancc are hundreds ." thousands of acres Of
unbrokcn forest in Virginia and North
Carolina, tenantcd only by the bear tho
wolf and tho deer, with rich soil, and
climate above all malarious Influences, aud
vast resources of timber, coal and iron. If
these men will 90 to Brazil and Australia
at the risk of such pcrls as those which
shocked the country last week, they will go
to the next State if the way is made clear
to them. Is it cheaper to help them, as tho
Pittsburgcrs arc doing, or to feed them at
home, either as paupcrs or prisoners? If
Intelligent mechanics would co operate, they
would obtain the respect and aid of capital.
lists. The undertaking would pay both in
the end. II anything of the kind is 10 bo
done, February is tho time 10 orgaoi@c. A
man cannot begin farming in the middle Of
summer. 1t is not easy work, but it is
work, and the chance for life. We confess
We see very little chance elsewhere.