The Louisiana Democrat., 1879-12-31
THE NEW YEAR.

abundant harvests with which the
farmers have been rewarded, and the
remunerative prices obtained for
their products, have been instrumen-
tai in reyiying all branches of trade.
Throughout the North factories
which had been idle for months have
resumed operations, and mechanics
and lahorers find work plenty, and
wages better than they have been in
many years. Money is everywhere
plentiful, and tue necessaries Of life
are as cheap as in the best times we
experienced before the war.
That the present is but the begin
ming of an era of prosperity, unpre
cedented in the history Of this coun-
try, we have every reason to believe.
The spirit Of speculation which enter
ed every field open to it, in the years
Immediately following the war, did
more to demoralize our people than
the direct result of the overthrow Of
slavery. The insane expectations of
realizing fortunes in every enterprise
in which men engaged has nowhere
had parallel, save among those who
aocked to the gold fields of Califor
MIA. The fabulous price of cotton
! had attracted hither thousands who,
| by whatever means, had accumulated
capital during the war. The disas-
trous failure of crops, two years in
succession, and the steady decline
in the price of cotton, found the
South, at the end of that period, al
most wholly impoverished. The
bankrupt carpet-bag cotton planter
next turned his attention to politics,
and every legitimate avenue to pros
perity was blocked by the unscrupu-
lous and mercenary horde who made
every means subservient to the end
they have in view, money getting,
by whatever means it could be &C.
complished.
! Not the least among the evils un.
der which our industries have Ian
guished is the system of credit which
has oppressed and fettered them.-
But, in spite of all these restrictions,
the reaction has come, and under the
benign influences of mild and hon
est government, we believe that, in
the near future, the South will attain
q degree of prosperity of which she
had never dreamed.
i Treading upon the threshold of the
New Year, we pause to drop tear
at the bier of the old, for its demise
like the separation from an old friend
brings with it many saddening re-
flections. However kindly time may
deal with US, it is, albeit, certain that
each successive year adds one more
notch to the reckoning, which is TO
Ifll out the final number. The wheels
of Time have deepened the obnox-
ious s'crows" feet, and the natural
wear and tear incident to all condi-
tions, admonish us that none of us
are exempt from the inruads which
are so stealthily being made upon
our "good looks" and, that it is a
mere question of time, when the
space which interyenes between nose
and chin will be so narrowed, that
we may celebrate the happy reconcil-
iation between those opposing mem
bers.
The difficulty we experience in
reading our fayorite newspaper, indu-
ces Us to believe that the type is not
so large as it used to be, and that
thessink is of an inferior quality, for
we are quite sure that, only little
while ago, we did not have to sit in
so strong light as we do now, to be
able to read at all.
1t is, perhaps, melancholy to re-
fleet that, in this Volume of Life, we
are not permitted to "turn back' and
scan anew its pages, as We were once
wont to do in the great bopnd vol
ume Of the penny" Magazine.
| Standing, as it were, at the infn-
itesimally small point of time which
separates past and future, there are
presented two scenes; in the one, we
sec only familiar faces, and in that
landscape, in the back ground, we
could point out the fields, the hills,
and the valleys where we've sported,
the streams, in which, during oul
boyish days, we bathed, and the
fountains at which we drank. A sin
gle withered flower, from that old
garden, is worth more TO us than the
rarest bouquet from a conservatory,