Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1885-07-02
Employers and Employees.

The past six months have shown bat
little change or encouragement to the
laboring class of this country. AL
though the bottom seems to have been
reached in regard to many industries,
and scores of individual firms are fail
ing monthly, the cry is,stiil they come!
and each days history is but melan-
choly repetition of the last. Daily the
Argus-eyed press points moral with
some special case wherein production
is shown to have reached lower cost
and brought less return than ever
before. Or where, were it not that
food Is also lessened in price, wages
have been reduced to the starvation
point.
Within the past year all industries
have suffered. Being a nation zone
and indivisibl 1.-THE wave of adversely
striking upon one or the other of our
shores, casts its spray over the whole
land; the difference being that in some
cases slight shower only is experience
ed, while i'm others a flood overwhelms
and brushes out every vestige of form
er prosperity.
Farming, manufacturing, railroading,
shipping-all are under cloud which
for discouraging features seems not i'm
the memory of man to have had pre-
cedent. No locality nor class nor
calling has escaped the whitening blight
of that panic hard times, over-produc-
ton, or whatever other name may be
given to the revulsion to prosperity
which at regular intervals occurs to as
civilized people. L
Whether it be true or untrue that q
change in our government imperils the
industries dependent on a protective
policy, it is certainly true that many
manufacturers believe it sufficiently to
make them timid in enlargiDg or push
ing, to their full capacity plants which
have survived the last years waiting
for the good time coming, not to speak
of the erection of new.
But little business is being done by
the iron and steel mills, the Eastern
manufactures, or by the mercantile
community. And where anything has
been done it has been either without
profit or at an actual loss. Crop prospects
for the year have been steadily grow
ing worse and worse for the last three
months, and now it is certain there
will be shortage of some millions of
bushels of corn and wheat. Railroad
earnings when compared with last year
show marked decrease. With these
statements, which are daily verified to
the dissa tisfaction of those most inter-
ested, is it not plain that we are not
enjoying an era of unexampled pros
perity?
Possibly we are not worse off than
some of our neighbors: but the situa-
tton is grave one, and merits all the
care we are able to give it.
Government being a sort of neces-
sary evil, an unavoidable curse, as it
were, could not do better than in some
way make amends for its capricious
acts: and in what better way could it
do this than by making careful study,
and utilizing its conclusions, i'm regard
70 improving the conditions of it's
iaboring class of citizens. But large
bodies are hard to move: and the pres
ent generation would die while watt
ing, as other generations have died be-
fore them, should We fail to take a
hand ourselves.
We think ours the best government
there is-on the whole, it must be So
but some nations we short while ago
thought but half civilized are far in adj
vance of us in the equitable or happy
distribution of wealth and labor.
In Japan a pauper is as great rarity
as millionaire; and it is misfortune
to US that the Japs and Chinese have
not caught the missionary spirit from
America, and sent US over a few of
their apostles of thrift and economy.
1t is needless to particularize orquote |
statistics. The intelligent reader will 5