The Press., 1885-02-26
Stafford correspondents of the New York Evening
 Post, Feb. sd, 7s36s, s8 N x FRUITS OF RH3TECEI01Ng

Post, Feb. 3d, 1s363 Fl
 FRUITS OF RHx1TECTK0Ns& The Industrial Crisis in New England-s Starving op-
 eratives-squalor and Misery in Factory Villages
 How the Tariff has Killed Out American Labor.
 Notwithstanding the mild and open win. ter, the general stagnation of business ill the large manufacturing centers of New England has had its necessary effect upon the operatives, and I by no means over state the case or exaggerate its conse- quences when I say that disease and starva- tion have already begun their ravages in many of the apparently prosperous villages that dot the margins of streams from the confines of Maine to the Hudson. Either from lack of enterprise or from indisposi- tion to mention an unfavorable condition of home affairs, but little attention has been paid to the subject by the provincial newspapers. But it is none the less fact beyond dispute that multitudes in our larger villages are in condition of pitia- ble destitution.
 I shall endeavor to portray with exact ness the condition of affairs in a single town-one of the chief centers of the wool en industry in the state of Connecticut the town of Stafford, and to sketch some of the scenes of suffering that have come un- der my notice in the progress of careful and protracted investigation.
 Occupying station midway of the northern boundry of the state, on and about the headwaters of the Willimaptic river, with very limited agricultural re- sources, the business centers of the town forty years ago consisted of two quiet ham, lets, both of which are now dismantled and well-nigh deserted The population at that date was composed mostly of the descendants of old colonial families, whose necessaries of life and enabled their pos sessors to subsist in the rude way of the generation that had preceded them. The only industry creating local market for the products of the farm and dairy con- sisted of primitive iron foundry, whose fires blazed day and night in deep cleft between the hills ever since des1gnated as the Furnace Hollow. The foundry fires died out years ago, but relics of their ex- istence still remain in the nomenclature of the villages now forming one of the largest centers of industry in the state.
 Within the last forty years, and mostly within the last twenty-five, under the in flation of the manufacturing movement produced by the high tariff policy, con- plete transformation has taken place, and the town now consists of congeries of villages strung upon the silver thread of the Willimantic river for the distance of five miles. The most northerly of these villages, Tuckervllle, contains two large woolen mills, with the tenements, stores, and offices incident to New England fac tory village. Half mile below are the spires and turrets of Staffordville, formerly the New Furnace, comprising two gigantic stove factories. The next in order is Hydeville, named after an old colonial family now almost extinct. The village contains one of the largest factories in the largest factories in northern Connecti- cut. Half mile further down, nestling costly in the bottom of a deep gorge, lies l the Furnace Hollow, with two large mills. Glenville follows, with one large mill and the usual array of tenements Stafford | Springs, the real center of the town, occu- pies large basin, into which, in its south erly traverse, the gorge opens. Here are four large mills, with 8 corresponding array of tenement houses and some of the finest villas in the northern portion of the state Half mile to the northwest, rest ing upon large tributary of the river, rises the village of Foxville; and half a mile to the north of Foxvile the tourist encounters the once thriving village of Or cuttville. West Stafford, scarcely more | than cosy hamlet, though containing two small mills, completes the congeries. Its ponds are fed by tributary of the Willi- mantle that rises in Diamond Lake, a TO- mantle sheet of water sentinelled about by the giant hills that form the eastern spur of the so-called Ellington mountains.
 | The whole country for miles about is dependent upon these villages as forming local market of considerable importance and these, again, depend for their very ex. istence upon the wages paying capacity of the mills. All told, the number of per. sons of both sexes and all ages, whose only means of subsistence ar1ses from operative labor in the factories, amounts to upwards of 3, ,O00-cnmprising about 400 families together with from 500 to 600 young girls, operatives in the weave-rooms, whose pa. rents are not residents in the town, and who, therefore, when the mill closes and their savings are exhausted, are in the sit. uation of homeless wanderers. I have seen dozens of young girls tramping on the road from town to town during the last two months, seeking in vain for worl, alone, defenceless, obliged 10 ask lodging in barns when denied admission to the house, thinly clad, hungry-often emaci ated by long starvation and protracted ex posture. As to tramps, of the stronger sex young and old, but able-bodied and capa ble in most instances, they swarm in scores on every highway and byway in this part of the state; some of them sullen, drs
 perate; others sad, cringing, with the stamp of patient suffering upon their pal lid faces. Poor souls, with the sharr winds of these sudden weather crisis cut
 ting them to the bone, what is left to them
 with the inefficient organization for the poor in New England towns, but to be found dead of cold morning in the hay loft of some farmers barn, less cared fol than the oxen in the stalls beneath? As 6 result of this wholesale vagrancy, begging pilfering, larceny in all it's varieties, ano outrages of kinds indescribable have be- come events of such common occurrence that the farmers have begun to talk of wig ilance committees and of organizing into squads to hunt nocturnal plunderers, whose only blame is that, in the absence of work they must steal or die.
 Of the nearly twenty large woolen mills within the villages have named, the ma jority shut down last July, with the prom ise of resumption. when the presidential election was decided-a promise which served 10 keep operatives from taking tc the road, but has not acted as a bill el credit at the grocery stores. Rather thar break up their industrial organization and scatter their employees over the country | | ,,,i1 oxu,,ora bovo rornittod tho yonf oI