The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1895-08-16

Iuminary of the Estate Gazette" eontih-
ues to bewail the ragged young men who
cannot get married because the ogre OF
Gray Gables ~monopelizes all the grand
sweet song in the country by means OF
the German tariff. Poor little gentle
parts, narrow must be the limits WITHIN
which the policy of Mr.. John L. Murphy
permits you to wave your pen, when you
can go on teasing a patient public with
your weak little pla tueiroLs twaddiing.
The lives of sorae of the present gener-
alton extend back to 1873, when there was
truk a panic in this country. we can
recall the wears from then until 1873,
when the New York HERALD ran that
lamentable column headed AlWay with
you" in which the cases of the starving
Jpoorlthousands of them-were presented
: TO the charitable public. The day when
Jay Cooke & Co.. went to SMASH drag
ging down ten per cent. of all the houses
in Wall street with them is not yet Ior-
gotten. 1t is not forgotten thai the
slump in prices extended ever to New
York real estate. wrecking the fortunes
of hundreds, among others of Honest
Tom" Murphy, the Republican coliector
of the Port.-for we then. wonderful TO
saw. had a Republican President-one
Ulysses S. Grant-a Republican senate
and even a Republican House of Repre-
sentatives part of the time.
During that mournful period about half
the railroads of the country went INTO
the hands of receivers; building opera
lions stopped in all our cities: enterprise
was paralyzed and progress was blocked.
There was not an opera season for ter
wears In the old Academy of Music; the
Grand Opera House was dark for seven
years and in fact old Wailacks and the
Union Square Theatre were the only two
houses in New York which kept their
doors open
The elimination came In the great rail-
way strikes of 1871, when the employees OF
:, the roads. all over the east and as far
west as Pittsburg, revolted against the
starvation and overwork to which they
had been subjected for years.
Throughout all this period we had still
the old war tariff. extreme Republican
rule. and among other things a currency
imitation bill, passed by a Republican
Congress but vetoed, Wa freely admit, by
a Republican President.
The distresses of the last year were not
to be compared with those of the least
dolorous year in the period we have been
describing. There was more work and
more wages. more money made and spent
more trade. more enterprise. more pro-
gress in the single year of 1894 than there
was in sum total in all the years from
1873 to 1878.
The s~tringeney was real enough. There
was a serious loss to wage earners; but
it did not use up twenty-five per cent.
of the savings banks deposits. We are
told that the middle classes suffered; yet
the summer of 1894 was the best on rec
ord in the watering places about New
York. the ocean steamships did their big
gest business and the New York theatres
twenty to thirty of them played all the
year to paying business-winter and sum-
mer.
AS for the very poor. the officers of the
charitable societies unanimously agreed
that they had little extra call except from
the professional pauper class. The re-
sources of the decent poor were not ex-
hausted before the revival came-and
that is where the recent squeeze differed
from the exclusively Republican one of
1878.
The Red Oak editor should either read
a little history and politics or else write
a series of articles on the acauittal OF
Johnny Van Cleef.