Year: 1873

HARD TIMES IN MANUFA CTJ,RING
DISTRICTS.


From the New York Tribune.l


Whatever we may deem the cause or
cure of the panic, we may now all as
well face the fact that it will make the
coming winter an exceptionally hard
one. 1t is estimated that 80, ,0C0 opera
tives are already thrown out of employ
ment in this city, and every day adds
to the number of closed mills. Phila-
delphia, pre-eminently q manufacturing
city, is suffering still more severely.
Even could public confidence be fully
restored to-day, the evil already done by
the blow struck at fall trade, in every
department of business, would make
hard times until spring.


The class to whom we wish to say a
word to-day are those accustomed to
deal with and receive large sums of
money; to whom the private items of
housekeeping, clothing, ETC., are such
uuCOuSlucItu tillics III tile tHoIuiouS
aggregate of income and outgo, that
they are not altered by even really
great change of fortune. When CrGsus
gains or loses million or two it makes
no difference in the quality of his wines
or texture of his carpets. He looks for
ward to hard times and closed mills this
winter as entailing upon him, perhaps,
smaller operations in the stock board or
more care in his investments, but his
dinner and coat will certainly be un-
ouched. We want to remind him that
hard times to the skilled mechanic, q
man of as sound intelligence as himself,
means sudden stoppage at an hour S
warning to-day of the chances to earn
! to-morrow's bread His small savings,
if he have any, are thus drawn upon so
directly by his immediate necessities
that the lack of employment brings at
once stinting poverty and then actual
want. Hard times and closed mills to
the thousands of laborers below the
skilled mechanic, who have no savings,
who are paid on Friday night the money
to buy Saturdays breakfast, mean a
/ freless hearth and hunger, not next
week nor tomorrow, but to-day.


! Another point not readily discernible
by the rich man is the closeness with
which the fortunes of the poor are inter
woven. Even SO large financial OPP
orator may go down and drag but two
or three others in his fall but when the
dozen or two hands in petty factory
fail to buy their daily bread or pound
of beef. their baker and butcher and
small green-grocer are driven into
speedy ruin. We note these facts only
to show how immediate and widespread
is likely to be the actual want among
the poorer classes ten minutes of In
vestigation spent in the manufacturing
quarters will prove their truth. Now,
these people must be fed this winter
and there is little doubt that they will
be fed. Large as is the amount Of suf-
fering in the seaboard cities every win
ter, the amount bestowed in charity,
systematic and individual, is, we be,
lieve, large enough to cover it if it were
iudiciously applied.


The money is not gone out OF the
country it is here a very large pro
norton of it boarded useless away by
people of moderate means. Before the
winter is over the boards will be ex'
hausted, and sum given in aims, the
third of which, if spent in giving EN-
ployment now to working people, would
suffice to avert the coming appalling
destitution. In short, it is the duty oi
every man with money to give employ
ment as far as possible to needier men
and after that aims. One word, too, as
to alms-giving The habit Of most
wealthy people is to throw large sums
of charity into certain systematized re
ligious or municipal aid societies, whicl
are useful enough ordinarily, but viii
not touch the root of the evil this win
ter. The class who will need help nov
are those who have been independen
workers, not paupers, who will be th'
very last to make their wants known t.
any society. The American mechanic
must come very near starvation before
he says, 81 am hungry"