A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention: For Proposing Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, Held at Washington, D.C., in February, A.D. 1861Chittenden, L. E. (Lucius Eugene)
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A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention: For Proposing Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, Held at Washington, D.C., in February, A.D. 1861
Chittenden, L. E. (Lucius Eugene)
Conference Convention (1861 : Washington, D.C.); United States -- Politics and government -- 1857-1861
How stands the matter in those cities to-day? Now, just when the
spring trade should be commencing, go to the extensive and magnificent
establishments for the sale of goods in any of the cities I have
named, where goods are sold which in prosperous times found their way
into almost every family to a greater or less amount in this great
country. What will you see in those cities now? The heavy stocks of
goods imported last autumn, or laid in from our own manufactories,
remain undisturbed and untouched upon the shelves. The customers are
not there--they have not made their appearance. The few who have come
at all, come not as buyers, but as debtors who cannot pay, and whose
business is not to make purchases but to arrange for extensions. The
merchants, in despair, are poring over their ledgers; checking off the
names of their insolvent debtors, a new list of whom comes by each
day's mail. Their clerks sit around in idleness reading the
newspapers, or thinking mournfully of the wives and children at home,
who will go unclad and hungry if they are discharged from their
places, as they know they must be, if this condition of things shall
continue. All alike, employers and employed, with all dependent upon
them, are looking anxiously, and I wish I could say hopefully, to the
Congress of the United States, or to this Conference, as the only
sources from which help may come.
There are thousands and tens of thousands belonging to these classes
all over the country who must have relief, or their ruin is
inevitable. And then look at that other class, numerically larger,
perhaps, certainly not less worthy of our regard, who are dependent
upon these; I mean the mechanics, the day laborers, and those in turn
dependent upon them. What are they to do? If some change does not
come, if something is not done again to start the wheels of commerce
and business, what is to become of them?
And look, too, at New England! She has latterly been the workshop of
the South and the West. She has furnished their people with her
manufactures--they have been her market. An excellent market, too,
have they furnished her; she has grown rich through their consumption.
How stands the matter with New England to-day? True, some of her shops
are running, but many more are still. The noise of the loom, the
rattle of the shuttle, have ceased in many of her factories, while
others are gradually discharging their operatives and closing their
business. But I will pursue this branch of the subject no farther. No
one acquainted with the facts, will deny that the whole country is
upon the eve of such a financial crisis as it has never seen--that
this crisis will come as sure as that the sun will rise, unless we do
something to avert it!
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