"The melancholy days are come"
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"The melancholy days are come"
“The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.”1
Yes! while the warm, mellow flush of the October sun still brightens the streets and makes glad the fields, glistening here in the folds of the brilliant dresses which sweep along the pavements, and away in the country, on the ruddy fruits of the orchards and the golden products of the corn-fields, as yet ungathered; who does not know and feel that “the melancholy days” are indeed come upon us? Scarcely have we passed the Autumnal Equinox, nor yet come to the “calm, mild days” of Indian Summer, when we find ourselves involuntarily and with gloomy forebodings looking forward to the frosts and rigors of the winter solstice. The open air is still genial and exhilarating; yet thoughtful heads and kind hearts are turned to the anxious consideration of what can and must be done for the houseless. The granaries of the land are filled with the harvests of the year, and, strange to tell, the philanthropic are everywhere meditating on by what means famine shall be kept from our doors. For the land has been shaken as by an earthquake, and the fountains of industry are dried, the arm of the worker is palsied, the cunning hand is motionless, and the hum and stir of a busy commerce are changed to the dejected silence of a day of national fasting and humiliation. Vainly the laborer cries out in the market-places and at the corners of the streets—
“No parish money, no loaf,
No pauper badges for me,
A son of the soil, by right of toil
Entitled to my fee.
No alms I ask, give me my task
Here are the arm, the leg,
The strength, the sinews of a man,
To work and not to beg.”2
Alas! There is not work such as he seeks, to be done, be the arm and the leg never so strong and sinewy; the “son of the soil,” however faithful, cannot enforce his right to “fee!” He must even be content to accept “alms”; shall he be driven to “beg?” He must have a share of the “money” and the “loaf” of those who have them to distribute; and he must not be insulted with “pauper badges” nor thrown upon the “parish.”
Already, it is computed, more than 15,000 laboring people, who live, and help still more numerous thousands to live, by their toil, are thrown out of employment in the metropolis alone. And, day by day, this immense body of idlers, whose idleness is not their reproach, is swelled by increasing accessions from the ranks of the workshops.
It cannot be extravagant, we fear, to assume that at least twenty-five thousand people, residents of the cities of New York and Brooklyn, who, in an ordinary season, would find opportunities to earn a livelihood in the various branches of industry, will be deprived, during the coming winter, by the mere pressure and severity of the times, of all opportunities of employment whatever except the most transient and precarious. And it cannot be doubted that this enforced idleness of so many thousands will unfortunately and seriously affect the mean of subsistence of four times that number.
That such a condition of things should be so nearly impending over this community ought to excite the most lively apprehension. That such a condition of things may, within the bounds of any probability, come to exist amongst us, ought to arouse us to immediate and ample preparation to meet it. We believe that our estimate of the probable number of unemployed who will have to be provided for in some form, by us, is under the mark. But concede that it is greatly exaggerated—was it ever yet known that the treasuries of our public charities were burthened with a surplus, or that the means and ministrations of private benevolence were too profuse and assiduous? And considering how, within only the past three weeks, the predictions and calculations of the most sagacious and cautious have been utterly falsified and confounded—how those who now conceit that they feel, with their tiny plummets, the solid bottom of the deep, have been for eight long weeks heaving their little leads and crying out “bottom!” at every fresh ripple of the troubled waters—how all-pervading are the stagnation of business and retrenchment of expenses, and how near at hand the quarter-day—we most earnestly implore all who have hearts “to feel for others’ woes,” to think of these things, and of what is to be done. Of the latter we shall have something to say hereafter.