DISTRESS IN AMERICA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4333, 8 February 1875, Page 3

DISTRESS IN AMERICA.

(From the Melbourne Argus.) Protectionists must be at their wits' ends to discover some plausible explanation of the immense amount of distress which exists in most of the great cities of America on the Atlantic seaboard. In New York alone it is computed there are 90,000 persons of employment. No such wide-spread calamity, overshadowing the whole community, has existed, we are told, since 1837- Mr. J. H. Keyser, a well-known philanthropist, writing to the New York Tribune on the 23rcl of November, says: —“I have witnessed the harrowing spectacle to-day of 800 to 1000 homeless, hungry men struggling for a simple bowl of soup and a piece of bread, the only meal of the day. The destitution is far greater than that ®f last winter, because the small deposits saved up previous to that season were not all exhausted then, while the better class of applicants for relief a year ago bad pawned furniture, clothing, and valuables before asking for alms. Now nothing stands between them and pauperism. In the State of Pennsylvania, 17,000 persons have been thrown out of employment by the stoppage of the smelting or blast furnaces ; and in one town in Connecticut, generally employing upwards of 1000 hands in manufactures, nearly every industry is at a standstill. The poor people in the great cities want food, fuel, and clothing, and are willing to work for them. The last harvest was an abundant one, the coalfields of America are practically inexhaustible, and the clothing factories are glutted with wearing apparel. Now, why should such startling anomalies as these exist in a country so richly endowed with natural resources, and so thinly peopled as the United States ? A precisely sinvlar condition of affairs existed in England, and became almost chronic there from 1815 down to 1816. The manufacturers were accustomed to complain of over-production, the farmers annually raised the cry of agricultural distress, and the working-classes were periodically pinched by famine. These mischiefs and miseries ceased with the cessation of the infamous system of protection, which had begotten them; and if this instructive lesson should be lost upon cousin Jonathan, be is not the intelligent fellow we take him for.