Washington City, August 30, 1835

 

Dear brother,

            I received your letter dated August 17. the only one which I have received from you since the 7^th of last December, I was astonished on reading your letter when I came to that part of it where you say, “I have written to you several times since last winter and had concluded not to write any more until you answered some of my letters.” I had almost come to the same conclusion in regard to your not writing. I could not determine what was the reason I could not hear from you, for I do assure you that the present one is the only one I have had from you since the one dated December 7. in which letter you informed me that father had just been taken ill with a gethering on the leg, which you were afraid would go pretty hard with him, and that you would let me hear from you in the course of two or three weeks and let me know how he was getting, immediately on the receipt of that letter I wrote to you, and waited anxiously until the first of March to hear further from you, when I wrote to you again, and have never heard a word from you until/the present time. How to account for your not receiving my letters I don’t know, unless I might, through mistake, have directed them to Indiana instead of Jefferson County, as I was in the habit of so long directing them to Blairsville Indiana county; and perhaps the reason I missed yours was my living and working on Capitol Hill last winter, which is in a different section of the City, and the letters of that part of the City carried by a different penny-post, who I suppose did not know where to find me, and perhaps mislaid them. I have lost nearly all my wages for the last nine months; last fall, Duff Green, for whom I worked for a long time, bought three very large houses on Capitol Hill, and moved his office up there, and took a notion into his head that he would do his work all with boys, and proposed to take three hundred boys and just keep journeymen enough to instruct those boys. This the journeymen opposed, as it through so many of them out of work, that he could not get any of them to instruct his boys, and after keeping us on a stand for three weeks he was obliged to take us all back. The next thing he undertook was to reduce our wages, which we also opposed, and after/a stand of a couple of weeks defeated him in that, but he became so exasperated at us and kept up such a continual broil that our winter’s work was of no service to us. However, to have satisfaction of him, at the close of the session when the election for printer came on in Congress, we got up a memorial stating our grievances, and praying Congress to elect some other printer in place of him, which resulted in the election of Gales & Seaton. About the middle of March I had an offer made to me to go to Charlottsville, Virginia, and take the foremanship of a paper that was about to be established there, at $15 per week, which I accepted, but which turned out to be an unprofitable situation. The proprietor of the paper failed and was obliged to take the benefit of the act of insolvency, whereby I lost my four months wages, and returned to this place the first of this month, and am now at work here.

            Dear brother, I was glad to hear that you were all in pretty good health, and that father has recovered as well as he has; I was surprised to hear of the marriage of cousin Betsy, and I hope that she has got a good home. I see by the back of your letter that you have got the office of Post-master, which is the first intimation I had of it. I will write to you shortly more fully. Please remember me to all my relations.—your affectionate brother

                                                                                    Michael Rodgers.

Mr. William Rodgers

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