Hard Times

 

We are becoming a nation of schemers to live without work our boys are not learning trades our farmers sons are crowded into cities, looking for clerkships and post officers; hardly one American girl in each hundred will do housework for wages, however her need, so we are a scending to Europe for workmen and buying of her artisans millions worth of products that we ought make for our selves. Though our crop of rascals is/are large, we do not grow our own hemp, though we ar over run with lads who deserve flagellation, we import our own willows. Our women unless deceved shine in European fabrics, our men dress in foreign clothes, the toys which amuse our little children / have generally reached us from over the sea. We are like the farmer who hires his neighbours sons to cut his wood, feed his stock and run his erands, while his own boys lounge at the grog shop, playing billiards, and then wondering why, in spite of his best efforts, he sinks deeper into debt till the sheriff cleans him out, and he starts west to begin again We must turn over a new leaf. Our boys and girls must be taught to love labor by qualifying themselves to do it efficiently. We must turn out fewer professionals and more skilled artisans as well as food growers and laborers. We must grow and fabricate two hundred millions more in value per annum, that we now import, and so reduce the foreign debt that we have so long and so successfully augmented year by year. We must qualify our clever / boys to erect and run factories, from rolling mills, tanneries, machine shops etc, to open and work mines improve and fashion implements and [?] the present product of there fathers farm so shall we stem the tide of debt that sets steadily against our shores, and cease to be visited by hard times.

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