The Charlotte Democrat

Croakers.

Instead of complaining so much about the hard times, we had better work a little harder and save our pennies uselessly expended for cigars, extravagant dressing and excursion tickets.—Amidst all our croaking how much idleness there is in the country. In every town, at the depots, cross-road grog-shops in the State, you may see any day, crowds of idlers standing around loose, some whittling sticks, some spitting at a mark, others abusing the hard times. There is really no ground for despondency. It is true money is scarce, but there is a rich abundance of bountiful crops. It is true that our people lost much by the war, but still mother earth is here with her capacity to yield bread to the eater and seed to the sower. The early and latter rains fall according to the ancient promise. The sun rises and shines warming and fructifying as of old, and the goodness of Providence crowns the rolling year with golden sheaves and mellow fruit. We have the strength of a healthy climate, and ample means of supplying our own wants. And the negro, too, is here, if we know how to work him. Don't despair of finding a way to do that. You say he won't work unless he is compelled—very well, neither will white men. But compulsion is of different sorts. Formerly, you compelled him by virtue of being his master—now, compel him to work by force of his necessities. Show him that you can live without him, put your own hand to the plough and say to him, if you will help, well, if not, well again: enforce the laws against vagabondage, and he will gladly work when he can do no better. At present he thinks he can make a living by voting but he will come out of that in due season. On the whole, I am inclined to think he is the best laborer we are likely to get in the South; as he is the best tool we have with which to cultivate the soil, let us sharpen and improve him in every possible way.
And for this great Anglo-Saxon people whose blood has filled the earth with the most beneficent and utilitarian civilization it has ever witnessed, and strewed the shores of its oceans with mighty cities, reticulated its surface with steam roads, covered the wide seas with the white wings of commerce, and even invaded their unknown depths with the iron-shod pathways of the lightning, for these men to acknowledge that the wheels of their progress are stopped because the negroes won't work and keep contracts, is a sorry spectacle indeed! Shame to us if it be so!

And as to capital, the want of which makes us complain so loudly—are we really suffering for that? I say not. We are suffering from a want of capacity to use what we have rather. What relief would a fresh issue of government currency do us unless we had the equivalent to give for it? Suppose that forty-four millions were given to us, how long would we keep it if our consumption annually exceeded our sales as far as it does now? Like water seeking its level it would soon find its way to those who had a surplus to give for it. What is the use of an idle fellow lounging around with his hands in his pockets, without a thing in the world to sell, but who buys his very axe handle and his cabbage from the North, abusing Eastern capitalists for grabbing all the currency? Let him raise a bale of cotton, and see if he don't deprive that Yankee of some of his gains? Let him grow his own pork, flour, corn and hay, and see if that bondholder don't have to shell out—Shelby Banner.