Springfield Weekly Republican

Copperhead Tactics.

We have before us a copy of The Philadelphia Age, a copperhead journal of the most virulent type; and its leading article—a long one—is devoted to an exposition of the effects of this 'abolition war' upon the fortunes of the poor. Of course it is an appeal to the unreasoning and the ignorant poor against the policy of the war, and an attempt to make them believe that New England is growing rich out of the war, at their expense. 'New England contractors and manufacturers,' it says, 'daily grow inordinately rich on the price of blood, and the mass of the people who work for their bread, hour by hour grow poorer and still more poor, marching steadily downward from common poverty to downright beggary, and from beggary straightway to starvation.' This extract gives the gist of the whole article. The statement is boldly made that 'of the thousands of millions which the war has cost, and for which the laborer is taxed, not a penny finds its way into his pocket.' This statement is made in the face of the patent fact that the New England manufacturers are paying the heaviest taxes that are paid in the country, and the laborers are thriving on unprecedented wages and have no taxation at all, or none that is worth mentioning. The laboring population of the country were never earning so good wages as they are earning to-day, even when we take into account the relation of wages to the cost of living, and never lived when there was such a demand for labor at the highest prices as now. There is nobody who has a disposition to work, from the boy and the girl of twelve to the man and woman of every age, who cannot get work to do at prices which pay munificently. If we were to select any class which is more prosperous than any other it would be the laboring class. The laborers themselves know or ought to know this. If they do not, those who employ them do. The grand burdens of the war come upon the rich men and the business men, and, with the scarcity of labor which everywhere prevails, the poor have a guaranty of constant remunerative labor which they have never had before in the history of the country.

Still further to show the poor man what he is coming to, The Age quotes from the New York Tribune of January 1st, an article showing how one Dr. Winthrop Dunshunner has ascertained that the soil which grows cabbages and other vegetables, contains all the nutritive elements of those vegetables, and can be used for food, as 'the Patagonians and other athletic tribes of savages make dirt a portion of their daily banquets.' It also quotes from the Boston Commonwealth the statement that Professor Winslow Perkinpine, of Harvard, has discovered that the flesh of the common grasshopper contains 115 per cent. of nutriment, and has been a favorite dish of that most intelligent and beautiful people, the Digger Indians of California, and that, with dirt and grasshoppers, 'the laborer may well bid defiance to poverty and hunger, and can, without serious privation, give all of his earnings, instead of nine-tenths, for the support of the government, and the liberation and sustenance of the noble black.' These articles, which are, upon their face, fictitious, the second one being a gross travesty of the first, are actually quoted by this scoundrelly sheet to show that this diet is prescribed by the Yankees for the poor, and the editor coolly adds: 'And so the world goes on—the war bleeds and beggars us, and the Yankees of New England entertain us with editorial specifics for emptiness and rags.'

It is humiliating to believe that the writer of this rascally stuff knows that he has a market for it among the ignorant poor around him, to whom it will be faithfully read by bar-room and brothel demagogues; and it is still more humiliating to believe that there are others engaged in editorial work who are equally lost to shame with the editor of the Age himself. It is sad to know that the government, and every well-wisher of the government, have these men to meet in an election which is to decide the policy of the nation for the next four years, and that this damnable machinery is used for the simple purpose of transforming simple people into foes of the government and into foes of New England. It is sadder still to realize that among all the democratic presses of this country there is not one which desires or dares to expose the rascality of this appeal, or spurns the means by which this caitiff tries to win supporters to the nominees of the Chicago convention, whom he promises in advance to sustain.

We trust that the intelligent, loyal people of the country have, before this, learned that the greatest danger that menaces us to-day is not a possible failure before Richmond, not an overthrow at Atlanta, not a raid into Maryland, not even the establishment of Southern independence, but a hopeless political demoralization of the people, and an excitement of bad blood between political parties through the machinations of traitors living North of Mason's and Dixon's line. There is no depth of infamy to which these traitors will not dive, if, by diving, they have a chance of bringing up their coveted pearl of political success. Fraud, violence so far as violence may be safe, intrigue, falsehood, appeal to the grossest passions of the mob, dissemination of the fear of want—all these will be resorted to; and our political system is to stand the severest test to which it has ever been subjected. Just now the favorite string to play on is that of class interest and prejudices. New England is to be made responsible for the war, is to get rich by the war, at the expense of the poor elsewhere, and New England principles and New England patriotism are to be made odious by association with these falsehoods. We shall have the rest soon enough. First the hoofs, then the tail, then the full horns above the tail.