St. Landry Democrat

Labor Depression Everywhere
There is labor depression everywhere. In New York it is calculated there are fifty thousand workers clamoring vainly for employment, and these may be taken as representing fully two hundred thousand in distress. From the English industrial centres come like representations. Here and in England there is quietude for the present, but how soon the absolute want may develop into indications of anarchy, as in Paris, no one can foresee. In the French capital, and in many of the cities in that country the crisis continues.

A manifesto signed by the delegates of all the workmen of Paris is virtually an appeal to the working classes to rise in revolt against the bourgeoise. The stoppage of work, it says, far from diminishing, goes on increasing day by day.

"The shops are full of our labor, but we are nevertheless without bread, without clothes, and many among us without a roof to shelter them. But we are starving, dying of starvation. Those who oppress us continue to live a joyous life, living in luxury and enjoying the fruits of our labor." Shall this state of things continue? 'No, fellow workmen, we will rise against that so—society to which we have given everything, and which makes of us a legion of slaves.'

It speaks well for the patience of our unemployed masses that there are no appeals to passion like this. The conditions here are just as bad as those in Paris: happily the consequential effects are not alike. It is hard to preach philosophy to starving men willing to work and unable to find food; but the best philosophy and palliative of excited feeling would be a practical benevolence. The winter time is with us with unwonted severity so early in the season, and the Christmas days are suggestive of an effort to lighten the burden of the suffering poor and make them feel that they are still of our common human family.—New York Star.