machinery has been much more than doubled; the number of idlers has been increased in like proportion, and again the cry for work comes up from millions of our people and fills the whole land. Under present tendencies the idleness must increase and the cry swell in volume and force, for at no previous time has the continued displacement of muscle by machinery been so rapid as at the present. The whole movement, from the beginning, has been marked by a constant acceleration, and at no time more distinctly than within the last twenty years.

To-day there is heard the wailing of great multitudes for work-for work that they may live. It comes from the strong and from the weak; from the skilled and from the unskilled; from the old and the young; from the cultured and from the uncultured; from mothers and from daughters; from fathers and from sons; even from babes and infants of six and eight years. The wail is everywhere on our streets, at our doors, in our halls and houses; in our churches, and offices, and factories, and shops, and stores-for "work, work or we die." For want of it our people are dying daily; some by the slow process of starvation, others by their own hands. The same want fills our streets with prostitution and crime; our insane asylums to overflowing, and our reformatories and penal institutions beyond their capacity. It is the direct cause of the increase of all the evils of intemperance, and the great barrier to every reform. It is heard in every country, but in none so loudly as in

our own.

Manifestly the great increase in man's productive

power, and ability to provide for and "insure his daily subsistence," has not been attended by a correspondingly improved condition of the great masses of the people, and an advance in the general tone of society; but, on the contrary, it has served to suddenly place enormous wealth in the hands of the few, and to bring corresponding destitution and distress on the

many.

CHAPTER VII.

EFFECTS OF THE WAR OF THE REBELLION UPON THE LABOR OF THE COUNTRY.

THE

HE war of the rebellion marks a period of very important changes in our industrial and social conditions, coming upon us, as it did, after forty years of mechanical development in the direction and with the effects herein partially described. The beginning of the year 1861 found the people of our country in the greatest distress, which had been for years increasing and intensifying. Thousands of operatives were out of employment and destitute, begging, clamoring for bread, and perishing with cold and hunger; whilst those who were fully or partially employed were in receipt of wages that would hardly supply the barest necessaries of life. Trade and business of every nature suffered in common with the industries of the country, and distress and demoralization everywhere prevailed. Whilst the country was in this condition hostilities commenced, and a call was made for 75,000 men in the North; shortly afterwards 300,000 more were enlisted; then more, and more, until all the late idle and partially employed men and women in the country had been gathered into the army, or some industry, and were paid an amount that enabled all to live more liberally, more comfortably than ever before. Not

for full forty years had our people in the North been so generally employed, nor so abundantly supplied with all the necessaries and conveniences of life as during the last three years of the war of the rebellion, and for a short period after its close. Only one thing marred the general happiness—the sickness, wounds, and deaths that war carries to so many households.

The first half of the year 1865 found all the men and women in our country in active and remunerative employment-none were idle. The four years of universal employment in the northern States enabled all to pay the indebtednesses and square the accounts of the period before the war, and enter the second half of 1865 with no private debts, but largely increased powers of production and distribution.

One would think that, with this statement of facts, the future of our people must have been all that could be desired. But with the close of the war there came a change of the greatest importance. During the first months of the year 1865 all were employed and receiving compensations that gave to all a generous support; but at the close of the year millions had been thrown out of employment into idleness, and left without any industrial means of subsistence.

I have made an effort to see how great was the number who so quickly passed from well compensated employments into absolute idleness - from plenty to penury.

Whilst in Washington, during the winter of 1878 and '79, I obtained from the Secretaries of War and the Navy, from the Quartermaster General and heads

of other bureaux, the best estimates obtainable within a limited time of the forces employed by government in the war of the rebellion, and the reduction which has since been made. I can not do better than to quote in full the statement of Quartermaster General Meigs :WAR DEPARTMENT

QUARTERMASTER GENERAL'S OFFICE.

Washington, D. C., January 13, 1879.

It is estimated that at the close of the rebellion there were in the armies of the United States not less than 1,800,000 enlisted men, 487,000 horses, 305,000 mules, and 130,000 civilians, hired as teamsters, laborers, and servants to officers, etc., to do the civil work of the army in the Quartermaster's Department.

This is exclusive of all those citizens who were employed upon railroads not under military management, in mills and factories, and workshops, building wagons and cars, and making cloth and clothing, or gathering crops of grain, hay, and other agricultural products to be consumed by the army.

Nor does it include the persons employed by the Engineer Department, the Ordnance Department, or the Commissary Department. It includes only the enlisted men and officers, their servants, and the civilians hired and paid by the Quartermaster's Department.

MR. W. GODWIN MOODY,

Boston, Mass.

M. C. MEIGS, Quartermaster General, Br'v't Major General, U. S. A.

At the time of receiving the above statement General Meigs said to me that his observation and experience during the war convinced him that at least one fifth of the able bodied men of the North were enlisted or employed in the immediate service of the army, and that another fifth were employed in furnishing them with material and subsistence.