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46 dollars to less than ten millions of the people, while the remainder more than thirty millions of the people of the country would have nothing! Do politicians, generally, endorse such a sentiment as this? If so, is it not high time that farmers, mechanics and laboring men, universally, should join together, and elect somebody to Congress and to the legislative halls of our country, who would legislate for their interests, and for the interests of the entire people?

Honesty should come to the front, and political tricksters, greedy monopolists, stock gamblers, salary grabbers, or any of that ungodly crew, who have no interest in the people, further than the securing of their votes, should be invited to retire.

The panic of 1873, precipitated by speculators and stock gamblers, threw thousands upon thousands out of employment, and with want and starvation staring them in the face, the working men of New York called the said mass meeting, and in their extremity, may, or may not have said unwise or improper things. But, would our legislators or politicians have given utterance to any wiser or more patient words, had they been in the same straits?

That the reader may realize more fully the condition of things in New York in the winter of 1873–'74, and the terrible destitution and suffering that then prevailed, I will here introduce two or three extracts from the daily papers, out of more than a hundred with which I was furnished by a friend in that city, during that winter. From the New York Herald, of February 10, 1874: