Work ahead.
The new year is approaching, when men must wind up, as well as they can, the past, and open their books for the coming year.
Commercially and agriculturally, there are matters for the gravest consideration.
The work that is ahead will admit of no child's play — no temporizing in the hope of postponing responsibility — of delaying an exigency.
Commercially, there will be a crisis within the year which all ought to prepare to meet in the best manner.
Economy is the sevenfold shield that will protect a community best from a financial revulsion.
It should be practiced by all. Merchants should not venture too far; their bills payable should be reduced in number and amount as much as possible, and there kept until the storm is past and we can see more clearly into the future.
Housekeepers and heads of families should cut down their establishments to a moderate standard, and diminish their outgoings, at least, so that they should not exceed their incomings.
By practising this system of economy wherever it can be applied, the community will be infinitely better off. No spirit of speculation and wild adventure, with a bold reliance upon chances, while so dark a future is immediately at hand, should tempt men to incur very heavy responsibilities just now. Caution and prudence are now our best friends.
A little patience for a few months will enable us to come to better and safer conclusions, and to take new measures and adopt new policies, with better lights ahead to guide us safely on.
Agriculture, upon which rests the commerce of the land, has to undergo radical changes.
There must be entirely new systems adopted.
The new mode of hiring labor — and that free labor — forces upon the farmer this change as a necessity.
There are some advantages in hired labor.
You are not responsible for it when disabled by sickness or the infirmities of age; and you may dispense with it at times when it is not needed.
It buys its own clothing, feeds itself, and pays its own doctor's bills.
When the service of this kind of labor is rendered and paid for, there is an end of it. You know what it has cost; you know what you have made.
You are involuntarily led into a system of calculation, and forced to that balancing of accounts which not only shows you how you stand, but compels you to settle up. This is one advantage over slavery, and will make the farmer a better business man than formerly.
He will be driven to a more close and compacted system of cultivation.
He will diminish his area of tillable soil, and apply his hired labor under his own eye to better advantage.
His spare land he will soon sell off; that which he retains, by prudent tillage, with a reduction of useless animals, which have heretofore consumed so much and yielded so little, will enable him at the end of the year to have more ready cash than he has been accustomed at such a time to call his own.
These matters will give the farmer a great deal to do. He ought to consider them well and proceed intelligently with his operations.
He has yet to see whether the freedman will work — will perform his contract.
But there can be no satisfactory settlement of that question unless the farmer prepares his plan of operations and arranges the whole system of his farm in a manner to institute a proper and efficient superintendence and accountability.
The old slipshod mode will not answer at all. Slaves did not do half work under the old system, and it will be expecting too much of freedmen to hope that they will do any better than slaves under the same system.
The freedman must have a fair trial under a good system, and then, if he does not answer, we can try some one else.
But there is no alternative now but to give him a proper trial.
He is, we believe, still kindly disposed, and if he is kept clear of the demoralizing influence of the vicious and idle who crowd the cities, we by no means despair of him. The pinching demands of the present winter will have a beneficial effect upon his disposition, and we may find that his life may be systematised and his labor directed so that he may become useful and independent; i. e., a good laborer that takes care of himself and his family.
Nothing short of this, we all know, will answer.
If he cannot do this he must go. This, too, if he does not know now, he will in due time learn.
These matters contain enough to occupy the attention of our people.
Everything depends upon the manner in which they are treated.
Every man who, by his forecast and energy, so fashions and arranges his own affairs as to secure success and avoid disaster, will promote the general welfare, both by what he saves or makes, and by his excellent example to others.
