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would be a great blessing.
A man who owns the roof that shelters him, and the soil from which he draws his subsistence—and few acres are requisite for that—need not envy any Nabob's great fortune.
To young mechanics.
“It is the first step that costs.”
The main obstacle to saving is the lack of the habit.
He who at twenty-two has saved a hundred dollars, earned by honest, useful effort during the first year of his self-control, will be very unlikely ever to be destitute thereafter.
On the other hand, he who has saved nothing at the end of his first year of independence, will be pretty certain to carry a poor man's head on his shoulders while he lives.
Our young mechanics are not thrifty, because of the evil habits they have formed during their minority.* * By-and-bye he marries, and retrenches some of his worst expenses, but too late—the increased demands of a growing family absorb every cent he can earn; and at fifty or sixty years of age you will see him emerging, seedy and sickly, from the groggery, whither he has repaired for his bitters or his eleven o'clock, enfeebled in body, and discouraged in spirit, out of humor with everything and everybody, and cursing the banks, or the landlords, the capitalists, or the speculators, as plunderers and enslavers of the poor.
Coming to the city.
The young man fit to come to a city does not begin by importuning some relative or friend to find or make a place for him. Having first qualified himself, so far as he may, for usefulness here, he comes understanding that he must begin at the foot of the class, and work his way up. Having found a place to stop, he makes himself acquainted with those places where work in his line may be found, sees the advertisements of “Wants” in the leading journals at an early hour each morning, notes those which hold out some prospect for him, and accepts the first place offered him which he can take honorably and fill acceptably.
He who commences in this way is quite likely to get on.
A labor-exchange.
What I would suggest would be the
Union and Organization of all workers for their mutual improvement and benefit, leading to the erection of a spacious edifice at some central point in our city to form a Laborers' Exchange, just as Commerce now has its Exchange, very properly.
Let the new Exchange be erected and owned as a joint-stock property, paying a fair dividend to those whose money erected it; let it contain the best spacious hall for general meetings to be found in our city, with smaller lecture-rooms for the meetings of particular sections or callings—all to be leased or rented at fair prices to all who may choose to hire them, when not needed for the
