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THE COUNTRYMAN.
TURNWOLD, GA„ OCTOBER 20, 1862.
What are We to Do ?
This question is heard on all hands—
What are we to do? What are we to do
for hats, for shoes, for csnaburgs, for this
thing, for that thing, for the other thing ?
My answer is, go to work and make
them. Tf people would quit sitting down,
wearing out the seats of their pantaloons,
doing nothing, and loafing around general
ly, instead of going to woik, to try to do
something for themselvps, and their coun
try, you would not hear so much complaint
about high prices. Idling away your time
is no way to make low prices. There is no
room in the Confederacy, now, for drones
and grumblers. Let every man be up and
doing something. I work, myself, and I
work hard—1 work all day, and frequently
halt the night. Therefore I feel at liberty
to call upon other people to work. We
ought all to do it—every man, woman, and
child. There is no room for gentlemen or
ladies of elegant leisure in this crisis of onr
country. Everyone ought to do something,
either on the field of battle, or in pro u-
cing supplies for the country. He who is
only a consumer now, producing nothing,
ought to die—and that suddenly, and with
out remedy.
What are we to do for shoes ? Tan your
own leather, and make them. Make them
of raw-hide. Make them of clot-li. Make
the uppers of cloth, anti the bottomsof leath
er, raw-hide, or wood. Make them alto
gether of wood. Thousands of people in ;
Europe wear nothing but wooden shoes.
Kill all your worthless curs, and make
shoes of their hides,
But we don’t know how.—Then get up
off of your stool of do-nothing, and learn
how. If you are not an idiot, you can learn
—very easily learn.
What are we to do for hats ? . Make
them of cloth. Make them of wheat-
stiaw, rye-straw, oat-straw, pine-straw, and
almost anything else. When you go to
Eatonfon, look at the hat Dr. Gibson wears,
made by some one down ftbout Gordon, out
of homespun, and sold ati<f>i or $1.50. It
is neat, durable, tastefuL&nd stylish. Had
it bben introduced here from yankeeland,
as the mode, it would have been all the
rage. But as it was made down about Gor
don, you don’t think it worthy of your at
tention, and sit, with your lazy fingers in
your mouths, and ask, what are we to do
for hats ?
<■
What are we to do for osnaburgs ? Spin
them and weave them. No woman in this
broad land is too good to spin and weave.
Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, a Roman
nobleman, and accounted the most beauti
ful and accomplished woman of the day,
was found at midnight working at the loom.
Penelepe, the renov'ned wife of the great
Ulysses, did not think herself too good to
weave. Solomon clad in royal purple, and
generally admitted to be a good judge of
women, in one of the books which he wrote,
and which has rendered him as illustrious
as his capacity to judge of feminine accom
plishments, speaks of a good woman as be
ing a good spinner and weaver.
But I have no fault to find of the women
of the land. They are doing their duty.
They are spinning, weaving, sewing, and
knitting. You don’t find them gadding
about over the country in idleness, asking,
what are we to do ? They see what ie to
be done, and they go to work at it.
What are we to do for kerseys? Spin
them and weave them. If you haven’t got
wool, go to Messrs. Denham’s tan-yard, or
any other, get cow’s hair and mix it with
your cotton, This mixture will make good
kerseys, and good blankets, Go to work,
and make them.
But what are we to do for cards? Go
to work and make them. It can be done.
Let our men stop grumbling—those whose
fertile geniuses are so great that they can
sit around street corners and discover un-
constitutionality in the Conscript Act, and
lead our armies so much better than Lee or
Bragg—-let them turn their splendid intel
lects to account in the manufacture of cot
ton and wool cards. Wo all know it is a
pity your great talents are not employed
in the cabinet, the senate, and the field :
but those posts are filled, now'—not quite
as well probably as you could fill them,
but still filled—and if you cannot be as
splendidly employed as you would like to
be, you can be usefully employed in mak
ing cotton caids, and your services will be
at least as fully appreciated by your coun
try as they are now m your capacity of
grumblei s-in-chief.
Now I assert, without the fear of contia-
diction, that tliere never was a time when
lahoi and everything a man can do, if he
will do it, bore such remunerative prices
as now. If a man won’t do well, it is his
own fault. Take the mere laborer, who
has no capital—take the mechanic—and he
has an opportunity to do better than he ev
er did in his life. Look in all our newspa
pers, and see the great demand there is,
through advertisements, for labor, free and
slave, 1 have never known such a ti^e.
And now take the farmer that is the
greatest grumbler cf them all, if I am a
farmer, myself. Everything that he pro
duces, or that grows on his land, meets with
ready sale, and is bearing an excellent
price. See what he can get for dried
peaches and apples—for peach and apple
brandy—for chickens, butter, and eggs
for lard, bacon, beef, wool, hides, tallow-
candles, pork, mutton—for peas, corn, po
tatoes, flour, and corn meal—for tan bark,
medicinial barks, roots, &c. Then look at
the timber that the farmer has, out of which
he and his hands can manufacture matches,
axe-helves, hoe-handles, water-buckets, and
the thousand things which he now has an
opportunity to sell instead of having to buy,
as formerly. Look at the tremendous pri
ces for the brooms which he might make
on his plantation if he would, growing his-
own broom corn. Look at the goobers he
might make, and the syrup, and perhaps
sugar, too, of the Chinese sugar cane, and
at such prices as these articles now bring.
With all this boundless field bet-re our la
borers, mechanics, farmers, planters, capi
talists, and street corner statesmen and Na
poleons, why stand they idle, all the day,
and ask, what must we do ? Gan they say
* no man hath employed us,’ when the
whole country calls upon them to do some
thing—when bleeding liberty bids them do
something—when our soldiers m the field
call upon them (or aid—when their wives
and their children, their firesides and their
altars call upon them in thunder tones for
action, action, action ?
These men are criminal in their do-noth
ing-hut-grumble policy. They not only
won’t do anything themselves, but they
decry everybody else that tries to do any
thing. Let a manufacturer of any article,
however much it is needed by the country,
endeavor to supply that article, and be
cause he can’t produce it at the cost at which
yankeee swindlers and pauper labor used
to produce it, he is cried down as an extor
tioner. I ask my countrymen to pause in
their thoughtless, if not mad career. The
way for you to bring down the price of the
necessities of life is to go to work, help nro-
duce them, and get your share of the mon
ey. 1 ou can’t grumble down the prices'of
things. Go to work with competition, and
bring them dowm in this way. It is the on
ly way you can bring them down.
I have fi w'ord more to say about the
women of the land—God bless them !
They are not the grumblers—they are not
the drones—they are the workers. I know'
many women in Putnam County whose
names deserve a place by the sido of those
of our bravest soldiers for the part they