Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

30 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