EFFECTS OF THE WAR ON LABOR. 155 



at Appomatox Court House. A change greater, more 

 rapidly made, and of more momentous consequences 

 than the world ever before witnessed ; an event that 

 demoralized our whole industrial and trade interests. 



The idleness that was developed by this great and 

 sudden change came upon us in the very hight of our 

 greatest prosperity ; it was like a flood, with its wa- 

 ters spread over the face of the whole country, which 

 are still rising and washing and wearing away the 

 foundations of all prosperity and filling the nation 

 with ruined fortunes and dead and blasted hopes. 



It is not possible for the condition of things here 

 noted to occur under the European systems. The 

 great armies of those nations are never disbanded en 

 masse, and turned in upon the nation to find employ- 

 ment or be idle, as best they may. There, in peace as 

 in war, the great body of men who are not required 

 in productive pursuits find occupation and sustenance 

 under their military systems, and thus are those na- 

 tions, in very large measure, preserved from those 

 perils by which we are surrounded. If, at the close 

 of the late Franco-German war the great armies of 

 those nations had been at once, and permanently dis- 

 banded, the industrial distress which now exists in 

 each would have so multiplied as inevitably to have 

 destroyed both. These economic facts and principles 

 are well understood and acted upon by the governing 

 powers in Europe ; but our ward politicians and feu- 

 dal economists have yet to obtain their first idea of 

 these self evident principles. 



Of the great number thus enforced to idleness, from 

 the armies and abnormal industries of the North 



