CYRUS HALL McCORMICK 



to have been so intense that there was little or 

 no social sympathy. There was very little 

 pity for the pauper, he was auctioned off to 

 be half starved by the lowest bidder; and for 

 the criminal there was no feeling except the 

 utmost repulsion and abhorrence. It was 

 found, for instance, in 1809, that in the jail 

 in New York there were seventy-two women, 

 white and black, in one chairless, bedless room, 

 all kept in order by a keeper with a whip, and 

 fed like cattle from a tub of mush, some eating 

 with spoons and some with cups and some with 

 their unwashed hands. And the men's room 

 of that jail, says this report, "is worse than the 



women's." 



Also, in 1809, the chronic quantity of misery 

 had been terribly augmented by the Embargo, 

 that most ruinous invention of President 

 Jefferson, whereby American ships were swept 

 from the sea, with a loss to capital of twelve 

 millions a year, and a loss to labor of thirty 

 thousand places of employment. According 

 to this amazing act of political folly, every 

 market-boat sailing from New Jersey to New 



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