A MOURNFUL COMPLAINT FROM NEW ENGLAND.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXIV, Issue 3399, 8 June 1868, Page 4

A MOURNFUL COMPLAINT FROM NEW ENGLAND.

This Boston Bulletin says: — "In no part of the country is industry at so low an ebb, capital so unremunerative in its investments, and their joint products so poorly paid for as here, in New England, at tbe present time. The specialties of our skilled labour, whicb were once a source of wealth to the capitalist and profitable employment to the people, are now a drug in the market, and refuse to go into consumption at any price. They are relatively much cheaper than the agricultural products of the West or South, or the raw mineral products of the Western States. Not only are our manufactories clotted, or running on short time, and our mechanics and labouring men by thousands thrown out of employment, but our commercial classes are Buffering immense losses from tbe stagnation of trade and shrinkage in merchandise value. The latter are pbliged to 'carry' not only thef produce of! New England commerce and industry, but aleo, to a great extent, those of every <>tber section of the country. Hence, upon their shoulders the depreciation in prices principally falls -And tbe situation with us is rendered still more severe and trying from tbe fact that our foreign commerce and its dependent interests continue in a depressed ana crippled condition. In fact, the noble race of importing and shipping merchant", once the pride of our New England seaports, whose ships ploughed the waters of every sea, and poured into our markets the wealth of every clime, are now, alas ! falling into comparative decay. Our mercantile marine, swept from the ocean during the late war, involving a loss of millions of dollars of capital not evenly shared by <any other section of the country, shows no signs of I recovery from the blow. The high cost of labour, and the unfriendly' policy of the Government in imposing a tax on tonnage, and discriminating against ship-building materials, have prevented any attempt to repair that heavy loss. Our ship-yards all along the coast once resonant with the lively chorus of the axe and the hammer, are now silent and solitary as our graveyards. The Canadian Eeciprooity Treaty, which once brought a large and profitable trade to our seaboard markets including cheap lumber for ship-building, has been suicidally abrogated, and the raw pioducts of Canada and the Maritime Provinces, which were once sent here to exchange for our West India goods and home manufactures, now pass by us to other markets. This is a faint picture of the Eastern situation, and of what New England has been called to suffer on account of the war and its sequences "