LATEST AMERICAN GOSSIP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7515, 19 December 1885, Page 1 (Supplement)

LATEST AMERICAN GOSSIP.

[ITKOM 001 l OWN CORRESPONDENT.] San Fkancisco, November 24. DULL TIMES: WANT OF WORK. Tub Chronicle's onslaught on your humble servant has so much to do with my June letter to the Hekai.d that I think I cannot do better than answer that paper from the place whence tho alleged grievance came ; and at the same time I owe it as an imperative duty to always report the exact aud truthful condition of the times on car side, the Chronicle notwithstanding. That this paper has impugned my voracity in what I consider an unjustifiable manner I wish to prove. The objective and objectionable paragraph is the following : —" I never have known this city to be in such a bankrupt condition as it is. Wo are all ladies ami gentlemen of elegant leisure, waiting for something to turn up. Everything is cheap —labour, fruit, aDd sugar at minimum prices. Everybody holds on to his or her half-dollar, and no one thinks of paying their bills, simply because they cau't. It is funny, aotually. If a collector comes to the door, he says, 1 Here is a bill. S'pose you've no money ? I can't collect a cent,' aud goes away with a broad grin on his face. Scores of young men walk about town with their hands in their pockets, pitiful to see. If a situation appears in the advertising columns of a paper, even at the low rate of £5 per month, a hundred applications are received from boys, and even men of 150 years." This the Chroniole clipped from the Herald, and commented upon in no measured terms. When I wrote the letter in Juno, it was as I said precisely. We were in a measure bankrupt, if that word implies inability to pay our bills, and impossiblity to obtain work. On every side you could hear the same complaint, " We never knew anything like the times." I had applied to the proprietor of the Chronicle, who is an old friend of mine, for his influence to get a place for a mutual friend. " It is impossible," said he. "Times are so dull that all the merchants and the railroads are discharging instead of taking on hslp. I never saw duller times" (that meant outside the Chronicle, which knows no let or hindrance to the raking in of mouey ; but there is only one Chronicle, remember). This from the head of tho paper, and meanwhile that paper was publishing daily items about destitute families and uieu aod women who had taken their lives on account of their inability to obtain work. I had made earnest enquiries ere I wrote about the dreadful depression, and I did so from a pure motive. Numbers of my friends in New Zealand, and also people I Dever heard of, write to me from time to time, asking what the chances are out here for work ; and this induced me to write and tell them there was no work for our own people, let alone outsiders. It was last June I wrote thus. Now, mark you, the letter was returned here in September, when things were pioking up a little, and the Chronicle, in want of a new sensation, seized upon the trivial matter, instead of "letting sleeping dogs lie," and poured its unmerited abuse on my bead. It says, to begin with " It would seem idle to protest against this harsh treatment of our business interests, if it were not calculated to damage our credit in the Pacific isles and injure our growing trade in that region,and if it did not also afford a fair excuse for an inquiry regarding the actual status of our business affairs," which shows that the paper merely wanted an excuse" to boom the city, and goes on at length to show how much buil.ling is going on, how rich the banks are, and how readily people find employment, statistics

which oovered a column and a-half of the Chronicle's issue of October 9 th, and which, bear in mind, only related to the people who r hold tho money in their bauds. It is quite - true that Flood and other millionaires are 1 building enormous blocks, and that the banks are full of gold; quite true that there is plenty of money in San Francisco : the only . trouble is that it is not distributed equally, 1 or even in part so. While one set of men build great palaces for two or three persons to live in, whole families live in one or two rooms, and die of hunger. Even the Chronicle, which denies the truth of what I write, publishes the most distressing episodes day by day. When that paper took so much trouble to go round to the rich - j firms for statistics to controvert that one little paragraph in the Herald, it failed to 1 interview the storekeepers, doctors, lawyers, artists, and other of the smaller fry, who 1 declare that in 20 years' experience in this city they never saw it depressed as it has been for six months. Other reliable proprietors of newspapnrs (and there are some even outside the Chronicle) declare they "never saw anything like it," and many of their best advertisers are compelled to break their yearly contracts from inability to pay. One doctor said to me, " I got so disgusted with staying in my office doing nothing that 1 closed it, aDd went the rounds of my other medical friends to make enquiries. Finding them preoisely in the same predicament, 1 felt considerably relieved." Lawyers are the same. There is the same complaint everywhere ; but women feel the times the hardest—those who are compelled to get their own living. Artists, of which the town is full, are obliged to close their studious, or teach for Is 5d a lesson. I have my own studio in illustration. Last year I made straight along £30 monthly on an average. This year, since June, this being November, I have made precisely £20 in all those months, My studio is oftentimes crowded day after day, and offers made mo of four bits (2s) a lesson, " because the times are so bad, we can't afford it," they say ; but I always decline to come down, so I go without. This is only a sample cane I could quote scores of similar ones. As to men, they walk about with hands in their pockets, living God alone knows how. I know one gentleman who works for 2s a day, though he speaks three languages, and is a brilliant correspondent; but it is among the educated middle class that the poverty is fait. For such there is absolutely no work. True, as the Chronicle says, there are no mendicants or anything approaching a poor-looking person on the streets. Why '! Because the police allow of nonesuch. At least we are spared the sight of want, though it exists. When people who have been living comfortably are so reduced from falling off of work that they have to gradually sell and pawn their jewellery and plate to keep the wolf from the door, that 1 call bankruptcy ; but these people do not advertise the fact in the Chronicle, or even give their business away to its reporters, therefore the hundreds of cases of this kind are entirely unknown. OTHERS ACCUSKD. But I am not the only person whom the Chronicle has accused of wholesale lying. Judge Maguire, who is a man of probity, and correct in all his statements, has been severely censured by the same paper for having stated the exact state of affairs at a public meeting. He is Judge of the Superior Court, intelligent and discreet, and he would not be likely to utter anything false. He, however, has answered the Chronicle in their own pages, confronting its statement by statistics gathered from its pages from time to time. The Chroniulosays editorially that "if we want settlers from the East to (ill up our empty places, we ought to have sense enough to not defile our own nest." But we do not want settlers of the kind that are lured over by newspaper bosh and talk. Carloads of men come hero seeking work. They bring a little money, rest on it, and, when that is done, go round to the houses after nightfall for "something to eat." I have one of these young men now working about the house and garden for his food only. He says, "We hear so much of California through the newspapers and railroad agents that we leave all our connections and steady work in the East, because we think we are coming to a land of plenty, but we often find that if we go into the country to take up a bit of land, the birds are so poor on it they can hardly fly." Now, we don't want these men, as long as we have not sufficient work for our own people, and it is cruel to bring an influx of workmen into a city that cannot provide tor its own. At this moment you may see in some of the merchants' otlices and railroad depots a notice, ''No men wanted," in order to put an end to the never-ending applications. The street cars are tho lust resort of indigent gentlemen and mechanics ont of work ; and do you know that it takes large influence oven to become a conductor at the following cost: —£5 deposit paid down, until you leave, when, if not caught steali ing or otherwise misconducting yourself, it is returned. Meanwhile the conductor is that much out of pocket. Cap, strap, and grip cost £1 ss, and 12s always in your pocket for change. Now, few men have £6 17s to spare when "dead broke," yet this is the cost of going on the cars, and big influence to boot. I have been here ten

years, and certainly never felt it bo hard to live, taking into consideration that I have a grown family, with good and high influence, and yet have had one son without steady work for eleven months until lately, when it took four big politicians to pull the wires for a very indifferent job.

LISTS KEPT. The influential men have lists at their offices,. bearing hundreds of names of men out of work; but all have their own families to put in these positions, and, therefore, an outsider has little chance unless he is a man of extraordinary ability. It is computed there are at present 17,000 men unemployed, aDd I ask you why should the Chronicle dare to boom this city as a "prosperous" one? Not that I believe things will go on in this way; on the contrary, everything points to a better time for ISS6. This year we have suffered on account of short crops. The blessed rain, which has already set in, will no doubt give us a grand yield next year, and this will in Home measure make up for this year's pinching penury. There is no greater sin in my eyes than that of newspaper booming. Ten years ago I came over here, entirely led by the glowing accounts in a paper called the Resources of California, which led me to believe that any number of intelligent women could instantly jump into a golden living. I had five children and £30 when I landed, being without atfingle friend. Fortunately, I could do half a dozen things, one failing; but, had I not met one good woman who stood my friend, I should have starved to death, children and all, for the trouble is that, owing to false booming by the newspapers, people orowd in here, thinking there is an instantaneous opening for them, to fiud their mistake, because everything is overdone. In each block |of offices you will find a dozen doctors all in a row. Kvery second plate proolaims either a dentist or a doctor. Artists the same— you can pick them op by the score. Musicmasters are in the number of legion, and so on. Therefore, what. do we want with more of such a class, when our. own people are merely knocking out a bare living, and many not that True, you can live cheaply, but what is that if one can't earn anything ? A loaf at a cent is dear to those who have not that cent to pay. Concluding my talk on this head, I wish you to believe that I never write any accounts that will not bear investigation. We all know the value of newspaper "gush," and people are very apt to gush over their own country. For my part, having made America the land of my adoption, 1 surely should not have any object in running it down, which was quite wide of my thoughts ; but my advice to you all is, Don't come here to make a living until there is a living to be had. First let us put our own overorowded, unemployed young men aud women in positions, and then come over and try your luck if you will, but at present 1 would willingly send away my own sous where they could get deoent salaries. Everything is cut down. Will the Chronicle deny that? At the Mint a whole regiment of men and women have been dispensed with by way of retrenchment ; at the Custom House salaries are cut down. Some years ago an assistant bookkeeper got £20 or more a month ; now, if an office-boy is intelligent, he does the work at a salary of £4 to £6. If an Englishman comes here, he cannot enter a Government office, because he is an alien. If he has more grit than the rustling Yankee, he may get ahead of him, but I doubt it. You ask me if there are places for you. I answer, "No, deoidedly not— at least, at present." Silver Pen.