On the Reduction of Armory Wages

REDUCTION OF WAGES.
We learn, with much regret, that peremptory orders have been received from the War Department, to reduce the wages of the artiz[s]ans employed in the Armory at Harpers-Ferry, twenty per cent.. This is a serious event to the working citizens of that place– indeed it may be termed a calamity. We have not been in the habit of saying much in favor of the present Administration, but really we feel confident that a re-consideration of this measure would move the authorities at Washington to a prompt and cheerful reversal of the order. We cannot believe that the President will suffer so large a body of useful and meritorious men to be reduced to a condition of absolute and fruitless drudgery.

There are some considerations which, if presented to the proper department, (and we have no doubt the worthy superintendent will not fail to present them,) we feel convinced would have the proper effect. We will allude to one, which ought to itself be effectual. For twelve years, (with the exception of the last,) Harpers-Ferry has been most severely scourged with malignant fevers, and many of the workmen have been so enfeebled by the disease, that their means thereby so much curtailed, that almost one-fourth of their earnings have been required to pay physicians’ and apothecaries’ bills. We have seen their houses look like hospitals, and their grave-yard daily freshened by some new mound of earth. We have lived among them– know their real condition– and would violate our own feelings, did we not raise a voice on their behalf. Though the last season was healthy, yet the situation is always a precarious one; and this stroke, which comes at a moment when their hopes were just renovated, now falls upon them like the leaden weight of affliction, without a mitigating feature. We trust the President will himself lend an ear– a patient ear– to the circumstances.