DEPRESSION OF BUSINESS

13%

Publishing Committee · Rochester, N. Y. · Dec 26, 1854

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 6, No. 19.

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DEPRESSION OF BUSINESS.

PRINTING.—Experienced men say they have not known so great a depression of the Printing business for many years. Many of the leading offices have discharged two-thirds of their employes, and have reduced the remainder to two-thirds of a day's work. A large number of journeymen printers have left the City—others are working a day or two in a week as substitutes in the offices of the daily journals; but many more are totally destitute of work. The scale of prices, as established by the Union, has not been materially departed from as yet, that we can learn, although employers say that a considerable reduction must take place unless business improves, and that right speedily.
DIFFERENT TRADES.—From different parts of the country the prevailing cry of "hard times" is echoed and re-echoed far and near.
In Detroit, Michigan, several hundred workers in iron have recently been thrown out of employment.
In Buffalo, between 300 and 400 men in the iron business have been thrown out of work. In Albany, provisions are cheap, and but little distress has yet manifested itself. The Saratoga and Sackett's harbor Railroad, after $150,000 has been expended upon it, and debts to the amount of 250,000, been contracted, has been discontinued, throwing out of work some 5,000 laborers, who are said to be suffering greatly in the northern wilderness. The snow is upon them, and it is feared that many, particularly women and children, will die of cold and starvation.
In New Jersey, the same stagnation is apparent. The Burlington Gazette says:
"A large proportion of the hands at Cooper's Rolling Mill, at Trenton, were discharged a few days since, in consequence of the proprietors turning their attention to another branch of iron work. On Saturday last, a man fell down in the streets of Trenton from faintness and exhaustion caused by hunger. He had not tasted food for three days. At Newark, the manufacturers are complaining, and at Plainfield, where hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of clothing is annually made, there is but little doing. We understand that the shoe-trade is also suffering. It is well known that at least one-tenth of the inhabitants of our city are engaged in the manufacture of ladies' shoes, and that tens of thousands of dollars are paid out in the course of the year to binders and journeymen. Prices are lower, and work is less abundant than it was a few months since."
Pennsylvania, suffers no less than her sister States.—N. Y. Tribune.