Transcript
Transcript for "Emigration," Frontier Guardian, 26 June 1850, 2
We feel highly gratified to see our emigrants so well fitted out as they are. They generally have two good yoke of oxen, and from one to three yoke of cows to each wagon. The average freight of each wagon is 1850 pounds. The average amount of bread stuffs to the person, old or young, is one hundred and twenty-five pounds--bacon, sugar, coffee, tea, rice, dried fruit, and other little necessaries in proportion.
To see a people who, three or four years ago, had to sell their all to get bread to last till they could raise it; and now see them with from one to four wagons each, with plenty of good team, thousands of sheep and loose cattle, horses, mules and machinery of various kinds; wagons all new and stock all young and thrifty, is gratifying in the extreme.
This people are naturally industrious; necessity has forced them to acquire this habit. Public frown upon a poor miserable lounger in our streets is so severe, that he is compelled to go to work or clear out. This is just as it should be. A lounger should be served as drones are served in the hive, or the vagrant law put in force against them.
It has been our aim continually to encourage industry, and inspire every able person to labor steadily and faithfully, in the most advantageous way, pointing out a field for every man to labor in. And it affords us unbounded satisfaction to behold the result in part. Between seven and eight hundred wagons well fitted out for the mountains, are gone from this point this year. May the Guardian ever continue to encourage industry and economy--to suppress vice and promote virtue --to exalt the honest and industrious,--and to scourge and abase the viscious, the idle, and such as are too short of good and redeeming qualities! And may those who love this stand which the Guardian has taken, subscribe for it themselves, and influence as many others to follow their example as they can. It is true that some have found fault with the strictness of our course, and pronounced us overbearing and tyrannical. But we have this consolation that such as find fault with us, are either idle and wish to live at the expense of others, that are always borrowing, begging, lounging, and never producing anything useful by their own industry and economy. They can sell whisky, and by it, corrupt the morals of society. They can gather pecuniary strength enough by this foul traffic to become very insolent and saucy, as least some of them; they can see every thing but the hook they are swallowing, which, one day, will pull them out of the water, and hold them up in the sun's rays to dry in the sight of all. All men living are now on the stage and are acting their part. Happy is he that chooses that part that will secure to himself the applauses of wise and competent judges!