January 23, 1861, The New York Herald
The official reports of the Commissioners of Charities and Correction show that they have now under their charge, 8,777 persons as inmates of the city institutions, an increase of 465 over 1860, and of 850 over 1859 — corresponding periods. Statistics as to the condition of the outdoor poor are still more suggestive. Our reporters have ascertained that the distress among the laboring classes in this city is unprecedented. As many as twenty eight thousand persons, able and willing to work, are now idle. The superintendent of Outdoor Poor has received no less than ten thousand applications for coal during the last two or three weeks. The same official receives daily applications from mechanics who wish to be committed to the Workhouse. Beyond this there is of course an immense amount of suffering which is concealed through false pride and shame. Would it not be well for our republican friends, bank presidents and so on, who voted for Lincoln, to devise some plan for the alleviation of the misery which the political excitement consequent upon his election has caused in the Northern cities? In the South we find the negroes sleek, fat, comfortable and devoted to their masters. In the North the white slaves are walking about the streets with the alternatives of pauperism, starvation or crime. The contrast is not a very pleasant one for us, but it is absurd to deny that such is the state of things.