THE DISTRESS IN THE MANUFACTURING DISTRICTS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 290, 24 November 1862, Page 5

THE DISTRESS IN THE MANUFACTURING DISTRICTS.

C-brom the Home Neivs.) "The Cotton Famine Committee/ says the Times, " has organised its executive and commenced operations, and there is every hope that distress will be allayed for the present; but, notwithstanding the generosity of a first impulse, we doubt whether these gentlemen have fully realised the probable duration of this distress, and what will have to be done before it 13 over. They must prepare for something scriou3—more serious than they have to meet at present. One subscription fund is soon spent. If the American struggle goes on—and it is impossible to tell how long it will go on—more money will be wanted, and people will begin to talk ot appealing to the Exchequer and of,more appeals to the public;' but before either of these appeals is listened to', all eyes will be fixed on Lancashire, itself, to see what cotton riches will give to relieve a cotton famine. Yfc shall not let the poor people starve before our eyes, that is quite certain; whoever has to keep them, they are safe; but before we go to the public, or the national Exchequer, we have a right to expect a good deal more from local capital than it has yet given. If Lancashire has not an exceedingly wealthy class of landowners and millowners, the idea of wealth has been ali along a great mistake in the world, and people have been in a dream upon tin's subject, indulging an Oriental fancy and rising words to which there was no corresponding realit*. We will, however, gladly allow all the Lancashire landowners and manufacturers to talk to themselves and to think of themselves as poor men, provided they will when it is wanted, as it probably soon will be give very large round sums to the Cotton Famine Relief Fund. They have not yet given those sums, though some have given respectable instalments. But it cannot be said that we have hitherto .anything like a proportion between the sums contributed to the relief of distressed labour and the enormous gain which has been made ot that labour."

A correspondent from Preston gives the following picture of the external aspect of the town :—

A casual visitor would b& slightly puzzled, on first entering this district, to realise the correctness of the statements now so continuously made about the intensity of the distress which prevails ; and if nothing beyond a mere fleeting external view \verc obtained, ifc 13-probable that the only strong impression made would be, that the picture had been over-coloured—that the state of affairs had been exaggerated—that keen-eyed penny-a-liners had distorted the truth—and that scribes with a passion for " piling the agony" had been indulging in gross hyperbole. And the casual visitor, if he went no further than this, would have nothing to disturb the equanimity and strength of his convictions. Certainly the dark columns of smoke, which ordinarily even dim the light of noonday, are not perceptible, and to the trained eye their absence is demonstrative of some commercial catastrophe ; but in other respects there is nothing directly and peculiarly ostensible to either arrest the attention of the superficial or convince the mind of the wonderseeker, At daytime the streets are alive as usual ; the leading thoroughfares are thronged as of old ; the squares are redolent of aristocracy; and the walks and public promenades are freighted with afternoon beauties and old-fashioned loungers. But all this is a mere delusion, and one of the cleanest of " white-washed sepulchres." Far away in the town—deep down in the back alleys, and the dark courts, and the foul reeking passages—there*is something more terrible, and people who live in them are slowly passing through a fierce, bitter, baptism of poverty too deep and too strong for human words. The outside may flatfnt, and wheel, and grow rotund with content, but the inside, the great heart of life, is beating up heavily against the sides of misery, and anguish, and want. And yet, after all, the people are confronting their trials and afflictions with a coolness and a self-possession alike astonishing and commendable.

The distress is by no means confined to the operatives. It falls heavily on the small ratepayer. The same correspondent supplies some facts:—

Shopkeepers especially are amongst the class of persons who have a heavy burden to bear. In all the towns about here cotton manufacturing is the staple trade; the generality of the work people have a direcfc connection with the cotton business; the wages which are spent every week, the meat which is purchased, and the "clothes •which are obtained come, in the great majority of cases, out of the money of factory operatives; and when they are deprived of work, there is a general and consecutive stoppage. In Preston and Blackburn alone, the decrease in wages, in consequence of the present panic, cannot be less, I am informed, than L 14,000 or L 15,000 per week. The loss of this sum to all the various classes, .of shopkeepers tejls a wonderfully painful tale, and produces an inconceivable amount of monetary embarrassment throughout middle-class society. The distress increases weekly at a prodigious rate. We give one example. The same thing is going on in all the manufacturing districts. In the union of Preston, according to the statistics furnished to the guardians, on one day there were 12,970 persons in the receipt of parish relief, and the sum expended in a week upon them amounted to LSI 6 15s lid. In comparison with the previous week the increase was— ia parsons 432, and in money LB3 4s Bd. As compared irith the corresponding period of last year, the increase is tremendous. A.t that time the persons numbered 2,468. and the sum expended was L 123 153 sd. There has therefore been an increase of 10,502 in persons,.and L 693 0s Gd in money.

Mr. Farnall's report to the Manchester Central Relief Committee, for the week ending September 20, of the state of the distressed operatives in the 24 unions affected by the cotton famine shows that in them 149,612 persons are receiving parochial relief, while in 18 of the districts 110,000 are relieved by local committees. This shows an increase of 107,588 persons reeeving relief over the number in the corresponding week of last year, and of 4,810 over the number of the previous week. The total weekly cost of out-door relief in the 24 districts is L 8532.

A sum of Lssoohas been received in aid of the distress in Lancashire from Victoria, Melbourne, and a like amount from New South Wales.