The Express.
London, England, 1862-10-17 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 17, 1862.

THE DISTRESS IN LANCASHIRE.

(►sow on arscia. coansronion)
MANOIDEITER. OCT. 14.
I must again revert to the general statement
that the distress at present existing in Manchester
is in Many respects unlike that which weighs upon
the surrounding towns and villages, in order to set
in a clear light the peculiar diffiett/ties with which
both poor-law boards and relief committees there have
to contend. The operative poptlation of the city
is far more miscellaneous than that of the country.
In moat places of this district it is possible
to divide the whole working class into two
sections—the natives of this and the adjoin-
ing counties, and the Irish. Immigrants from
other parts of England are rare ; and, where
they exist, soon assimilate themselves, even
in dialect, to the mass of the population.
But Manchester not only has its crowds
of Irish workpeople, but, by the attraction
which cities of a certain magnitude always seem to
exercise, has drawn to itself natives of every
county of England and Wales. The other night
I heard the particulars of 130 cases of distress,
from the lips of the applicants themselves, at a
district relief board, and hardly a dozen times
were my ears saluted by the familiar sounds of
the Lancashire dialect. Then, pauperism, especi-
ally when it has grown to a certain size, possesses
a fatal faculty of self-propagation : where paupers
are few, and to receive the parish help carries with
it a stigma of unthrift, if nothing worse, .men will
struggle to keep their names off the books ; where
pauperism lives and grows with unblush-
ing front, there is • great temptation
to dispirited and unlucky men, to become
from payers, receivers of the rates. What can it
matter if one more solitary dweller in the wilder-
ness of. streets, with few friends whose esteem
he cares to forfeit, should quietly sink into
the ever-widening waves of dependence ? And so
it conies about that in Manchester it is very diffi-
cult to draw the line, in such times as these between
the respectable factory operative, reduced to
poverty by this undeserved calamity, and the occa-
sional pauper, not unwilling to subside into com-
plete reliance upon the workhouse; Ido not mean
even to hint that the former class has no existence
in Manchester ; 1 know that there, as else-
where, may be found noble examples of
that patient self-dependence which has won
so high a mead of praise. But it is a
fact that the factory hands of Manchester bear
a far higher reputation for manual skill than for
mpral conduct, and that in all the essential qualities
of citizens they are inferior to the same class in the
county.

There are, indeed, wasp reasons why it should be
so. I need not enumerate the peculiar disadvan-
tages and temptations of great cities, nor trace the
process by which close and filthy streets, crowded
dwellings, the possibilities of self-indulgence, the
contagion of crime, the difficulty of harmless recrea-
tion, the absence of brightening and retiniug asso-
ciations, produce the peculiar .form of reckless
wretchedness which is characteristic of such human
anthills as London, and Manchester, and Glasgow.
Any of your readers who kuow what are the hindrances
in the way of successfully dealing with the ordinary
misery of these cities will well enough under-
stand what difficulties we now have to meet, when
the tide of pauperism rises higher every day, and
every day engulfs some of those who have, uptothis
time, resolutely held themselves above it. In every
district the dietress extends beyond the factory
handy to those whom they employ—sempstresses,
charwomen, nurses, tailors, shoemakers, small
shopkeepersof everykind ; batin Manchester, where
there is always a large class of unsettled workers
hanging upon the outskirts of the labour market,
and never finding more than precarious employ-
ment, the proportion of candidates fur relief, who
never were inside a mill, is far above the average.
Then in a great town, the factory system does
not operate, in one important particular, as in
a small one. In the latter every mill handisknovrn.
In all probability he has worked at one factory
ever since he could work at all. Even if it has
changed bands more than onoe, he may have woven
upon the same looms, he may have watched the
same spindles turn, and would think himself ,
wronged if they were given to another. Ile has
some relations of kindness with his employer ;
managers and overlookers, at least, know where he
lives, and how many children he has ; he lives
under the eye of a minister of religion, even if he
do not attend church or chapel, and has a character
to lose. The standard of self-respect maintained
by &Lancashire factory hand is a very strange one,
for it does not always include sobriety, or even
chastity ; but, for all that, it exists, and is better
than none at all. But in a great town there is
little or nothing of what I have described. The
people are mere units in a countless population.
Nobody of • higher rank knows them, and they
know nobody. When iu better times, or in a sea-
son of peril like this, a benevolent person takes
charge of a district, he has uo natural ties to the
people whom he visits ; and a sympathy, which
runs up one side of a street, but is forbidden to
cross it, is apt not to be very hearty even within
its own boundaries. Every one who has served an
apprenticeship to this kind of work knows what an
advantage is gained by standing to the poor, whom
it is desired to benefit, in • relation
which is neither vague nor artificial ;
and how much larger an opportunity of
influence is enjoyed by the employer who actually
gives work, the clergyman whose sermons are really
listened to, or the doctor whose physic is taken,
than by one who appears merely as a professional
friend and general adviser. The real and personal
connexion which in the country binds together the
operatives with their master and those of their
neighbours who are higher in the social scale al-
ready feeds their self-respect, and were its value as
a means of popular education better appreciated ,
might prove to be the source of still greater be-
nefits. The absence of any such connexiou in the
city helps to produce a clam of workpeople whose
tendency it is to, swell inure and inure the ranks of
the disreputable a•d the vicious.
In Manchester, then, both the guardians and the
relief boards have to do with an exceptional popu-
lation ; a fact which at once explains the peculiar
difficulties of poor-law administration. What these
are in the district generally may be summed up in
few words. The system is adapted for ordinary
times and circumstances—it has to be suddenly ex-
panded and modified to meet what is extraordinary.
The process of transition is neither easy nor brief.
' Impatient benevolence, which always sees its way,
is ignorant of many obstacles, and wilfully blind to
many more, raises a frantic cry against red-taps if