The Express.
London, England, 1862-12-25 00:00:00

PROVINCIAL SHARE MARKETS.

LIVERPOOL, DSO. 14.—thiles to-day :—London and North
Western, 105—Rona Pastern and Dover, 1161—Irie, 425--Santbre
and Mame, 101.
M DSC. !e.—The market was 'quiet. end prices
stea Great Pastern, MIS I—Great Luxembourg, 14 1-16—Great
NortNien A, IWl—Orest, Ship, Os. 9d. 6a 6th—Greet Western eg
Cansda,l3l-14118—Oreat Weetern,o9l—Lancsaldre and Yorkshire,
10111 9—Aanchester and County Bank, 11 p —Mancleger, Med-
ial, rand Lincolnshire, 401—New York and Brie. 431—North
Staffordshire. Mt d.—South Partern, ssi, s—Ditto, 41 peril cent.
aged, 1025—Senibm and Lancashireerp and Rotterdam.
71—San Paulo, paid up. !Si lnsurance. 1.16 p
Bllansasam, IWO. Bs.—The sales today were of /Orman-
ham Canal, at 901 Birmingham Banking Company shares, at
161 ; Birmingham Joint Stock Bank (Limited), Sf ; and Britannia
ISMS', AM. South Staffords closed, 11 to 111 y; Birmingham Gas,
144, Mayen; Staffordshire Gel. 100, burrs ; Metropolitan wagon
buyers
iotroTiOrbtWeeer'ximtVied olithel'other share market., the
ham Stock Exchange will be closed on Friday and Saturday after
autanim-day, and reopened for businest on Monday, the 881 k
Id. ho list will, therefore, be published this week.

The CONDI:WNW MUILDDRER OCEOLD.—WiIIiILIN
Oekold. the old man easideuseed for executioo at tie leas
wises for the murder of hie wife at Oldbury; continues to
exhibit a calm demeanour, and pays special attention to
the ministration of the chaplain, the Rev. J. Adßeece.
As yet an intimatioe bee lime received from the secretary
of state, and unless a reprieve be granted the dread sen-
tence will be carried out on Friday week, the second day
of the new year. It remains to be seen whether three
persona who have usually expressed abhorrence at capitol
punishment will memorialise the Home Secretesy on the
matter.— Worcester Chronicle.
A Cosnacrenierrio PassErr.—The United Cooke
Pension Society have made a monster plum pudding, to be
presented to the Leoreakire operatives. The authorities of
Marylobnoe Union lent one of their large boiler.. The
dimensions of the mould were 3ft. tin. in depth, Mt. lin.
over top. 21t. gin. in bottom, 10ft. 211 n. in circum-
ference in top, and Bft. 4in. in circumference at bottom.
The ingredients were 13016. of currants, 130Ib. of sultanas,
21016. of flour. 1:30Ib. of suet, 80th. al peel, 80th. of sugar,
1,040 eggs, 8 gallons of ale. 41b. mixed spice, lib. of ground
ginger—gross weight about 900th. The pudding will be at
the Amber Tavern, Olisapsids, on Friday, and roman wilt
Monday following, to be promoted on Nay Yeer'rday.
DESPATCH Or AIIIIRICAN AND CANADIAN Mena.
—Yesterday, the Lamm steamer City of Washington wan
despatched from the Mersey for New York, with mails feu
the United States., together with passengers, cargo, he. To-
day (Thursday) the Noetreel Oesaa Steamship Cowpony's
Ammer Nova Booties will leave Liverpool for Talked
with mails for Canada and the United Stake. Os Ms
day the British and North American Royal Mail Steamship
Company's steamer Africa will be despatched trout the
t% for Baotou, with mails for the United Nato. bes-
at the Liverpool Peet-office will be for this
somplion of lettere, ha, until 10 a.m., and NA
till 8.30 p.m. without, and with late tees of one pansy tilt
L3O p.m.
• Simla raex svu.—This applies to the 160.
.I.o2ATweeters corralled by Alfred Webb Mile% WIN= eati
IL
ia 73 13eoo etre* Ream erequen,

LANCASHIRE AND THB COTTON FAMINE.

(From All the Pear Round.)
There are nu more important considerations con-
gested with the misfortune than those which are connected
' the employment question. The oompuleory inactivity,
which lays "its heavy mace" on these once busy men and
women, is not the saddest element in the whole of this sad
Whir. Ws hardly know what want of employment is, to
mesehmited permits. It is bad enough for the educated,
seal sassy are the expedients which those who need not
reek are driven to in order to get through their time ; what
mart it be to those who have no money to spend in seeking
ortractioss outside themselves, and no resources within

,
liannelves to fall back upon! In such oues the mind preys
we itself, sad two or three ideas are dwelt upon Ulcer
wetly. Of all the lad sights which meet one at every turn
k these cotton towns, than is warmly anything much more
dielresaing than to see en able-bodied man hanging about
Dia rained home, listless, dispirited, and with nothing
Me do. Then there is the danger of this inaction
U some oases becoming habitual. When it is of no
me to get np in the dark, and when no object is
sittaivable by doing so, why should a man bestir himself at
illie usual time l How easy to get oat of the habit of early
shag under these circumstances, how hard to return to it.
The importance, then, of providing work for the im-
mure numbers of factory hands who are out of employment

- .
am by oo passibility be over-estimated. Menu of employ-
ment are Dot wanted here by way of a labourteet, but u

laag entirely emeential to the well-being of the people.
mat is the nature of that employment to be For many
bras of labour these men are unfitted by their bringing up

aria previous way of life. Out-door labour, and indeed hard
masa' work of all kinds, they are manifestly unfit for.
Asything, again, that would imply their removal to distant
paean would be liable to objection. We are creatures of
eastom, and go best in our habitual grooves. The hands
belonging to a particular mill will be, of all human beings,
those most wanted on that mill when the day comes for the
machinery to be set a-going again. Unless such changes
fake piece in human affairs m it would be idle to contem-
plate, there is no doubt that those mills will be set a-going
again, and then all these people will be wanted once more.
This crisis once over, there will be a great revival of the
MOOD trade, and grand times again for lAncashire.
Men, therefore, have been set to work at different
trades, for which they have in many eases displayed con-
eiterable aptitude ; they have bean employed—pertioularly
the superior clam of them, such as book-keepers and over
lookers in posts connected with the administration of
Nisei ; and large numbers have been induced to take this
opportunity of getting themselves educated, and spend their
loan of compulsory leisure at school. As for the women
sad girls, it is easier to find suitable occupation for them
Man for the men ; most women's work being of the seden-
tary sort, and something akin to the ordinary employment of
ille factory-girL Among the good things which will result
tram this very disaster in Lancashire—and we may hops
Mot many good things will result from it—not the least will
be the advance of all them women and girls in a knowledge
of the use of the needle—a kind of knowledge in which they
were singularly deficient
I went into one room at Blackburn in which not is than
400 girls and unmarried women were sitting working at
soadlework. In the same boilding was a room where a
group of girls were working at straw-plaiting, and bad
picked up the art with wonderful quickness and dexterity.
In other rooms were more than a hundred monied women,
who were all provided with a comfortable warm whim,
where they were kept employ( I, and wheel they earned 2s.
a week. All there claws are under the superintendence of
ladies; but I saw others at Manchester which were over-
biked by monitors chosen from among the girls themselves,
which seemed also to be working admirably well. In one
of these a girl seated on a table was reading aloud to the
rest while they worked, or knitted. It was some simple
tale of a religions tendency, but which was listened to with
absolute eagerness. Some of them girls are rough and un-
mannered, and I heard that a marked improvement had
leas effected in their conduct since, in attending these
glares, they had mingled with, and observed, the ladies
who superintend them.
Acre ! must mention a want which those whohave or •
gnaw' these sewing-classes feel 'my much, and which I
hope only needs to be known to be supplied— the want of
needles and pins. It is difficult to make the young girls
careful of them, and great 'umbers are broken and lost ; a
fact in sonic degree attributable, no doubt, to the inexpr
risme of the embryo-needlewommi. It would save many
. .

pounds to the fund, if some benevolent individuals who may
seed this, would make collections of pins and needles, and
forward them to the Relief Committee, especially philan-
thropical manufacturers of such articles in the good town of
Birmingham.
It is easier to provide sedentary occupation for women
than for men. Of all the experimente made with a view of
meeting this difficulty, the most satisfactory appeared to be
those of an educational kind. Everything that keeps men
buy, that makes them bandy, and enables them hereafter
to be mole uaefal to their familee, is good. I law boys at
work at tailoring, mounted on a counter in professiosal
style with their legs craned under them. I saw men at
work as joiners, fitting up benches and doing other simple
esrpantors' jobs uncommonly well ; indeed, the way in
which they mortiosd in the joints, and calculated their
distances, was astonishing to auy one acquainted with the
difficulties of amateur carpentering. Others engaged in
abos•mendiog had completely mastered all the difficulties of
securing the sole to the " uppers," and who doubtless were
even fully acquainted with all the mysteries of the " welt."
OM, good as all this is, and in ever► way reassuring, it ap-
pears to me that these classes—educational, too, in a certain
way—were lea important, and lees interesting, than than
which were intellectually educational..
' '

The echools, whose benches and desks are occupied by I
rows of grown-up men and grey-headed students, are full of
Interest. Late indeed have some of the hoary pupils wan-
dered for the first time into the groves of Academe. In
see of the schools no less than three hundred and eighty
nags of all ages are assembled. As you glanced down the
line of faces the scene was not a little touching. Yon saw
men clasping their bald beads, es if to keep them from
splitting over sums in addition ; you saw some helping
each other ; you saw others who, for their superinr attain-
ments probably, had beeu aelected as monitors. __ad some-
time, you saw men, young, strong, energetic, 6.%.5g their
whole capacity to what they were about, aiming at
higher things than their neighbours as they felt them-
selves stronger on the wing, and laying, perhaps, then
and there—as they tasted the sweetness of the first sips of
knowledge, and were taught to think and reason—the seeds
=future greatness. I saw one young fellow of this sort
who was working a problem of Euclid on his slate. These
were not nieu for whom it was necessary that monitors
should be provided, part of wham duty it was to keep them
awake. Yet this was one of the duties of the monitors,
sleep not being allowed in school-hours, and brain-culture
baying a tendency to produce somnolency to some con-
stitutions.. These old boys are good boys, and the super-
intendent of this very school of which I am speaking told
me there had been no insubordination during the whole six
weeks that it had been in operation. Old boys, indeed !
There was a inau there efty-seven years old, and this was
the first time he had ever been in a school!
That same superintendent told me that the ordinary
theory that boyhood is the best time far learning by no
means corresponds with the results of his experience,
but that it appeared to him that men learned more quickly
than boys. This is slimily to be comprehended. The boy
approaches hie task, not of his own free-will and feeling,
but rather in ► spirit of vicious •ntegonism and determina-
tion to profit by it as little as poseible. The man
some, to his lemon willingly ; he wants to know
a thing which it will tell him, to ask • ques-
tion which the book will answer, and so as the book
answers be li Acne and lays up what he bears as so much
pined towards the attainment of that object which his
whole soul is in earnest to reach.
Awit; the advantages which we may look for as likely to
=erne, iu after time, from the great cotton failure of '62,
will be the acquirement by the men of habits of studying
together and helping each other, and those habits may be
presen e I even when the distress which brought the thing
about is a thing of the past. It is a very great thing fur
all the women to get a knowledge of the use of their
pestles. Such knowledge cannot fail to be useful to
them hereafter. It is a good thing spin for the
masters and the am to be brought into familiar
seated, and for the employed to be able to
see that the employer takes a real interest
. b his well-being, end does not look upon him as simply part
of the machinery of big trade. Perhaps in future difficul-
t= between masters and men, the memory of hied offices
Illedered daring the "bad time," may come in to the react=
sad help to make peace between them,
It is • happy thing that the tendency which existed in the
iodise days of the cotton tansies to throw doubt on the
esemeity of a general land to which all England shwa

subscribe, is lees heard of now. Theory "lake the poor•
rate is less heard lately. Thb weight of that irresistible
&clamant that just in proportion as you raise the poor-rate
you reduce the number of those who can pay it, is beginning
obe felt, and we ass that to impose a tax which that
dam, the small trader, and shopkeepers, could by no
*bility pay, would do very little towards supplying the
Node so urgently required. It has been well mid that the
peculiar industry which is carried on in Lancashire has
tended to relieve the parishes in other parts of England,
. .

by taking away large ioatelmileta of their poor pepulaaion

- _
and settling them on its own townships.
Such wholesale distress u that in Lancashire, so widely
spread, so long motional, is beyond the reach of townships
or boards of guardians, or any purely local machinery. And
the demand upon our charity is likely to be a long-continued
one. An attack of disease so sharp and serious as this which
has fallen upon the cotton trade, is likely to be followed by
a convalescence which will not be the affair of a day or two,

but rather of many weeks and months. It le not improbable
that, when the news shall reach us that the American diffi-
culty is near to its solution, some of as will rush to the
oonclusion that the Lancashire difficulty is over too, and

that our help is no longer needed there. Such a conclusion
would bea very false one. After 'settlement with America
shall have taken plane, an interval of three or four months
must elapse before the mills can be got into thorough work-
ing order.
The question—how far the millowners of Lancashire
have done their duty in the present crisis, has been much
diseased. There is too prevalent an impression abroad
that all millowners and manufacturers are millionaires,
that their works are on an enormous scale, that their profits
are equally enormous, that they live in gorgeous palaces, and
in • luxury of which Londoners can form no idea. It is
doubtless true enough that • great many of these Lanca-
shire manufacturers have made very large fortunes, and that
some of them live in wasiderable luxury. These are the
men we hear of, and these have come to be looked upon as
fair specimens of what the cotton trade does for those who
follow it as • mesas of acquiring wealth and distinction.
Absorbed in contemplation of the riches of the cotton lord;
we have been apt to overlook another class, who are very
largely represented in Lancashire. These are the manufac-
turers in a small way, the men of little or no capital, the
men whom aoy mischance of the present kind knocks over
almost as utterly as it does the mill-hands themselves.
As I was wain down a certain street in one of the cotton
towns, in company with a gentleman well acquainted with
the place and its inhabitants, • young man with rather a
careworn and abalone look pseud us. "Do you see that
gentleman ?" asked my companion. "Two or three
years ago he was pommel of • sum of 25,0001. ; the cotton
trade was then in • very flourishing state, and he in-
vested the whole of it in the building of a mill and
fitting it up with machinery. From the time that the
factory was complete, there has been nothing but adversity
in connexion with the trade, and now his 'mill is standing
idle, his money brings him in no interest, he has hie ma-
chinery to keep in order, and his ground-rent to pay—what
am • man in such a position do for the poor factory-hands?

Take another use which is by no means an
one. It will sometimes happen that a man who bee risen,
by being a good workman, to the rank of overlooker, or to
some superior post, will manage in time to save a good little
sum of money—say, five hundred pounds, or six hundred
pounds. A machipery-maker gets to hear of this, and,
lending for the man, proposes to him to start a mill.
He gives him credit for the machinery, and the cotton-
merch•nt gives him credit for the raw material ; the five
hundred pounds or six hesdred poundsare wanted to set the
thing going. It is evident that this is altogether • venture,
• speculation which may or may not turn out well. If
times be good, the man who is thus set up in business goes
o• prospering, and by degrees, though no doubt very slowly,
gets out of the original entanglement, pays for his machinery
sad cotton, and at last makes money. Bat all this takes
time, and if any thing happens while the proms is ping
es, what becomes of oar millownen?
In the season of extraordinary prosperity, • few years ago,
the cotton trade was so good, and held out such strong al- I
lurements to those who were Is a hurry to making a forty's,
that all Norte of people rushed into it, bent on profit by the
chance of the moment. It is probable that many of them
got to work just es that wooderfe, tide began t 3 ebb.
Where are those men now? Depend upon it we make •
mistake when, as we steam through these districts, we note
the mighty chimneys on each aide of the way, and assume
that each one of them is • sort of alchemist's furnace in
which the men of Lancashire are turning tufts of condo
in to hers of gold.
As to the real millionna,ree, the men who have pros-
pered, and whom the labour of the mallards has really
profited, I believe they are in the main doing their duty,
and that many of them are doing more than their duty,
and making such sacrifices as one cannot hem of unmoved.
There are exceptions, no doubt, and great is the contempt
with which these are spoken of by the more open-banded.
But the exceptional cases are found more rarely among the
actual millownen and manufacturers, than among those
who have made money in a lees hazardous manner by the
sale of the finished article. Two other classes are Mud
up with this particular industry, concerning whom it may
be questioned whether they have come forward with such
liberality as might be fairly expected of them ;
namely, the men of Liverpool, who have made
enormous fortunes by dealing in the raw material, and
who have profited in no ordinary degree by the recent
panic ; and theiground landlords, who own Lancashire pro-
perty, and whose land has been increased incalculably in
value by the chance which caused it to be the locality
chosen as most convergent for the formation of a cotton
colony. From these two claws the seferers in Lancashire
have a right to expect liberality.
The sum of 130,0304 raised recently in one sum among
the Lancashire people alone is only an item in the long list
of contributions which has been furnished by the people of
this locality. Nor are the money contributions which can
be distinctly set forth in subscription lists the only or the
most valuable reinforcements which the men of Lancashire
have brought to the great work of keeping starvation and
misery at bay. No doubt it is a good thing to hand over •
large sum of money to the relief fund, and no doubt the
man who does so is helping the cause well ; but what shall
we say to those who, at a continue! loss, are keeping mills
going, and are buying cotton at the present high prices,
knowing that it will one day be greatly deteriorated in value?
I attended • meeting at Manchester at which some par.
tinders of the private benevolence of many of the manufac-
tories firms came out. I all quote one of these instances.
A certain mill gives employment to about eleven hundred
hands, and during the last year and three-quarters his
worked, on an average, forty-two hours per week. During
that year and three-quarters, the actual loss sustained
by that firm Ins been 12,9851., and in this account
not one penny is charged for interest on capital or
deterioration of machinery: the value of the plant being 80,0004
If the works had been entirely stopped during the period
named, the expense woe'd have been, for rent, taxes, coals,
and wages, 6,4301., thus showing a loss, through working,
of 6,5551., or 721. per week. During this period there has
been paid in wages to the workpeople the sum of 33,9661.
Out of eleven hundred hands there have not been twenty
applications to the parish for relief. Besides all this, the
principal and inner partners have contributed to the distress
fund 8001. between them. The same speaker who gave these
particulars mentioned a dozen similar instances, the figures
of which are reported in the Manchester newspapers of
Thursday, the 20th of November. I think I cannot do
better than extract them :
A. feeds his hands, 900 in number, at a met of 801. per
week, or 4,1601. per annum. B. has from 1,000 to 1,100
kande, and gives, in money sod provisions, 1101. per week,
and 241. weekly to a sewing clam This equals 6,9681. per
year. The schooling of 42 boys is also paid for, and
money is given to the support of many old superan-
nuated hands. C. bas expended for his workpeople—
cub, 1.3401.; bread. 2201.; coals, 481.; total, 1,6081. D.
has 2,000 hands, and entirely employs his idle work-
people. E. has from 1,800 to 2,000 hands; gives •
daily dinner to the whole ; has taken their clothes
out of pawn ; has provided much fresh clothing ;
and has given, in addition, 1,0001. to the general
fund. (Cheers.) F. gives, in addition to his subscription
to the central relief fund, 201. per week to the Provident
and another society; furnishes coal and food to 700 hands.
No cottage rents have been taken since the mill stopped ;
330 children an sent to school at the expense of the em-
ployer, who pays for them 3d. per head per week. G.
gives 51)1. per month to the fund, and in addition pays wages
equal to 2301. per week to his own bands. H. pays to his
lands 130/. per week, in addition to large subscriptions to
the general fund. I. (a small concern), with limited means,
gives from 101. to 201. per week for clothing. J. has
a/fanged to spend 10,0001. amongst the workpeople as
required, besides !ongoing their rent. K. is speeding
11100 f. weekly in relieving the wants of their work.
1,. gives 5001. to the general fund, and has given in
ilia, in small sunny to workers upwards of 1,6001., aid has