The Express.
London, England, 1857-11-27 00:00:00

TO TUE IDITOI OP TOO TIMMS.

Sty—The tone of your articles on the threatened
and actual distress of the manufacturing population
so completely chimes in with my own feelings, that
I venture to address you on the subject. I wish
simply to relate my own experience about fifteen
years since. I was then a curate in a large manu-
facturing district. Our poor were fearfully destitute.
Our rates had been rained to such a sum as to render
many small properties untenable. On these grounds
we applied for and obtained a grant from the sum of
money which had been collected throughout the
nation for the relief of the distressed operatives.

We determined to husband our resources. Aided
by the most influential persons in the district, I
formed a committee of persons of all persuasions, re-
ligious and political. We obtained the use of the old
poorhouse, premixed a large iron boiler or copper, as
it was called, and set it up. We bought good
wholesome meat ; our butchers obtained it for us at
wholesale prices. Our neighbours right and left
gave ye garden vegetables, such as carrots, onions,
celery, Itc.; peas and barley were purchased. The
ladies of the place organised themselves into a cook-
ing committee, and we forthwith manufactured good,
wholesome, first-rate soup, savoury and palatable,
the very odour of which would have inclined you to
taste it, the taste of which would induce you to
taste again. Then we bought potatoes wholesale.
Thus prepared, we announced that we were ready
to receive applicants. Them we sat, the clergy and
laity, with our overseen, parish medical doctor,
Quaker guardian, and principal manufacturers. We
were united in oar object—the relief of the distrem
dour poorer brethren, and the relief of our own
rates. Our applicants came in ; it was astonishing
what we knew about them. One was a good, hard-
working fellow, with a large family; give him a
couple of quarts of soup and a peck of potatoes.
Another was a ne'er-do-weel, but his wife was
thrifty and his children hungry ; give them a quart
of soup or two, and a supply of potatoes. Somehow
or other, parson, master, doctor, overseer, or consta-
ble, we could give amongst us the history of every
one.

Well, our soup was good ; so good, the mothers
blessed us, and told us that they put a quart of
water to two quarts of soup and boiled it up, and so
made two quarts three. But the most remarkable
thing was how our soup grew, it was almost like
the widow's cake and cruse of oil. Contact with so
much misery roused our two committees, male and
female ; our pot received so many contributions it
kept boiling, with little money, all through the
dreary winter. Kind-hearted *manufacturers said,
" Nay, ye shan't eve ow- men soup for nought;
you make it, we will send our men for it, and pay
you for all you give them." 'Thus we relieved our
rates, fed our poor, and kept true hearted brave men
from the degradation of parish pay till times
grew better. And then, actually, we had a sum
in hand, which we distributed among the poor mo-
thers and children in warm clothes and good shoes.
I would not trouble you with this history of our pro-
ceedings, it was so common-sense like, did I not re-
member how different was the fate of some of our
neighbouring districts, though they were not so dis-
tressed sa ourselves. They spent their money reck-
lessly, like charity money. They made soup,
cheap stuff; and the poor, hungry thmigh theywere,
poured it into the gutters, grumbling and cursing.

The secret of our success was, that what we made
and what we distributed was good. We learnt, from
following the rule of doing to others as we would be
done by ourselves, that what was savoury and taste-
ful was likely to be healthful and really helpful.
We thus learnt what dietetical philosophers are only
now just beginning to discover. We uncovered the
thousand rills of charity among our neighbours
which only required a guide to direct them into a
common stream, and we were all astounded, when
the dismal days passed over, at how much was done
with so little foreign am, &e.,
A FORMER CURATE OF A MANU-
FACTURING DISTRICT.