The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-11 00:00:00

ons times they pay litte attention to careful domes-
tic economy, and now that it is needed they have no
knowledge how to turn their scanty incomes to the
best advantage. If the money which they spend in
food was laid out to the best account, and they were
able to cook the materials so procured in the most
useful manner and without waste, their moneys
would go much further than they now do. An ex-
treme instance of ignorance in these respects was
exhibited by a poor girl at Preston who paid half
her earnings in rent and tried to keep herself alive
upon the remaining 15d. a week. This would have
been difficult with the best management, " but her
notions of economy were comprised in bread and
tea, and death by scurvy was the result of them."
The ordinary diet of the unemployed, as witnessed
by Dr. Buchanan, was almost exclusively vegetable ;
occasionally only they afforded a bit of bacon,
cheese, or butter, a herring, or, more rarely still, a
morsel of cheap meat.
" Bread constitutes the greatest part of their daily food.
Oatmeal or meal of Indian corn less commonly is the next
most usual food; made into porridge or into various sorts of
bread. To these a little butter or treacle is added general],
for the children when they cau afford it. Potatoes stand
next, being happily good, cheap, and generally popular.
Partly from want of utensils, partly from inexpertness, their
cooking gives no variety to these materials. Tea with
sugar, but usually without milk, is now the common drink.
In very few families can a proper amount of milk, even if
any at all, be bought for the children; they are put on the
same food as the adults at much too early an age."
After such a picture as this, it is satisfactory to
learn that, although animal food was so scantily
consumed in a solid form, the poorest usually buy.
ing none, yet, "in almost all towns there are soup
kitchens, where a quart of good meat soup is given
for a penny ;" that "in some few towns potato.hash"behadata
(locally called " bob sconce") " may
penny a pint," and that in Manchester and
eal
Salford public dining kitchens base been lately
established, where not only
and potatoes can be had for ansepx,trbeumtenals of l meat
fect that—" In
email
pay-
ment." The advantage of such establishments is
strikingly illustrated by the
ani-
mai food can be got for the same money that in the
ways a dinner containing about two ounces of
homes of the poor would only procure a dish of po-
tatoes or a basin of porridge."
As far as the better class of cotton workers were
concerned, there was at the time of this report but
little alteration as regarded the houses which they
c They were, as a rule, inhabiting the
a
iceaotiages of three or four rooms that they occu-
pied pin more prosperous times. There was among
them but little disposition to crowd together,
though often a married son or daughter came
back to live with their parents, in order to save
rant. Among the poorer classes, however, things
were worse. Many who formerly rented a two or
three-roomed cottage were obliged to content them-
selves with a single room, while others took a
stranger to lodge with the family. In the very
poorest class two families frequently occupied a
single room, one bed sufficing for the whole of each
family. The amount paid for rent varied consider-
ably in different towns, and even in the same town
according to the means and disposition of landlords.
The owners of single cottages, often poor persons, to
whose support the rent was a material contribution,
were obliged to bear rather hardly upon the tenants,
bat larger owners could afford to wait for their
tents, and as a rule they showed considerable libe-
rality. Distraint was rare, and not many cottages
were to be seen empty. The average of rent paid
was probably much less than half the usual amount.
Only in one town, Oldham, did the Relief Com-
mittees make a separate provision for the rent of
the people whom they were assisting, but as a rule
the committees regarded a portion of their grant as
applicable to this purpose, and arranged their allow-
ance with reference to that circumstance. Over-
crowding was distinctly on the increase, and had in
December reached a pitch fatal to cleanliness and
purity of air, and equal;y so to sexual delicacy.
In the very poorest cottages there was a further
reason for overcrowding, besides the desire to save
rent.

The ticket-seller, the luggage master, all the railway cffi-
dials, harbour towards you the same feelings an your cabman
d
or porter. They all eye you sorely, answer
you
leisurely
curtlyand
tartly. tartly. Nay, before they answer they stare at you
as if revolving in their mind what right you have to put a
a question, or what business it is of theirs to attend to it.
They have not the sharp, snappish, pedantic, dictatorial
tone of your French Jack-in-office, but neither have they
the rough-and-ready but good• humoured obliging English
way ot going to work. The faro is not down on your ticket;
you pay as you are bidden ; your luggage is not weighed ;
the charge is made at discretion. It may be all right, no
doubt. I was bidden to pay twice as much for say trunks
from Washington to Baltimore as I had paid between New
York and Washington—twice as much for the same weight
over hardly one third of the distance. I asked for explana-
tion, and was answered by a vacant supercilious look. Very
clearly inside the station the horse has the whip-hand of
his master. Your choice lies between travelling on such
conditions or travelling not at all.
Enter : you have been kept en queue at the ticket-
office; ycu have been penned up at the waiting-room as in
France, or at Smithfield ; but the bell rings, and this is the
way to the "cars." The cars, or railway carriages, are
long vans on railway wheels, *constructed to carry any
number of passengers from 60 to 100, disposed in seats, two
by two, with a gangway running the whole length between.
Theao cars are ail for one and the same class. Americans
travel on the footing of perfect equality. The crowd was
immense, as it always is at every hour, on every road, by
every conveyance in this marvelously stirring community.
I read in the pages of a recent good-natured English
traveller that "this promiscuous coming together of persons
of every description gave rise to no inconvenience; for the
same thing, happened here as on board the penny boats on
the Thames, where the shabby passengers, altogether en-
titled to equal rights, instinctively shrink from contract
with the better dressed, and huddle together as if knowing
their places." I did not find my fellow-travellers so
modestly accommodating, the other evening, nor have I
since found many instances of this amiable disposition
among these people. There was a rush and a scrambling
and jolting; the cars were taken by storm, the places were
secured, and with stranger " car-fellows " poverty could
scarcely have made me acquainted. It is true some ot the
cars were not equally thrown open to the multitude. Before
them stood soldiers, grizzly guardians with muskets, bar-
ring the doors. These were reserved we know not for whom;
perhaps for the micitary. One or two were set apart for
" ladies," for in America the sex is your true aristocracy.
Like the Emperor Nicholas, it confers distinction on those
its countenance shines upon, and so long only as it does so
shine upon. The sex enjoys privileges which it can easily ex-
tend to any man or set of men in its company. It is, howeveri
a distinction without a difference, for the " gents' " car (the
word gentleman is never written at full in these places) the
gents' cars are only open to the world. The " ladies "
cars are accessible to "the world and his wife." A. very
fishwoman is as freely admitted into the privileged com-
partment as a duchess; and she can bring with her a whole
squad of fishmongers, as much entitled to rank among the
"ladies' men" as she among the ladies. Luckily or unluckily
I was owned by no lady, and had to put up with the gents'
limbo. I got in. The whole of Broadway was squeezed in
that close narrow apace. There they all were, the loafer,
the rowdy, the coatless, the hatless, the washed and the
unwashed, the sharp-featured sour-visaged Yankee, the
wild shaggy-headed Irishman, the heavy-lipped beery Ger-
man; all the heads of the people, with the exception of the
negro head. All Broadway is on its travels, incessantly on
its travels. You would say that broadcloth shuns the high-
way, or that gentility drops its trappings, and affects the
look, the costume, and the manners of rascality to propi-
tiate it on the highway. The air of the place choked me,
the sight sickened me, lam an old stager, be it borne in
mind, broken into all manners of hardahips, roughing it
with the hardiest of men. But I draw a line between the
washed and the unwashed when I can ; and I do not con-
ceive why, so long as one class lives apart from another in
houses, so long as Americans shun contact with each other
as they do by pews in churches and boxes in the theatres,
why, I say, they should not allow money equally to pur-
chase separation in public conveyances, why men of all
ranks should be "made" to "pig together" on omnibuses,
boats, and railways. Talk of the tyranny that chains toge-
ther the patriot and the felon in the galleys I Why, here
is republican equality dooming the clean to spend a whole
night, or any number of nights, aide by side with the un-
clean in the cars.
I walked up and down the gangway twice and three times,
like a luckless dog fidgeting lound and round far a proper spot
to lay himself clown. Alas 1 no spot was loft. I took my seat
near one of the sovereign citizens, edging away from him,
without looking at him. Smoking is not allowed, I believe,
even in
beastth eg gents'
himselftscars, but
with. the
The
Yankee
quid
wasneed in
s no
everycigar
t o
make atwo
s tPiroo twh ae sd ko
ue pb tl
eurpo fromn
tthhee
double row on
the narrow open windows, re-
out of
left. The missiles flew
right-hand seats
gar
black ashes from
d with the dust of the road and
mouths out of
tthhreerei.gAn.
ht
spray, mixe
• But why should I dwell on the loathsome
the engine.
pandemonium; and a night spent in an
•dless of the wind which flung them back in minute
steno? It was
is not certainly
sympathies in
behalf
of
calculated to awaken his kindest
American car, even if it brings a man down to a proper sense
of his own unworthiness as one of the race,
the race itself.

I am an old stager, as I said, and if compelled to travel
five or six nights in succession I can make myself at home
in a carriage seat as in the most luxurious of beds. I
smothered down my indignation, overcame my disgust,
crouched down in my narrow and by no means soft bench,
and soon dozed. Dozing, indeed I Behind me was the door
opening every two minutes, fiercely jarring as it opened,
Cruelly banging as it is closed. The gangway was a tho-
t"Afttro for vendors of orange pop, eatables and aria-