Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1878-12-28
STARVATION IN ENGLAND.

OF assisting in preparing the contract.
STARVATION IN ENGLAND.
The Beginning of the Present DI.tress..
Gen eel' Paupers-Incidents of the Fam.
ine--Mothers Feeling Garbage to Their
Children.
London Daily News, Dec. ILL
While parliament is debating the affairs of
Afghanistan, and considering the advance of
Russia in central Asia, another sort of enemy
is making terrible progress and inficting
fearful suffering at home. The distress of
the working classes in England and of the
small shopkeepers and clerks in many places
is becoming very serious. The centers of
the cotton and iron trades naturally suffer
most and reports from Manchester and SAL
ford are especially painful. We select these
towns by way of illustration. The story
told of them is true in substance of many
Others. Private Chart, is only
beginning to deal with mass
of misery of which the proportions
are no. yet ascertained. It. is difficult, in
deed, to learn exactly how people are stu
ated, for the classes which shrink from
charity. and dread pauperism worse than
death, have reached the end of their re-
sources. They know not where to look for
q meal from day to day, but to charity at
least, and to the union, they have not made
up their minds to look. According to eve
witnesses who write in the Manchester pa
pers, times in that city are even worse than
they were during the cotton famine. Not
only ale times worse, relief is more sparinp-
ly doled out, and is often grauted only on
conditions which are terribly repugnant to
the industrious poor. From week to week
there is an increase in the number of per-
sons who accept relief. Yet these numbers
do not at all represent the sum of the PEG.
pie who are suffering sorely for want
of relief. On December 20, 1862. the
Manchester guardians assisted no fewer than
38,470 men, women and children out
side the walls of the union. At present, III
face of distress which is said to be more
general and pitiful than that of 1862, only
about 400 persons are said to receive out
door relief. Of course these statements are
not made as charges against the guardians,
Who are bound, as far as possible, to main
tain certain rule, and to avoid giving peo-
pie push down the easy descent of pauper-
ism. Even with all their care tue figures
published by the guardians show the steady
increase of restitution. and the weekly
growth of the demands on their resourcee.
1t is not strange that distress gains ground.
On Saturday six hundred men were dis
missed by the Lancashire & Yorkshire rail
way company. Eight hundred men are out
OF work in the engineering trade. In the
moldlng trade 500 workmen, and perhaps
nine hundred laborers connected with their
business, are out of employment. The men
u IN arA M pi,ara IF n
they have families, some ten shilIings week,
The men who are not members of such So
cletes are destitute. They sell tools, clothes,
beds and furniture, to buy food, and at last
are reduced to the bare covering over their
heads, to few Indispensable rags, and
actually to the offal of CATS meat stalls and
the scraps of waste food which may be pick
ed up IN the streets. In the iron trade at
Stafford and elsewhere, business Is at stand.
still. There is an increase of LAO paupers
in Stafford union as compared with the num-
ber5 there IN the corresponding week of 1877.
1t may be taken fer granted that when
the worshouses fill, the people who fight
against the necessity of becoming paupers
are sadly pinched. Let 1t be observed that
only the most manifest examples of starya-
ton have been noticed, and that, as writer
in the Manchester Examiner observes, "the
misery is endured by people who, IN pros
porous times, claim to be not only respect
able, but what is called ''genteel." thus
the charitable people who are trying to start
soup kitchens and to distribute clothing
have not seen the work of the public misery.
What they have seen is very bad. A wild
dow with folr children was found in
wretched room without food or fire, or hope
of getting either, and in very scant
clothing In another room were
married couple with three children.
Eight shillings a week was all they had to
live on--the price of couple of pairs of
glove, IF q few cigars, the worth of two or
three cab fares. Two children were found
crying bitterly, late at night; it was no won
der that they cried, for they had not tasted
food that day. Their father was porter,
who had possessed a donkey and cart, but
who had been obliged to sell these and ev-
erything else that he possessed, down to the
clothes of his family, to buy food. and now
food was beyond his reach. This inability
to purchase naturally deprlves the keepers of
small shops of their customers and profits.
ana they suffer with the people on whom
they depend. At school feasts, which used
to be graced with nnts, oranges and apples,
with Injuries as understood by the children
"a IhO pun. IL R> 1Ohuo CSSlfaOit TO provide
more nourishing food. Bread and butter is
luxury, soup is thing to
be locked forward to as
rare dainty. Out of some seven
hundred school children at the feast it was
reckoned that at least forty would find no
dinner at home. Can any misery be more
pitiful than that of these little scholars, who
have to work their brains while their bellies
are empty. Happily a soup kitchen has
been opened for these young students who
belong to the congregation of ALI Souls
church.
There are even worse examples of destitu-
lion than these which go naturally excite
pity. A few days ago woman, whose dress
by no means betokened extreme poverty,
was seen to steal piece of cats meat, of
offal unfit for human food, from stall.
The stal-keeper followed her out of curl
osity, saw her eater her house, and found
her husband and children ereediIy deyouring
the garbage, all raw and loathsome as It was.
They were relieved for the time by the kind
ness of the tradesman whom the unfortu-
nate woman had robbed.
He's Going for the Brlckbat.