CHAPTER IV.

JANUARY-MAY 1862.

THERE was gloom throughout England at the commencement of the year 1862. The good deeds and the wise words of the illustrious Prince, but lately dead, were the talk of a sorrowing people. In the depth of a Canadian winter, English troops were hastening to strengthen the frontiers of the British possessions in North America, for the 'Trent' outrage was as yet unatoned for. In Lancashire, gaunt distress was advancing with rapid strides; and yet the aspect of political affairs was so uncertain, that no one knew but that the news of the morrow might not bring relief. Emigration had steadily declined since the first outbreak of the American war. It soon became generally evident that extraordinary measures must be taken to meet the fast accumulating destitution.

Wigan was among the first of the Lancashire towns to produce a definite organisation. At a meeting held in the Moot Hall on January 3, it was resolved, that a committee should be formed and measures adopted to alleviate the distress. It was stated at this meeting, that the operatives of Wigan were now losing 3,000l. per week in wages; and 1,000l. was raised in local subscriptions on the day of this assembly. Taking the average throughout the district, the operatives were at this time working about four days a week, and therefore earning two-thirds of their ordinary wages. It will be advisable perhaps to remark upon the use of the term 'losing,' as applied to the falling-off of wages. Throughout the whole duration of the Famine, the words 'lose' and 'loss' have been much wrested from their proper signification. A man cannot be said to lose that which he never had, and both the profits and the wages fund of future are in this category. But if the absence of profit is set down as 'loss,' it is but fair that the

same term should be applied to a deficiency of wages, and inasmuch as the ledger-keeping portion of the cotton trade has generally so dealt with the public during this crisis, the impartiality of history demands for the operatives at least a verbal equality.

By January 18 the Wigan Committee had collected 2,000l. and divided their town into districts, each having its separate sub-committee. The mode of relief adopted was that of giving cheques of a certain value upon provision dealers, to be expended in such articles as the applicants chose. In looking over their expenditure it is curious to observe how different were the tastes of the relieved. In some, in fact in most cases, one halfpenny went for soap, but few indulged in candles; some invested largely in bread, while others thought that oatmeal was preferable. At Blackburn the distress now began to be great. The cotton manufacture of both these towns consists chiefly of heavy goods, involving a large consumption of raw material. It was therefore to be expected that a stoppage of supplies would afflict them most seriously. A sub-committee devoted itself at Blackburn to the distribution of soup, and the board of guardians largely augmented their staff of relieving officers. The number of paupers in Blackburn was now increasing at the rate of a hundred and fifty per week. Still, nearly one-third of the mills were working full time, and there were not more than 28,000 operatives in the entire district wholly thrown out of employment. Proud Preston was now added to the much distressed towns, and the numbers relieved in this borough during the third week in January were three times as numerous as those on the guardians' books in the same week of the preceding year. The guardians were perplexed how to act between the necessity of granting relief to the many applicants, and their unwillingness to class these unfortunate persons as paupers. In this dilemma they meditated the advisability of making loans, to be repaid when better times arrived,-a plan much more inviting in theory than in practice. The labour test' was also beginning to give trouble. The operatives found themselves praised abroad and pauperised at home. They asked for bread, and complained that they should first be given a stone to break. The boards of guardians were placed in a position of con

siderable embarrassment between the triple difficultiesthe letter of the Poor Laws-the stereotyped forms of pauper labour and the demands of their numerous applicants. Blackburn resolved to memoralise the Poor Law Board to suspend their order relative to the relief of ablebodied men. The Manchester Board admitted a deputation of the District Provident Society to a discussion, without seeming very anxious for their assistance. Oldham, Bury, Rochdale, in fact every place, now began to tell its own tale of distress. In Haslingden, great suffering was experienced by many of the newly-imported population; furriners,' as the Lancashire-born operatives call them. In Blackburn there were 7,150 persons in the receipt of relief. The guardians of this union were relieving 5,074, at the rate of about 18. 6d. for each person. The Poor Law Board felt it their duty to refuse permission to suspend their order as to the relief of able-bodied men, which required that their relief should be given half in money and half in kind, and that they should be set to work under the direction of the boards of guardians. (This order did not prohibit the bestowal of relief in cases of sudden or urgent necessity, nor did it compel the pauperisation in the workhouse, of those to be relieved. It did not necessitate that their houses should be stripped of furniture, nor that they should be naked and homeless before they were fit subjects for relief. For twenty-one days, at all events, the discretion of the boards of guardians were entirely uncontrolled. The chief object of this order was to provide against the demoralisation of the paupers, and hence it was that such anxiety was shown to maintain its principle. The order did not prescribe the stoneyard and the oakum shed as the only labour to be set before the men. Even if the guardians found, as was the case at this time at Oldham, that it was practically impossible to enforce the labour test,' owing to the suddenness and extent of the distress, and to the difficulty of devising suitable works, it would still have been very injudicious on the part of the central authority to relax the law, and so to encourage a system avowedly pernicious, which necessity alone could excuse. To suspend this order upon the first pressure of distress, would have been to deprive the guardians of a very wholesome reserve of power; the carefully specified excep

tions to it, together with the well-known appreciation of their difficulties by the Poor Law Board, afforded them a sufficient latitude for all the exigencies of their situation.

Had it not been for the general establishment at this time of local relief committees, there might have been occasion to record a great failure on the part of the boards of guardians. Fortunately, this charitable agency came to their assistance. Early in February, Rochdale and other places followed the example of Wigan and Blackburn, as they in their turn may be supposed to have modelled their system on that of the Manchester and Salford District Provident Society, which had established a special fund for the relief of the operatives, and had already distributed' food and clothing to nearly 6,000 persons. Even in these early days, migration from the cotton districts had commenced. The relieving officer of a Yorkshire parish tendered his resignation to the Huddersfield Board of Guardians, on the ground that his house and his family were in danger from the violence of the wayfarers from Lancashire to Yorkshire, consequent upon his inability to relieve the immense numbers of those who made application to him.

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Meanwhile the distress was rapidly increasing, although as yet it had not exceeded that which had been experienced in previous hard times.' Everywhere the numbers, of relieved were growing. Ashton recorded that she had 2,379 more paupers than in the corresponding week of 1861. In the middle of February a very decided stand was made in the Ashton and other unions against what was incorrectly termed the labour test. The guardians were at their wits end to devise works such as should meet the complaints of the operatives, who pleaded their misfortunes and their soft fingers in bar of stone-breaking and oakumpicking. Rather than enforce an unpopular law, or perhaps to prove that they were acting in this respect ministerially, the guardians in some cases threw the responsibility upon the Poor Law Board. The operatives hated the name of the labour test.' Not that they were indolent and averse to work, but they had been so bepraised by those who feared that the general stoppage of the mills would be the signal for pro-Southern riots,-intended to force the Government to a violation of their righteous policy of nonintervention,---that they regarded themselves as the honor

hould

ary pensioners of the nation, to whom relief was not dishonourable until it was paid for by work. To be subsisting upon the poor-rates did not seem to them to involve pauperism. But this condition, so especially degrading in a locality where the great demand for labour has made pauperism so comparatively scarce, was realized in their minds immediately they had the stone-hammer in their hands or the oakum in their fingers. Had they not received so much uneasy flattery, they might have had less objection to the requirement of labour in return for relief. It would, however, be unfair to the operatives to pass unnoticed their strong repugnance to seeking relief from the guardians. It may be safely affirmed that the severest sufferings of these years of famine have been caused by this honourable pride. This unwillingness can be compared to nothing else than the dislike which the better portion of the superior class has to the Insolvent Court, where it may be said that the Commissioners sit as guardians for the relief of the rich.

The Poor Law Board evinced their sense of the difficulties of the situation, by invariably giving their sanction to any necessary expansion of their order; all that they refused to do was to suspend their order, to abrogate it entirely. As was shown in a previous chapter, the order, or the instructional letter which accompanied it, contains ample provision for an unusual increase of pauperism. To suspend the order would have been to stultify a wise and just principle; to interpret it most liberally and with due regard to the exceptional circumstances, was all that was required. To suspend this order would have been to invite the vagrants of the whole country into Lancashire. There is a wide difference between the effect of a law frequently violated, and that of a law repealed. In one case the principle is maintained, though it may be often trodden down; in the other, the principle is abandoned and the violation is encouraged. No wise administrator of the law would punish a man for working during Sunday, if such labour was necessary to obtain sustenance for himself and his family; indeed, he might applaud such a workman, while he would on no account consent to repeal the legal obligation to respect the sacred rest of the first day of the week. So it was with the relief order and its labour