MIDDLE CLASS DISTRESS AT HOME.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1560, 18 February 1879, Page 4

MIDDLE CLASS DISTRESS AT HOME.

The official statement of the bills of sale registered during the last seven years affords (says the “Pall Mall Budget ”) one test of the growing distress among a class which is in some degree above immediate necessity. Since 1872 the increase has been continuous, but whereas between 1872 and 1874 the numbers had grown only from 10,099 to 10,857, between 1874 and 1878 the figures have increased from 10,857 to 18,902. By far the largest disparity, also, in the return for two consecutive years is that between the figures for 1877 and for 1878, which shows an increase of nearly 3000 bills of sale registered, the numbers being 15,953 and 18,902. If a similar table were given cf pawnbrokers’ dealings we should, with the poor-law returns, be able to form some judgment as to the extent and probable severity of the existing distress. Unquestionably the opinion expressed by the Bishop of Manchester is correct—the pressure has already extended far beyond the working classes. This was inevitable. In every great crisis of displacement of labor the small shopkeepers and others who are dependent upon the earnings of the hands are those who suffer perhaps most severely. Not only are their savings swept away by rent and bad debts, but even when everything is lost they are slow to apply for relief or to avail themselves of the voluntary agencies for the distribution of charity. It is one of the worst features of so long-continued a depression as that which we are now feeling the effects of, that the economical and the unthrifty at last find themselves on the same level of common want.