MR. GLADSTONE ON THE COTTON FAMINE.

Southland Times, Volume I, Issue 48, 24 April 1863, Page 5 (Supplement)

MR. GLADSTONE ON THE COTTON FAMINE.

(From the Press.)

"We have received a pamphlet containing an address delivered by Mr. Gladatone tp. the working men of Chester, - on the evening of the 27th December .Jast, on the subject of the Cotton Famine, from which we make the following extracts, in which the statistical facts of the case are very clearly put. They are well worth attentive perusal:— And first I shall present to you a t crude, but I hope a tolerably accurate, <T outline of the facts. The bulk of the cotton manufacture of this country is carried on in a region comprised within twenty-seven of those Poor Law Districts which we term Unions. Their population is somewhat beyond two millions : and the rated I value of that portion of their property which is subject to rates, is about five millions and a half. Certain portions of the cotton manu- ' faeture are, however, carried on beyond the limits of this aTea ; the most considerable of those outlying 1 portions probably is in Glasgow; and others vary in amount down to the scattered factories, such as that at Mold in our neighborhood. The diminution of trade in these secondary districts, and the loss of weekly wages, must have been quite as great as in the main region, in proportion to the numbers usually employed. The distress would, J however, generally be less severe in ej proportion as the district may be less j 2| exclusively dependent on the cotton 3 industry. Yet even in these places jj much hasbeeji suffered, and much has J been done : at Mold, for example, *1 where the owners of the mills now J closed have, I believe, been most dl liberal in giving assistance to their tj hands ; and in Glasgow a single firm, \ [1 that of Messrs. Finlay, has, lam in- j ,J formed, been supporting from its own i jj funds its workpeople now unemployed, **m at a weekly charge representing twelve SI thousand pounds a year. Upon the tjl whole, we shall probably not go far irij wrong in adding to the figures yielded BJi us by the great Lancashire and Che*l shire, but mainly Lancashire, district, .{1 one-tenth for the outlying districts, so J far as contraction of trade and loss of I wages are concerned, and from oneI tenth to one-twentieth, so far as re--1 gards -actual want, and the necessity tj for continual or special aid. \l| The number of persons employed in *° the cotton manufacture of the whole Lte country appears to be little, if at all, tri short of four hundred thousand. ' Of t these one-half, equal to four-tenths, le < or two hundred thousand, are at present wholly unemployed. ThreeifJ eighths or thereabouts, are on short [fflLtime, employed, that is to say, on less tfmthan six days in the week. Less than less than fifty thousand 1 out of four hundred thousand, appear to hal be fully employed. 3 ji The loss of weekly wages for this Lng population is about L 150,000, or at v^l the rate of nearly eight millions a year. ■.*' When to this we add by estimate the k_ loss of wages in trades directly subsi;b; diary to the cotton manufacture, and wil dependent on its extent, the loss of rent ? n to the owners of houses and cottages, thi the loss of profit to the capitalist, and >le to the classes of tradesmen directly •*t concerned in supplying the workpeople with the commodities they consume, if, [itj I say, we take these items into account, aii without pursuing the remoter branches h ® of the question, it is, I think, impos'Pjsible to place the loss to the country at !gjless than twelve millions a year, and it pa' is probably a good deal more. v ? ! But, even at this moderate estimate, jsi such a loss tells in a sensible degree bu on the revenue of the State. Upon ; "7 the average it may be roughly stated ise that each man in this country eontriJn butes towards the public revenue about orsone-eighth part of his income. The Ibest paid of the working classes are r _ large consumers of commodities charged J is | with duty ; and as these commodities j los are the comforts, or what may in a '$?■ qualified sense be termed theluxuries of ip! the working man, and not the necesth c saries of his life, it is upon them that lgl( the loss of wages first and principally f^falls, though the void is to some small L^fextent filled up by his living for a time , { in his savings, and on the proceeds of cap irticles which he can turn into money. .^ Opon the whole, I think that the prer sent annual rate of loss to the revenue, in consequence of the cotton famine, is i million and a half, or thereabouts ; . md that the actual loss for the cur[^ent financial year, during which the omjlistress has been growing up to what, smi is we fondly trnst, is its maximum, 'he; rill be more than a million ; that is to Jj§ ay, that on the 3 1st of March next, &' rhen our accounts are made up, the -0 { (jgchequer will be poorer by over a W* nSlon of money, than, but for the t ~j6tton famine, it would have been. n jj I have spoken of the numbers out of loolltnployment, but of course, the nurad©lers in want of aid are considerably k^Jreater. Some of the workers are of families where the father, "om some other member or members of >ur* e ' family have other sources of emf *Sioyment or of support. But, against f|iy deduction on this account, a much Irger addition is to be made, on aclunt of those persons belonging to the Dailies of the workpeople themselves, whom no wages are earned ; the ry. young, the old, the infirm, and ose who find their employment in the res of the, household. I Accordingly, we find that in the dis■ct; of the twenty-seven Unions, the limber of persons receiving out-door for Law relief is about 250,000; and le number who, without receiving any ■tor Law Belief, receive relief from

Charitable Funds is 190,000 ; together. 440,000. To this number additions are to be made on two accounts.

First. For workpeople supported while out of work* in various cases, with a noble munificence, by their employers themselves. Second, For the outlying districts ; and, taking these additions into view, I think we must place the total of persons thrown into destitution by the cotton famine, in round numbers, at half a million.

So much for the numbers of the distressed.

Now let us consider "what has been, and is being done for them.

When, in the summer and early autumn, every week added rapidly and largely to the number of mills in part or entirely closed, and want came to be largely and severely felt, there were two or indeed three temporary obstacles, which may have unduly kept down the measure of relief. One was the difficulty of organizing, at a short notice, a machinery equal to the work of regularly supplying the sudden demand of thousands and tens of thousands, without at the same time incurring enormous waste, and giving direct encouragement to fraud.

The second was the noble independence of the people themselves, who were unwilling either to cast themselves upon charity, or to exercise that right of resort to the Poor Law which, although it is a right, is nevertheless, for the able-bodied man, an extreme one, and one never to be exercised without pain to a manly and well-constituted mind.

The third was an excusable timidity, which seems here and there to have affected the administrators of relicf — Boards of Guardians not always learning in a moment that an extraordinary calamity required an unusual freedom in the measures for meeting it ; and some managers of charitable funds, alarmed at comparing the amount of voluntary subscriptions, as it then stood, with the demands of the coming winter, and not yet having faith enough in the ability and will of the nation to administer by spontaneous bounty to this great distress.

All this was to be expected and cannot be blamed. But from such causes, the pressure of suffering was, it may be feared, iv some places sharpened for a time ; and a lady, blessed with large means, and more richly blessed in a disposition to use them largely, I mean Miss Burdett Coutts, having forwarded a munificent contribution , wisely expressed her wish that the whole of it might be laid out at once. We must all, at all times, meet the real and essential wants of the present, before reserving anything for the future. At that time, of which I now speak, in one most distressed union, the rate of weekly relief was not in all, I believe, more than about thirteen pence a-head, per man, woman, and child taken together. All this has sieadily improved. Intelligent benevolence, most of all in the discrict itself, has supplied both the machinery and the means. The average rate of out-door Poor Law Relief, which was before the distress Is 2|d per head, per week, is now nearly Is 6d. The funds of the Poor Law are expended, in the Lancashire and Cheshire district, at a weekly rate equal to more than a million per annum ; or about five shillings in the pound on the rateable property, after deducting that portion of it, from which in the present circumstances, rates cannot be collected. " The total weekly expenditure by Guardians and by Committees o| Charity in the twenty-seven Unions is L 43,547,"* and this sum yields to each receiver of relief, on an average, within a fraction of two shillings per head. In addition to this, the Executive Committee has distributed 4,734 bales of clothing, each bale on an average equal to one cubic yard ; nor are we to forget that besides this great bounty, many little streams are also flowing through private channels, and each and all of them bearing consolation with them as they flow. Now, looking to this amount of two shillings a-head, aided a little in many cases with supplies in kind, I for one think as follows. Though, for the sake o£ our noble-minded fellow countrymen we might all wish it were much more, yet looking to the natnre of the case, and to the absolute necessity, for the permanent welfare of the whole community, of preserving something of a due relation between the state of the < independent laborer and that of the receiver of relief, the present rate ought to be regarded as sufficient and satisfactory. And we have the pleasure of hearing from the report of Mr. Farnall, a most able gentleman, ap* pointed by Mr. Villiers to act in the district on behalf of the Poor Law Board, that "neither he himself, nor the Executive Committee, have received any complaints from the poor of insufficiency of relief or charitable

aid."

So much for the amount of the relief; the prospect is certainly no worse as to its duration. In the first place is some small reason to hope, that the high-water mark, so to call it, of the distress may have been reached. At any rate, so far as receivers of aid from the Poor Law are concerned, there was in the week ending December 6th, a diminution in their numbers of more than two thousand ; and this was followed, in the week ending December 13th, the latest period up to which I have obtained accounts , by a further diminution, amounting to 3,443.

As respects the Poor Law, Parliament has wisely given to the distressed Parishes and Unions three auxiliary powers, which come successively into action as the burden of the rates may increase : — The power to the Parish,

* From information by Mr FarnaU

its rates reach a certain point, of obtaining aid from the Union : 2. The power to the Unionfof borrowing money to a limited extent on the security of future rates : 3. .The power of calling in aid the ;whole rateable property of the county. On the other "hand, ac regards the Charitable Funds, nothing but a little time, and'the admirable means of publicity supplied by the newpaper press, have been required. The Charitable Committees in the different neighborhoods are sending L 25,000 per week; but the Executive Committee at the centre was receiving, from the 6th to the 20th of this month, which is the latest information I have been able to obtain, above L 7,000 a day. Speaking of public and general subscriptions, and of the district of the twenty-seven Unions, it would appear that they amount at this time to more than iLl,2oO,000; we may safely assume (but this is a mere opinion) that the machinery now in operation will raise this sum to Ll,500,000; whereas the sum hitherto expended must fall short of one-half the amount actually raised, so that we may look forward with cheerfulness, in the absence of any new and great calamity, to the remainder of the winter. It seems to be the opinion of [ the best informed, that, under operation of the providential laws, which regulate supply and demand both for materials and for manufacturers, there will probably exist in the month of March a state of things which will bring about a small but stable revival of trade and employment. Should the dreadful and sanguinary war which desolates America, and throws the sur- | plus of its curses upon Europe, be I brought to a close, further great and j early relief might be expected ; but in I any case the benevolent administrators of the public bounty will, it may be trusted, meet the Spring with consider- ! able remainder of funds in their hands. A remainder, however, which may be less, and under no circumstances is likely to be more, than must be required, in order partially to repair the i consequences of this widespread and i long continued desolation."