ALARMING DISTRESS IN GREAT BRITAIN.

Temuka Leader, Volume 2, Issue 122, 19 February 1879, Page 3

ALARMING DISTRESS IN GREAT BRITAIN.

It is no use ignoring’ the fact that we are. almost face to face with 'Such a- crisis of distress as tire present generation has never known. One must go back to the days prior to the repeal of the Corn ’ Laws and the introduction of free trade for an example of widespread .suffering such as that which is already being felt in. many parte of England. The centres of the cotton and iron trades and some coal districts are the most afflicted at present; but the evil is so surely and rapidly spreading that a few weeks will probably suffice to embrace within its malign influence the best part of what are general! v known as the manufacturing districts of the country. According to the reports of people who have no interest in exaggeration, the state of things in Manchester and (Salford is as bad as, if not worse than, during the cotton famine in 1862-Go. Thousands of working’ men in tin- staple trades of the place outside the cotton business have been idle for weeks. Those avlio are prudent enough to harve joined Benefit Societies have still a slight resource in the rapidly sinking funds from which they arc drawing a pittance just sufficient to prevent absolute starvation; but that unfortunately larger class who take no thought of the morrow arc undergoing that bitterest of experiences, when tools, clothes, furniture, and even bedding are pledged or sold outright for trifling sums before the stages of actual depiivation of the necessary minimum of food is reached. In Sheffield matters arc worse than they have been known in the memory of .all but the oldest. In Wolverhampton and a large portion of the Black Country distress is severe and widespread. In Glasgow some ten thousand people are out of employment, and the municipal authorities are being overwhelmed by applications to do the relief work that they ai’o organising to meet the emergency, at Is Gd to Is Sd per day. Ten and twelve per cent, reductions are being ■accepted all over the country, and through in places distress is complicated by strikes and locks-out, there is no doubt it will still be severe enough when these ill-advised struggles have conic to their natural termination. In Cornwall, too, mining industry is so excessively depressed that thousands of skilled miners and labourers are, and have been so long without work that severe distress is being experienced, in all those cases it is possible to diagnose the extent the disease with tolerable accuracy ; but m London, with its almost infinitesimal petty industries, carried on In tin- humble homes of the workers, the 'problem becomes one of immense difficulty. For instance, the difference between a brisk •or a dull sale of Christmas cards would be quite sufficient to throw hundreds of families from a condition of tolerable comfort into destitution and misery. Here the outlook is gloomy enough, and is severely exercising the minds of those who will hare to grapple with the -impending’crisis ; but it is gratiying to be able to state that, so far as the facts can he elucidated by carelul inquiry, the difficulty has not yet arrived. There is no doubt that there is considerable distress in the oast and south of London, but it is of that chronic land which recurs regularly l every-winter, and which may’be said to wax and wane almost with the range of the thermometer. From all parts the answer is uniform that the distress at present in London is not more severe than it was at this time last winter ; but in all cases there is the same unanimity in the fear that a few weeks will see a great change for the worse. Unless meterologists are much mistaken, the winter upon which we have already entered is almost certain to prove exceptionally severe ; and it behoves us to look and take measures to relieve the distressed. There is a rumour that 20,000 of the cotton operatives out on strike in Lancashire are about to visit London, and that a sum of £SOOO is being rapidly subscribed to provide them with free passes by rail. Their object is to induce the Government to abolish the impore duties on cotton goods into India. —‘ European Mail.’