7 Even this latter is grudgingly bestowed. Many of the richest mill-owners have not yet subscribed a farthing to the relief funds, so that it is a difficult matter to secure a shilling a head per week to the poor applicants. Yet who subscribed to the “Alabama?” Whose money fits out steamer after steamer with munitions to keep the life in Southern slavery ? What capital is it that buys Confederate bonds at eighty-four cents, and that is willing to take the risks of sea and a blockade to help in undermining the great Republic whose manifold prosperity it dreads ? Thank God, the elements of an American Thanksgiving, material and spiritual, are, and forever will be, beyond the reach of open levy or secret malice of its hearty haters. In Ashton-under-Lyne, whose population is 36,791, there are 10,933 hands employed in cotton, representing a population of nearly 22,000. The existing means of relief reach only 9,000 of these ; that is, there are more than 10,000 dependent on private charity, or their own resources. The 9,000 cost £480 per week. The mill-owners in this place have been disposed to help the operatives. Some of them have allowed their unemployed hands as much as two and sixpence a week, some lend them money, others maintain a daily distribution of food. In Preston the progress of the distress is shown by the following figures : in August of this year the number of poor relieved by the rates was 12,205, and by the.Public Relief Committee, 21,616 ; but in September the number had swelled to 14,289 relieved by the rates, and 23,932 by the Committee. “ During the week ending September 13, the Relief Committee distributed 16,832 loaves, weighing 61,016 lbs.; 11,301 quarts of soup, and 4,820 quarts of coffee.” There are seventy-one firms owning mills in Preston : of these, forty-eight contributed the pitiful sum of £1,978 to a relief fund of £12,000. Yet there are 27,600 factory operatives whose actual financial loss per week amounts to more than £12,000. This happens every week, and one in every seven and a half of the entire population of Preston become entirely pauperized. To counterbalance this, forty-eight rich mill-owners contributed less than £2,000, not per week, but their definitive subscription for the year ! See how these poor men were obliged to take their money Out of the savings banks. In the single town of Blackburn
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=