THE LANCASHIRE OPERATIVES ON THEIR OWN DISTRESS.
THIS is almost the first great occasion in the history of England on which we can truly say that a great working class is suffering severely without ignorantly inventing imaginary causes for that suffering, and demanding remedies which only increase the weight of general misery. There is, perhaps, no better' test of the proportionate development of the intellectual side of human nature than the capacity or incapacity for enduring a sudden and disastrous change of circumstances without a restless desire to extemporize any scapegoat besides the true cause of the calamity, to beat the blame and the vengeance. The Lancashire operatives have, however, clearly reached this stage, and it is no very early stage, in the intellectual and moral development of classes, and for all we can at present see there is little more danger of their rising against the cotton lords of Lancashire because the American war has' plunged them into misery, than there was in the mercantile crisis of 1857 that the ruined merchants of Liverpool or London would rise against the aristocracy because rash American speculation had plunged them into beggary. The Lancashire operatives look appa- rentlywith as calm and panquil an eye on the real causes of their own sharp suffering as the patients in an ordinary physical disease, and ask for the remedies which they imagine to be the most efficacious in a tone that betrays none of the querulousness of pain. We are therefore bound to treat them with the most respectful consideration. In a deputation to the Board of Poor-law Guardians at 'Manchester, on Thursday, Mr. Finnigan explained the real wish of the operatives. We understand his case to be in effect this :—the ordinary poor-law regulations are all adapted to deal with what we may call the importunate desti- tution of great cities,—the destitution which presses .itself on the relieving authorities. In the present case, however, the worst suffering is often the most bashful. Men who have never in their lives been reduced to ask either public or private charity cannot endure to be identified with and mistaken for the classes accustomed to depend on public relief. They will endure almost anything sooner than that coarse kind of sceptical mistrust which the regular staff of Poor-law Boards have acquired almost as a matter of necessity in investigating fraudulent and exaggerated statements. Many of these men need encouragement to complain rather than the official snub, and sacrifice themselves and their families rather than endure it. Moreover, the physical ma- chinery of the Poor-law Boards is quite inadequate to search- ing out the misery that will not present itself for relief. It is not adapted to the task of diving into holes and corners for shy wretchedness, but assumes that all who really want will come forward and specify their own claims. Hence the operatives ask for a multiplication of the investi- gating agencies, and think the Poor-law Boards should sub-divide themselves into district sub-committees and accept the aid of private persons in an organized investigation into the respectable destitution of each district. Again, the operatives think the present means inadequate, and are loth to look solely to local rates for the increase of those means— not because the local wealth is insufficient, but because local rates press very heavily on one of the most struggling of all classes just now, the small freeholders who are barely able to retain their property at all, much less to pay the rates on it. For these reasons the operatives would wish to supplement Manchester rates by either English or Man- chester bounty rather than to throw all the weight upon the rates alone. Finally, and perhaps, with less reason, the ope- ratives urge what we may call a somewhat sentimental claim for the young and unmarried working people who are obliged to accept aid, and who appear to be proportionally less liberally treated than the householders. They think that aid should be given in rather less scanty measure, and on rather less exacting terms : that the 2s. 6d. a week might be fairly increased, and the labour asked for it diminished, in consideration of the peculiar circumstances of the case. On the whole, we think that the request of the operatives is marked by general good sense as well as a remarkably good spirit. Some relaxation of the Poor-law regulations is clearly needed to meet the new circumstances of the case. Men who, like Mr. Finnigan, have sold their last valuable, even the much-prized library, which at no other time would they have parted with " for a hundred pounds," before they will ask aid, need a different treatment to that suspicious, hard, inch-by-inch yielding,which is, perhaps,the true attitude towards habitual destitution. That the Poor-law guardians in each parishShould sub-divide themselves into district sub-com- mittees, and solicit the aid of the clergymen and dissenting ministers of each district in their work, would, we think, be found an arrangement of great advantage to all classes: and the guardian or guardians on these sub-committees might be alone responsible for the division of the public moneys dis- tributed. But if this organization were adopted we do not see why additional grants in aid from private subscriptions— at first from Lancashire sources, and then, as the necessity becomes more urgent, from all English sources—should not be entrusted to the same committees. In this way the waste and fraud which is probably to some extent inseparable from such a calamity, would be minimized. So far we go with the operatives. Let them not, how- ever, plead for generosity and mild labour-tests towards the healthy working classes at this stage in the distress. They should remember that it is but beginning ; that to husband our resources now is the only way of providing against abso- lute famine in the coming autumn and winter; that senti- mental views of young people's feelings now may be only aggravations of coming anguish at a time when half-a-crown a week for a single person, on the condition of work however hard, will seem an enviable and a prosperous lot.
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