The year 1862 opened very gloomily. Relief committees began to be formed in Man chester, Wigan, Blackburn, Preston, and other towns, to distribute subscribed funds to such of the hands as were totally out of work. The streets were thronged with the unemployed; but there was no disturbance, and scarcely any begging. Sewing-schools were established by ladies in the several districts, to teach the factory girls useful domestic needle-work—of which they are generally very ignorant—to get them to make clothes for themselves and others; and to shield them from the vicious temptations which would beset them during a period of idleness. The ladies also won upon the affection of the girls by reading to them and sympathizing in many ways with their sorrows. Many of the manufacturers set apart large rooms as school-rooms and soup-kitchens for the boys and men, and abundant stores of soup were provided at ld. per basin. The poor-law board sent down instructions to the local guardians how to give as much elasticity as possible to the system of parochial relief. In April, Blackburn had only 18 mills on full-time out of 84, the rest being either on half-time or closed; and there were 9,000 of the inhabitants receiving parochial relief. Most of the other towns were in nearly as bad a plight. In May, matters were worse; Preston had 10,000 operatives out of work, and Blackburn had just about half-employment for 27,000. Middling Orleans rose in price to 15d., and manufacturers had more inducement to speculate in cotton than to spin it. Meanwhile, great efforts were made to assist the distressed operatives. The letters of a "Lancashire Lad" in the limes, with the text, " Con yo help us a bit?" made a great impression. The Daily Telegraph raised a fund of £5,000 by its own exer tions. The Lancashire landowners established a "cotton district relief fund" in Lon don, to which they subscribed £11,000 in one day; the lord mayor established a "man sion-house committee," which received subscriptions from all parts of the world; Manchester established a "central relief committee," as a nucleus for various local funds; while a great county meeting brought in £130,000, of which £i0,000 was sub scribed in one day in one room. Mr. Farnall was sent down by the poor-law board, as special commissioner, to superintend the plans for parochial relief. A rate-in-aid bill was passed through parliament, to enable the government to issue orders in council, authorizing parishes to raise money on the guarantee of future rates; it was only to be done where the current poor-rate had already reached a high figure, and the money raised was to be applied strictly to mitigate the distress of the operatives. Notwith standing all these sources of assistance, the work-people became reduced to great distress. "The pawnbrokers' stores," said an eye-wituess, " were glutted with the heir-looms of many an honest family. Little hoards were drained to meet the exigences of the time. Many found it the sorest trial of their lives to ask for food; and it is a happy circum stance for all to remember, as it is honorable to those of whom it is recorded, that none suffered more severely than those who bad a struggle to overcome their unwillingness to subsist upon food which they had not earned. Rents were falling in arrears, and many a house which had held only one family, was now occupied by three or four, in order to economize rent, fuel, and Nevertheless, none died of privation, and the average sickness was even less than usual. It was a fact well ascertained, that spirit drinking was less indulged in than in times of fulrwages. Meanwhile, the manufac turers began to make great profits; the prices of yarns and calicoes rose rapidly, and the stocks were sold off which had been so long on hand. Middling Orleans rose to 2s. 3d. in Oct., and thus there was less inducement than ever to purchase for the sake of manufacturing. Strange as it may appear, 50,000 bales of cotton were resold by the manufacturers themselves during the year, at the very time when the phrase " cotton famine" was on the lips of every one; but the simple fact was, that more profit could be made by reselling than by manufacturing.
It was a gloomy winter, that of 1862-63, for the mill-hands. In Oct., the loss of wages was estimated at £136,000 per week. In Nov., there were 208,000 persons in the Lancashire district receiving out-door parochial relief, and 144,000 others aided by subscribed funds; there were at the same time 20,000 mill-girls at the sewing-schools. At Christmas, there were 250,000 hands totally out of work; those, and about as many more dependent on them, received £40,000 a week from the parishes and the commit tees. Vast sums were sent from various parts of the world to be spent in winter-cloth ing only, and prodigious stores of second-hand clothing were contributed by private families. As the money relief seldom exceeded 2s. or 2s. 6d. per weak per applicant, to purchase clothing out of this was of course impracticable. The small shopkeepers also suffered greatly; for there was only one third the amount of wages received by their customers per week that had been received two years before. Emigration schemes were much discussed, but were not carried on very largely, because Lancashire men felt convinced that trade would revive after a time. Meanwhile, the rate of wages was not lowered; few mill-owners proposed it, and the operatives were rootedly against it; however small the quantity of work, it was paid for at the old rate.
No date can be named for the actual cessation of the distress; it died nut by degrees. When the manufacturers had sold off their old stocks, they recommenced buying more to spin and weave; because, although the price of raw cotton was enormously high W. for middling Orleanain May, 1803), the selling price fur calicoes and muslins was now proportionately high, and therefore they could manufacture at a profit. In June, 1863, a "public works act" was passed, to enable the government to advance £1,200,000 for public works in the cotton districts—partly to make good drainage, roads, water supply, etc., and partly to yield £600,000 or £700,000 as wages to the unemployed cotton hands in doing so much of the work as they could manage. The money (to be repaid by parish rates at subsequent dates) was to be advanced by the exchequer loan commis sioners on the recommendation of the poor-law board, and a government engineer was to examine and sanction the several works to be executed. All these operations were to be confined strictly to the cotton districts, where the distress existed, Mr. R. A. Arnold. the resident government inspector of these public works, states in his History of the Cotton Famine, that by the month of June, 1865, there had been works planned, and iu great part executed, under the clauses of this and a supplementary bill, to the amount of £1,846,000. They compromised the making or improving of 276 m. of street and highway, 304 m. of main sewer, reservoirs for 1500 million gallons of water, several parks and cemeteries, and a large area of land-drainage. Nearly 30,000 persons had been fed by the wages of the cotton operatives on these works. The subscriptions to meet the distress reached the vast sum of £2,000,000; while the outdoor poor relief was about EI,000,000 more than in an equal period of average times.
The fluctuations in the value and quantity of cotton available during this extraordi nary period are strikingly shown in the following parallel columns, relating to the raw cotton imported, and the money paid for it: Remark here the sudden and tremendous increase in the amount paid for cotton in the latter half of the period; the payment, indeed, of forty millions sterling more in 1866 than in 1860, for about the same quantity. To show how India and Egypt benefited by this unprecedented state of affairs, we give (in pounds,* not cwts.) the quantities imported from those countries as compared with the imports from the United States: The export of British Indian cotton is 1860 brought only £2.500,000; in 1864, it fetched £34,000,000. The largest quantity imported was in 1866. In 1876, the total value of Indian cotton was £5,874,704.