The Stockport Chronicle of yesterday calls attention to a "
tre- mendous power" which the manufacturers possess over the agricul- turists, " immediately available, and perfectly legal in its exercises " A committee of inquiry, similar to that at Leeds, has just made its re- port ; and it finds that of the 10,000 families in the borough, 3,000 be- long to rural districts. There are 4,000 persons in the houses visited totally unemployed, 2,800 partially employed. It is calculated that there are at least 4,000 persons too many for the employment of the place. In the agricultural districts there is no want of labour ; and it is proposed to send back the people belonging to those districts, to be maintained out of the local rates. Reckoning that each family of five persons would consume in poor-rates as much as the rental of 25 acres, the 3,000 families returned from Stockport would consume the rental of 75,000 acres. Lancashire could send back 50,000 families, to con- sume the rental of tracts equal to many small counties. Some manu- facturers already begin to think of "clearing their estates "—the manu- factories—of their agricultural burdens. The landlords are warned to beware of the manufacturers' " army of desolation."
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