THR LANCASTITRA CRISIS AND ENGLAND'S DUTY.
THE civil war in America has tested both the political creed and the political principles of our manufacturers by a test of no common severity. We believe it is destinedl to modify the former very materially, and we know that it has proved the latter and not found them wanting. It is not easy to express the genuine admiration with which we regard the present attitude of the cotton lords and cotton operatives of England. The north has always hitherto in- clined to advocate on all question a laissez-faire policy, it has been the reproach most frequently cast upon northern politicians that they could not see the close mutual interde- pendence both of different classes and different countries ; that they would insist both in social and in international matters, in labour quarrels and in foreign quarrels, on the maxim, "Every one for himself; you will only make matters worse by meddling." That is the natural creed of strong independent men, who have built their own fortunes, and almost regard it as a weakness to need assist- ance. They have believed so strongly in "the individuality of the individual" that they have scarcely recognized the common life in the body politic. They feel so confident that the English nation is sufficient for itself that they are incredulous d the duty of lending aid to any weaker nation. It seems not unlikely that the present American war will do much to shake these convictions to prove that dreamy French phrase, theraidarite of the nations, to be a firms and in this ease, grim fact, to prove also that the social unity of this nation is a still more fundamental and substantial reality. Already they are gaining a sense of sympathy and com- munity with their own worlipeople, which probably no pros- perity could ever have' generated ; already the sense of the sacrifices they are making for the support of their operatives, of the fortitude and self-denial of the operatives in bearing their' miseryso nobly, is producing a deeper insight into the ties between class and class, than had ever been forced upon them by Lock-outs or Strikes. But we fear that it will not stop here. The time is not yet come, but it is, we fear, inevitable, when even Lancashire must be willing to accept from the rest of the nation a help which the rest of the nation will be eager to tender, not as an. act of generosity, but of bare duty ; and when, therefore, the ties not only between class and chess but between distinct regions. of Great Britain, will be drawn closer than at any period_ since the Irish famine. That time, it is true, is not yet come. And we cannot express too strongly our admiration of the staunch consistency which twice within the year has proved that the non-intervention policy in Lancashire was held. on strona° principle, not on selfish whim. In the autumn and winter there was no lack of advisers urging the people of Lancashire to demand English interven- tion on the part of the South in order to secure the cotton- crop. The people of Lancashire, clear as was' the prospect of suffering, indignantly refused, and have never shown the slightest symptom of drawing back from their ground. And now' again, while the whole nation is almost eager to be asked for a subvention for the Lancashire distress, the Lan- cashire politicians once more decline to swerve needlessly from their principle of self-dependence. They are yet rich enough, they say, to minister to their neighbours' poverty. They will not appeal to the nation while they have wealth enough among themselves. And thus they manfully stick to their own colours for the second time at great cost to them- selves. This we call true political p es principle, which deserves i the hearty admiration of all parties n the nation.
Nevertheless, we cannot but regard. the present attitude of Lancashire as necessarily temporary.. This is a national calamity, which, so far as it is due to English causes at all, is dim to national, not local, causes, and ought to be shared by the whole nation. The slavery, which is the ultimate seed of all this misery, was, imported originally into Virginia by the British Government itself. Again, the reason which, more than any other, bolds us back from all intermeddling in this terrible war is the belief that we should arrest the extinc- tion, of this curse by our interference—and this is a national reason; not a local reason. The general policy of non-inter- vention itself, which has been so frequently adopted by our Government in Europe as well as in America, is adopted for national reasons, and' though it has found its most numerous advocates in the North, is wherever we have any doubt as to the right or wrong of a foreign quarrel, the chosen policy of the nation itself. Whether, then, we look to the seeds of the present disastrous civil war, or to our reasons for abstaining from interference, we find no trace of any but properly national causes and. national reasons. This calamity, which has fallen with crushing weight on Lancashire, has fallen on her only as a member of the British nation—not as a conse- quence of any error in the policy or conduct of her Nimbi- tion. On the contrary, that population is eager to bear its own burdens to theutmost—and it therefore becomes the nation, while reserving its aid to the time when it will be mostefficient, to be preparing for a resolute and simultaneous effort when that time comes—sparing no self-denial that may alleviate sufferings far greater than any other district can well:conceive.
How soon that time is likely to come the instructive statistics collected by our contemporary, the Manchester Examiner and Times, show only too plainly. Out of 349,316 operatives in the investigated cotton districts, we find Working full time (or 6 days) 71 5 days a week . . .
. 92,355 13,467 ,,. 4 "' . 70,342 18,853, 3 " . 73,611
71
21 " .
13,416,
I,
2 ., 9,411 No work . . 67,861 Total. 349316 which gives an average throughout these district's of 3- days' work in the week for each operative. Nearly one- sixth of the operatives, it will be seen, are utterly out of work. In the beginning of January we are told the average was four days a week for-each operative, so that half a day per week has been lost since' then. In many districts, such an Wigan, Blackburn-, and Rochdale, the distress- is of course much greater than this total would give any conception of. In Wigan nearly half the operatives are totally without 8925 work, the numbers being Working full time 920' Three days a week 4215 Out of work . . 3g90- In Rochdale, nearly a third are quite out of work, and more than half are working less than three days in the week. When we consider that in Manchester and the richer districts much of the work is not called for by any corresponding demand, and only carried on. by the capitalists to prevent the destitution which would other- wise ensue, we may well tremble for the autumn and winter, if not for the immediate summer months. Nearly half a million operatives are probably engaged in this manu- facture, representing a much larger population dependent on their now paralyzed energies. It will be by no trifling effort, perhaps by one little less than gigantic, that we shall be able to help this largo population to tide over till another cotton crop comes in from India next year which maybe fairly expected to supply no small part of our-deficiencies in the raw material. Yet if in the end this great calamity should clear the American continent of the curse which has so long afflicted it ; if it set us free from our direct interest in the continuance of that curse ; if it should deepen the belief of the hardiest and most courageous section of the English people in the closeness of the tie between nation and nation, between province and province,, between class and class, and while leaving uninjured the independent spirit,, should yet clear the air of the false dogma, of laissezjaire,, then we may yet look back to the calamity now impending over us with the same feelings with which we look back to the ruin of our own West India interest, as the price of the regeneration of the islands in which it had grown up.
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