proclaimed in the market-places. The signs of
what has gone wrong in these towns are few,
and may be described in few words. First,
there is less bustle in the streets, less heavy
traffic and carting of goods from place to place.
There is less traffic of all kinds, and those troops
of factory hands discharged, under ordinary
circumstances at stated times in great numbers,
are wanting.

As you pass the mills you hear no clack and
vibration of machinery, and, after night has set
in, the rows of windows which should be all
a-blaze with light are dark and cheerless-looking.
The great tall chimneys, too, which rear
themselves in all directions, discharge for the most
part no smoke, and though the air is all the
clearer for this, you are yet surprised to find
that the town where these chimneys are thus
enjoying a sinecure are all the more dismal for
the want of that thick and sooty cloud. The
smoke is an indication of prosperity, and the
absence of it is felt like a want. One more
indication there is of the existence of some
unaccustomed state of things in these towns, and
it is an indication which cannot escape the most
casual observer. At certain times of day as
you walk the streets, you meet great numbers
of women and children carrying packages of
bread and meal, and tin-cans or other vessels
for holding soup. These are the mill-hands out
of employment, who have been to the depôts
of the Relief Committees, to receive their dole.
Sometimes you meet a boy, or an old helpless
man thus loaded, but scarcely ever a young or
middle-aged workman. Beyond such indications,
there is little else to show what is
going on amiss in the manufacturing towns.
It may be that the people you meet are more
poorly clad than usual, and it may be that
their faces are, in some cases, more pinched
and careworn. But it must be remembered that
the manufacturing classes are never, at the best
of times, characterised by robustness of
appearance, and that pallor and poorness of
development are to be observed among them
as prominent characteristics under all
circumstances. It is within doors that you must look
for the real unmistakable evidences of what
has gone wrong. If there be rags, depend on it
those who wear them will hide out of view, and
the shoeless feet will not cross the threshold if
there is any way to help it. One man I went to
see, a specimen, no doubt, of a large, class, said
that he had not been out for months, simply
because he had not had fit clothes to appear
in, and did not choose to show in the streets
in tatters. Sodden and wretched he looked;
and, when I asked him if he had lost flesh, he
said, Yes, he knew that he had lost flesh, but
that was not so much from want as from
fretting. He said it was a man's mind that
wasted him away like that. And he was right,
poor fellow.

This may be called an instance of pride, and
I dare say it may be so, but it is a sort of
pride that one hardly knows how to find fault
with, and which you may go on finding fault
with to the end of time without avail. It is
the same pride which has kept many of these
suffering people so long from applying for relief.
It was false pride no doubt. To industrious
men whose means of self-support has suddenly
been cut off through no fault of their own, it
should be no humiliation to apply for that
relief to which they have a distinct right. Still
this is a humiliation, and one from which they
shrink.

It augurs, for the most part, a foregone
conclusion of long and terrible suffering when one
sees the home of one of these Lancashire
operatives wanting in furniture and ornament. Their
pride in their homes is very great, and among
some of them—the book-keepers and overlookers,
for instance— the glories of the best parlour are
really astonishing. Pictures and ornaments,
looking-glasses and bits of china, are seen
everywhere, and rosewood cabinets, and even
pianos, are far from being unknown. Therefore it is
that the cases of intensest misery and foulest
squalor, though they are the most striking at
first sight, are hardly the best specimens of the
peculiar form of distress which belongs distinctly
to the present crisis. The truest specimens are
cases where, one by one, all those highly-prized
treasures of the household have been parted
with, and where the better garments too, the
Sunday clothes, have been taken out of the
press to pass into the hands of the pawnbroker.
And here, again, that pride which we have been
speaking of has been bitterly punished. " It's
the first of my family who ever entered a
pawnbroker's shop"— "It's the first of us
that ever applied for relief," is the protest
the poor fellow makes as he falls before the
necessity.

And one other most eloquent though silent
witness to the ruinous mischance with which we
are occupying ourselves, we must look for within
doors also. Any one who during this present
crisis has stood within the walls of a disused
cotton factory, has had an opportunity of
observing how plainly dumb walls and silent looms
can speak to those who choose to listen. I
have seldom seen anything more terrible than
the aspect of one of these deserted mills.
In those great rooms ordinarily so busy, so
full of life, all is now still and silent. Where
you once could not, for the noise and clatter,
hear yourself speak, you now listen to the echo
of your own solitary footsteps. Where once
everything was moving, for ever turning,
advancing, and retiring, all is now still and quiet.
The eye and the ear are disappointed and
bewildered by such absence of accustomed sights
and sounds, by such quiet in a place devoted to
noise, by such solitude where busy crowds were
formerly assembled. I visited one mill thus
deserted, where the looms were entirely bare,
the cotton having been used up, even to the last
tuft, before the works were stopped. What a
ghastly affair that last day's work must have
been, and what must both millowner and workman
have felt as gradually each saw the amount
of raw material consuming and consuming