Robert Rawlinson: Cotton Famine Relief Works

Note: This is a sub-section of Robert Rawlinson

From the Liverpool Daily Post, Monday 22 February 1869:-

WHAT THE COTTON FAMINE HAS DONE FOR LANCASHIRE

Mr. Robert Rawlinson, the eminent engineer, who was appointed at the period of the cotton famine to supervise the application of Government loans to public works in the Lancashire cotton districts, has just presented his final report to the Right Hon. G. J. Goschen, President of the Poor-law Board. As a synopsis of the whole working of this peculiar experiment, the report is not only valuable for its facts, but eminently suggestive for the inferences to be drawn therefrom. It was at the end of April, 1863, after the project of finding employment for the distressed cotton operatives had been for some time discussed in the Times and elsewhere, that Mr. Rawlinson was despatched to the scene of the famine, deputed by the then Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, to communicate with the local authorities as to what projects of town improvements could be set in motion with the assistance of loans from Government, at a low rate of interest, and with easy terms of repayment by instalment. Mr. Rawlinson was especially to consider, works of public utility to be encouraged, town sewering and house draining, paving, and improving streets and roads, drainage lands, and improving waste lands, the formation public parks and markets, river improvements, &c. Upon these and similar works the unemployed cotton operatives could find employment with a necessary admixture of skilled labour. For these purposes two Acts of Parliament were passed, authorising the loan £1,850,000 at 3½ per cent., repayable by instalments in 30 years and upon full security. The plans of the local authorities were proposed by their own surveyors, who also superintended the works. All that the Government did was by its inspector to supervise and inspect these plans to see if they were of the kind contemplated for works of public utility, and, if so, to authorise the loans accordingly. We find then that up to the 1st January, 1865, of the whole sum of £1,850,000, loans to the extent £1,846,082 had been applied for by and authorised to the authorities of eighty-seven of the towns and parishes in which the cotton famine prevailed. In twenty of these towns and parishes parts of the sanctioned loans have been abandoned to the extent of £79,567. The sum actually taken up on account of the Public Works (manufacturing districts) 1863-4, was £1,768,615. Of this sum, £134,280 33s 10d has already been repaid, leaving a sum a little over a million and half owing to the nation, repayable within 30 years, and amply secured. So far, then, as the nation is concerned, not one penny will have been spent in relieving this cotton famine distress. It has made loan at 3½, being able itself borrow at 3¼, and thus there is rather a margin of profit to the extent of ¼ per cent., than a farthing's worth of loss.

What the Lancashire districts have gained by this timely application of the resources of the national credit it is the mission of Mr. Rawlinson to tell us. Mr. Rawlinson, as a practical man, has dwelt mainly on the net practical and observable results of the act now remaining to Lancashire. He does not, of course, comment much upon the number of cotton operatives actually employed on these public works ; although we are able to gather that they ranged about 13,000 men, who represented each a family of five, or a total of 65,000, and whose average earnings were at the rate of £33 15s per annum. It was at first objected that these men, overlookers, spinners, weavers, cardroom hands, warpers, piecers, &c., would never be able to do work with pick, spade, and barrow ; but Mr. Rawlinson tells us that in a short time the hands of the labourers hardened, while fresh air and exercise soon brought them into condition. " Many of the men," are his words, "in three months' time increased in strength, and became, comparatively, skilled workmen, capable executing sewer trenching and other forms of earthwork requiring skill and care." At first, and in those portions of the work rendering necessary something more than the mere handling of a shovel, skilled workmen, not cotton operatives, were employed; but the operatives were at once useful in the merely manual operations of digging, shovelling, and wheeling. It is the deliberately expressed opinion of Mr. Rawlinson that, in the districts where the works undertaken by the authorities with the Government loans have been in progress, the value of property has largely increased, and Lancashire from being quite backward in sanitary improvements, is at this time probably the most advanced county in England in town-sewering, street-paving, public parks, water-works, and road improvements." Before the passing of the Public Works Acts, 1863-1864, many of the Lancashire towns had neglected to adopt the Public Health Act, 1848, and the Local Government Act, 1858, while in many of the places the works commenced under the Public Works Act are now continued under the Local Government Act. Prior to the cotton famine many miles of streets and roads in the cotton districts were in so bad a condition that carriers and railway authorities had given notice to the manufacturers that they could not continue to fetch or deliver goods over them, the carts and waggons broke down and stuck in the mud so frequently. Between the passing of the Public Works Acts and the 28th March, 1868, no less than 703,088 lineal yards, or 399½ miles of streets, have been sewered, paved, and provided with flagged side-walks, side channels, and subsoil drainage,— "such as no highway ever had," says Mr. Rawlinson in the eighty-seven towns and parishes (fifty-five of which have completed the whole of their contemplated works) which applied for loans under the Acts. No less than 30,233 houses had, to the end of March, 1868, been drained in connection with the four hundred miles of sewering above referred to ; while the work is now (16th January, 1869, being the date of the report) still in progress. The total area of paving and other surface works completed to the same period was 3,825,625 superficial yards, or 796 acres. Of the total sum agreed to be advanced to the authorities, namely, £1,768,515, £358,414 have been expended in sewage works, and £813,007 in road and street improvements, a total of £1,171,521. A sum of £414,629 has been expended in the construction of reservoirs forming the storage of the water-works. The cubical contents of these reservoirs represent an aggregate of 1,480,675,000 gallons, equal to a consumption of 20 gallons per day for 100 days by 740,337 persons—a circumstance of great importance during the past dry season. Public parks have, through the working of those Acts, been opened in Bolton, Blackburn, Oldham, and Preston ; and public cemeteries at Bury, Dukinfield, Manchester, and Macclesfield. Works of river improvement have been undertaken at various places, notably at Bolton and Bacup, which, on the great flood on the 16th November, 1866, would have sustained much damage but for these works of river improvement undertaken. We gather that the total sum actually expended to the 28th March, 1868, under the Act, was £1,628,747 9s 1½ d —leaving some £100,000 of the sum authorised for loan still to be applied; while up this time (the date of his report), says Mr. Rawlinson, "I am not aware of the failure of any of the works undertaken."

Mr. Rawlinson refers with pardonable pride to the working of the Acts he has had a principal part in administering as a "great and successful experiment." It is, indeed, a great and successful experiment when viewed as one which has done a permanent good, and which enabled thousands of deserving operatives to tide over a period of exceptional and aggravated distress, without any of the loss of self-respect which the reception of purely charitable doles would have endangered. The poor operatives were provided with work ; many Lancashire towns, too bad in respect to streets to allow of railway vans passing along them, as we have seen, have been made passable and convenient; such a stimulus has been given to sanitary improvements, that, Mr. Rawlinson says, Lancashire is now in the van instead of the rear of the counties, and the Government will get its ¼ per cent., or, at all events, will lose nothing. Mr. Rawlinson's inferences from his experience of this great and successful experiment we give in his own words :—

Similar works to those undertaken and executed in Lancashire by the aid of a Government loan, at a low rate of interest, may no doubt be devised for other places. The metropolis and many large towns may find work in street and road improvement, which, if properly carried out, shall be advantageous to the district and directly and indirectly relieve the poor-rates. In all such cases, however, local distress most be relieved upon or through local works' and solely upon the responsibility of the local authorities, Government simply offering the necessary legal powers and pecuniary aid, on good security, as in Lancashire. There are many miles of new streets and roads unsewered and unformed in the suburbs of the great towns of England and Wales, which, if improved, as in Lancashire, would afford work to able-bodied men, and benefit the several localities. The work must, however, in all cases, be for wages, and those who labour must do so voluntarily, under the encouragement of the proper local authority where distressed labourers have, temporarily, become paupers through stagnation in trade. The Government has from time to time advanced money at a low rate of interest (from 3½ per cent, up to 5 per cent.) for various purposes to encourage fisheries ; to establish harbours ; to form roads ; to drain lands ; to make the Caledonian Canal; to improve rivers; to carry out arterial drainage ; to relieve the distress in the terrible Irish famine, 1846-7-8, &c. In many of these cases there was direct Government action and responsibility, resulting in money loss. If no Government aid had been given to Lancashire during the recent cotton famine, the towns would most probably for a long time have remained unimproved, and the poor-rates would have been largely increased. An increasing of permanent pauperism is also the usual result of any epidemic disease such as fever or cholera aggravated by defective sanitary arrangements. The public works in the Lancashire towns have benefited trade, giving 400 miles of good roads for tracts of mud. They have further added to the local means of health and pleasure providing public parks and recreation grounds which otherwise might not have been formed ; and they have also increased the rental value of house property by sewering, draining, and so removing nuisances from the vicinity of dwelling-houses, which nuisances, if allowed to remain, would have been liable to injure human health.

Mr. Rawlinson has opened up a very wide question—this of encouraging sanitary and other local improvements by the offer of Government loans at a low rate of interest—which we have not space to discuss on the present occasion ; but we must not leave the report without expressing our high opinion of its lucidity as an official document, and of the energy and discrimination which must have been displayed by the reporter to bring so vast an experiment to a successful issue.

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