[Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine by Edwin Waugh]@TWC D-Link bookHome-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine CHAPTER XXIII 52/83
The agent for several landlords assures me he could not from his receipts pay the property-tax, but no distraints are made.8.The bulk of the rents are not collected, and distraints are unknown.9.The millowners are chiefly cottage-owners, and are asking for no rents.' That leads me to call your attention to the fact that, in addition to the sacrifices they are making, the millowners are themselves to a large extent the owners of cottages, and I believe, without exception, they are at the present moment receiving no rent, thereby losing a large amount of income they had a right to count upon.
I know one case which is curious as showing how great is the difficulty of ascertaining what is really done.
It is required in the executive committee that every committee should send in an account of the local subscriptions.
We received an application from a small district where there was one mill, occupied by some young men who had just entered into the business.
We returned a refusal, inasmuch as there was no local subscription; but when we came to inquire, we found that from last February, when the mill closed, these young men had maintained the whole of their hands, that they paid one-third of the rates of the whole district, and that they were at that moment suffering a yearly loss of 300 pounds in the rent of cottages for which they were not drawing a single halfpenny. That was a case in which we thought it right in the first instance to withhold any assistance, because there appeared to be no local subscription, and it shows how persons at a distance may be deceived by the want apparently of any local subscription.
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