Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine

AMONG THE BLACKBURN OPERATIVES "Poor Tom's a-cold. Who gives anything to poor Tom?" -King Lear. Blackburn is one of the towns which has suffered more than the rest in the present crisis, and yet a stranger to the place would not see anything in its outward appearance indicative of this adverse nip of the times. But to any one familiar with the town in its prosperity, the first glance shows that there is now something different on foot there, as it did to me on Friday last. The morning was wet and raw, a state of weather in which Blackburn does not wear an Arcadian aspect, when trade is good.