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You know their case. The blockade of the American harbours has intercepted the large supply of cotton which till lately was regularly received from thence. Consequently, the mill-owners have either suspended work and closed their mills, or have reduced the number of "hands" to a small fraction of that usually employed. Thousands and thousands of able, active, industrious men and women are thus, with their families, deprived of the means of subsistence. Theirs is not the case, remember, of men who will not work, and who, therefore, according to the Apostolic rule, may justly be left to bear their own burden: "If any man will not work, neither shall he eat." They want to work. They are compelled to be idle; the door of the factory is shut against them, and were they qualified for other kind of work, it could not be found for them. What, then, is to be done for them? And who are to do it? There has been much talk, as you probably know, about the backwardness of the mill-owners generally to sustain the hands
