The gross amount of wages rose, of course, in proportion to the numbers
employed. At the end of October, the sum paid weekly was L61,000; at the
end of November, L101,000; and for the week ending the 26th of December,
L154,472.
The number of Relief Committees in operation throughout the country at
the close of 1846, was about one thousand. Indeed, everything connected
with the Public Works and the Famine tends to impress one with their
gigantic proportions;--even the correspondence, the state of which is
thus given by the Board in the middle of December: "The letters received
averaged 800 a-day, exclusive of letters addressed to individual members
of the Board, on public business; the number received on the last day of
November was 2,000; to-day, (17th December,) two thousand five hundred."
All this notwithstanding, the Famine was but very partially stayed: on
it went, deepening, widening, desolating, slaying, with the rapidity and
certainty which marked the progress of its predecessor, the Blight. The
numbers applying for work without being able to obtain it, were
fearfully enormous. From a memorandum supplied by the Board of Works to
Sir Randolph Routh, the head of the Commissariat Department, dated the
17th of December, we learn that the labourers then employed were about
350,000, whilst the number on Relief Lists (for employment) was about
500,000,--that is, there were 150,000 persons on the lists seeking work,
who could not, or at least who did not, get it.
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