These are large and serious questions, happily not of late years pushed forward by circumstances so greatly as of yore; but once very prominent indeed. The literature of cotton-spinning and strikes is a very extensive one, and written upon largely by no less an authority than Mr. John Morley, who is of opinion that “some of them (the manufacturers) are idle, some are incompetent, and some of them are blackguards.” This is severe criticism indeed to pass upon as enterprising and as upright a body of commercial men as it is possible to find in England: men, too, not so long since, generally of his own brand of politics. They do not seem the words of a philosopher.
The greatest period of over-production was that culminating in the gorged markets of 1861. The years 1859-60 had been times of “terrific prosperity,” in which new mills had sprung up numerously, and had, in common with the older, been working overtime. In the beginning of 1861 there were 2,270 factories in Lancashire, Derbyshire, and Cheshire, working at high pressure. As a result of the supposition that those good times would last, manufacturers strained every nerve to work their plant and their hands to their utmost capacity, and in doing so produced such a bulk of goods that by their own efforts they brought prosperity to an end. India and China, the great markets for shirtings and yarn, were full up, and ceased to be buyers; and all the while, the warehouses of Manchester were bursting with an increasing stock of unsaleable goods. The result was “short time” in October 1861. Even had there been no war in America, bad times would have come; but with the opening of the civil war between North and South, the Cotton Famine of 1862-3, brought about by the cessation of the supply of raw cotton from the Southern States, brought wealthy cotton-spinners to the verge of ruin, and misery and starvation to hundreds of thousands. Every one in the manufacturing districts suffered, for the classes are dependent one upon another. To manufacturers, workpeople, shopkeepers, professional men, the Cotton Famine was a very grim reality. By December 1862, no fewer than 247,000 hands were out of employment, and more than half that number on “short time.” The huge number of 234,000 were in receipt of poor-relief, and the average poor-rates for the manufacturing districts rose from 75⁄8d. in the £, to 2s. 2½d. The Relief Funds subscribed amounted to over £2,000,000, and the trade losses due to the Cotton Famine were calculated at £70,000,000.
THE COTTON FAMINE
The newspapers of that dreadful time were full of pen-pictures of the Famine, and they are readily to be referred to, but no good purpose would be served by recounting those sad tales. Yet, in spite of all their sufferings, in spite of having everything to gain from the success of the South, the essential sturdiness, independence, and honesty of the Lancashire people’s character kept their original opinions firm: that the North was right in fighting against slavery. It was essentially the people’s opinion. Knowing something themselves of slavery in the days before the Factory Acts, they were sympathetic, and were solid for the North. Other classes were, at best, divided, and England as a whole was for the South.
Manchester long ago ceased to be a cotton-manufacturing centre. The growth of the industry, the growth of the city, and the increase of rent, rates, and taxes within it, all led to Manchester becoming the metropolis of cotton, in which it is no longer worked up from the raw material, but where the finished product is warehoused. Warehouses, and not factories, are the prominent buildings of “Cottonopolis”; which is now a city of merchants and middlemen, and the metropolis of the Lancashire industrial towns, where all professions and trades are represented. To see the cotton mills, you need go to Stockport, Bolton, Blackburn, Oldham, and Preston: but whenever they suffer, Manchester will share in their trials.
The magnitude of the cotton-spinning trade is too great to be readily grasped. In the comparatively early stages of its history, in the years 1793-1824, the value of the total exports was £365,000,000, or an average of, say, twelve millions sterling a year, and that of the raw material imported £128,000,000. In 1887, the total value of the annual exports had risen to £70,957,000; or, in other words, it had grown almost six-fold.
ENGLAND’S BRAIN-CENTRE
There were then 700,000 operatives, and a sum of £29,400,000 was paid annually in wages. According to the returns for 1905, the exports of cotton goods in that year were valued at £92,000,000, showing an annual increase since 1887 of considerably over a million sterling a year. And still the tide of commercial prosperity is rising; no fewer than eighty new cotton mills having been built in Lancashire in the eighteen months comprising 1906 and the first half of 1907: with the result that there is more work to be done than hands to do it. When in due course the usual over-production ensues, and the scarcity of labour is replaced by lack of work, the bulk of misery and suffering will be proportionately increased; and should there ever come another Cotton Famine, the horrors of 1863 will fade into comparative insignificance.