[465] If Providence should continue to bless the work of our hands, and our life and health be preserved, we indulge the hope of being able, at no very distant period, to investigate this subject more fully.
[466] Lac of rupees is one hundred thousand rupees, which at 55 cents each amount to fifty-five thousand dollars, or at 2s. 6d. sterling, to £12,500.
In 1820, a resident of Dacca, on a special order received from China, procured the manufacture of two pieces of muslin, each ten yards long by one wide, and weighing ten and a half sicca rupees.—The price of each piece was 100 sicca rupees. In 1822, the same individual received a second commission for two similar pieces, from the same quarter; but the parties who had supplied him on the former occasion had died in the mean time, and he was unable to execute the commission.
The annual investment, called the “Malbus Khás,” for the royal wardrobe at Delhi, absorbed a great part of the finest fabrics in former times: the extreme beauty of some of these muslins, was sufficiently indicated by the names they bore: such as, “Abrowan,” running water; “Siebnem,” evening dew, &c. The cotton manufacture has not yet arrived at anything like this perfection with us, and probably never will.[467]
[467] The manufacture of fine muslin, was attempted both in Lancashire and at Glasgow, about the year 1780, with weft spun by the jenny. The attempt failed, owing to the coarseness of the yarn. Even with Indian weft, muslins could not be made to compete with those of the East. But when the mule was brought into general use, in 1785, both weft and warp were produced sufficiently fine for muslins; and so quickly did the weaver avail himself of the improvement in the yarn, that no less than 500,000 pieces of muslin were manufactured in Great Britain in the year 1787. In a “Report of the Select Committee of the Court of Directors of the East India Company upon the subject of the Cotton Manufacture of this Country,” made in the year 1793, it is said, that “every shop offers British muslins for sale equal in appearance, and of more elegant patterns than those of India, for one-fourth, or perhaps more than one-third, less in price.” “Muslin began to be made nearly at the same time at Bolton, at Glasgow, and at Paisley, each place adopting the peculiar description of fabric which resembled most those goods it had been accustomed to manufacture; and, in consequence of this judicious distribution at first, each place has continued to maintain a superiority in the production of its own article. Jaconets, both coarse and fine, but of a stout fabric, checked and striped muslins, and other articles of the heavier description of this branch, are manufactured in Bolton, and its neighborhood. Book, mull, and leno muslins, and jaconets of a lighter fabric than those made in Lancashire, are manufactured in Glasgow. Sewed and tambored muslins are almost exclusively made there and in Paisley.”—Encyclopædia Britannica.
Coarse cotton piece goods still continue to be manufactured at Dacca, though from the extreme cheapness of English cloths, it is not improbable that the native manufacture will be altogether superseded ere long.
In 1823-4, cotton piece goods, mostly coarse, passed the Dacca Custom House, to the value of 1,442,101. In 1829-30, the value of the same export was 969,952 only. There was a similar falling off in silk and embroidered goods during the same period.
In the export of the articles of cotton yarn again, there has been an increase. In 1813, the value was 4,480 rupees only; whereas in 1821-22, it amounted to 39,319 rupees. From that period it has, however, decreased; and in 1829-30, the value of the native cotton yarn exported from Dacca, amounted to 29,475 rupees only.
Annexed are two statements—one showing the comparative prices of muslins now manufactured at Dacca, and of the same description of cloth, the produce of British looms.—The other, the comparative prices of Dacca cloths, manufactured from yarn spun in the country, and from British cotton yarn. These cannot fail to be interesting at the present moment, and their general accuracy may be relied on.