Can you tell what proportion of hands are employed in manufacturing for the American market?—For the American market, about 4,000 male adults, and 2,000 women and children, making a total of 6,000.
How many do you estimate are employed in manufacturing for the home trade?—Six thousand male adults, and one thousand women and children.
How many do you calculate are employed in the remaining parts of the Sheffield trade, namely, manufactures for the foreign market, exclusive of the American?—Two thousand male adults, and one thousand women and children.
This last market includes Spain and Portugal?—Spain, Portugal, the West Indies, South America, and Canada, with some few other parts.
What proportion does the American market bear to the home market, as far as regards the Sheffield goods?—The American exports amount, as nearly as I have been able to ascertain, to one-third of the whole manufactures of Sheffield; the home trade to, I think, three-sixths.
[He adds that the American trade had been affected by the Orders in Council and the Non-importation Act of the United States. The home trade with towns in the American trade had been injured also. Goods to the value of £400,000 were waiting in Sheffield and Liverpool warehouses.]
[Evidence of Robert MacKerrell, London merchant, dealing in cottons and muslins, and manufacturer of Paisley.]
Can you inform the Committee what the state of the trade was in the years 1808, 1809, 1810, and 1811?—In 1807 we felt the whole effect of the Berlin decree, we were entirely excluded from the Continent; I speak with regard to my own transactions and those of a vast number of my friends. We had in 1807, and previous to that, trades to the South of Europe, particularly in Portugal, which were uninterrupted, but which were likewise put an end to by the French invasion in November of that year. In 1808 the trade revived considerably; a great quantity of our goods, and of English merchandise, was introduced into the Continent through Heligoland; considerable exports were made to the Baltic; the trade in the Mediterranean increased very considerably; a very great trade was opened to this country in consequence of the Royal Family of Portugal removing to the Brazils, which likewise made an opening to Spanish South America. In 1809 the trade through Heligoland was most extensive; Bonaparte had his hands full with the Emperor of Germany and with the Spaniards, and had no time to attend to the coast; the trade during that year I may say was uninterrupted. The trade to the Mediterranean increased very much; the quantity of goods taken out that year greatly exceeded any previous year, for reasons that at that time we could not account for. The trade to the Brazils was equally extensive with the year before, vast exportations took place to South America, and in general, trade in the line in which I am engaged was reckoned a fair trade; the markets were never heavy.