The development of the English industry can be traced through the following:—Aikin, A Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles round Manchester (1795); Andrew, Fifty Years’ Cotton Trade (1887); Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain (1835); Banks, A Short Sketch of the Cotton Trade of Preston for the last Sixty-Seven Years (1888); Butterworth, Historical Sketches of Oldham (1847 or 1848); Butterworth, An Historical Account of the Towns of Ashton-under-Lyne, Stalybridge and Dukinfield (1842); Chapman, The Lancashire Cotton Industry (1904); Cleland, Description of the City of Glasgow (1840); A Complete History of the Cotton Trade, &c., by a person concerned in trade (1823); Ellison, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain including a History of the Liverpool Cotton Market and of the Liverpool Cotton Brokers’ Association (1886); Léon Faucher, Études sur Angleterre (1845); French, The Life and Times of Samuel Crompton (1859); Guest, A Compendious History of the Cotton-manufacture, with a Disproval of the Claim of Sir Richard Arkwright to the Invention of its Ingenious Machinery (1823); Guest, The British Cotton Manufacture and a Reply to the Article on Spinning Machinery, contained in a recent Number of the Edinburgh Review (1828); Helm, Chapters in the History of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce (1902); Kennedy, Miscellaneous Papers on Subjects connected with the Manufactures of Lancashire (1849); Ogden, A Description of Manchester ... with a Succinct History of its former original Manufactories, and their Gradual Advancement to the Present State of Perfection at which they are arrived, by a Native of the Town (1783); Radcliffe, Origin of the New System of Manufacture, commonly called “Power-Loom Weaving” and the Purposes for which this System was invented and brought into use, fully explained in a Narrative concerning William Radcliffe’s Struggles through Life to remove the Cause which has brought this Country to its Present Crisis (1828); Rees’ Cyclopaedia, articles on Cotton (1808), Spinning (1816) and Weaving (1818); Ure, The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain, investigated and illustrated, with an Introductory View of its Comparative State in Foreign Countries (2 vols.); Ure, The Philosophy of Manufacture; or An Exposition of the Scientific, Moral and Commercial Economy of the Factory System of Great Britain (1835); Watts, Facts of the Cotton Famine (1866); Wheeler, Manchester: its Political, Social and Commercial History, Ancient and Modern (1836).
In addition there are many short papers in the Manchester public library. Much valuable information may be obtained from parliamentary papers; a list of relevant ones is printed as an appendix to Chapman’s Lancashire Cotton Industry, but it is too lengthy to repeat here. The most important are the reports relating to the hand-loom weavers, those on the employment of children in factories (of which a list will be found in Hutching and Harrison’s History of the Factory Legislation), and the state of trade and the annual reports of the factory inspectors. On labour questions there is a list of authorities in Chapman’s Lancashire Cotton Industry and also of parliamentary papers containing useful material. Printed copies of the “Wages Lists” are issued by the trade unions. The Factory Acts are dealt with in Hutchins and Harrison’s History, mentioned above, as well as the literature relating to them; while the handbooks by Redgrave and by Abraham and Davies are specially useful.
On the industry abroad the following are the fullest authorities:—Besso, The Cotton Industry in Switzerland, Vorarlberg and Italy (1910) (a report made as a Gartside Scholar of the University of Manchester); Chapman’s Cotton Industry and Trade (1905); Hammond, The Cotton Industry; Hasbach’s article, “Zur Characteristik der englischen Industrie,” in Schmollers Jahrbuch, vol. ii. (1903); Leconte, Le Coton; Lochmüller, Zur Entwicklung der Baumwollindustrie in Deutschland (1906); Montgomery, The Cotton Manufacture of the United States of America contrasted and compared with that of Great Britain (1840); Oppel, Die Baumwolle (1902); Schulze-Gaevernitz, Der Grossbetrieb: ein wirtschaftlicher und socialer Fortschritt: eine Studie auf dem Gebiete der Baumwollindustrie (1892; translated as The Cotton Trade in England and on the Continent); T. M. Young, American Cotton Industry (1902); Uttley, Cotton Spinning and Manufacturing in the United States of North America (1905; a report of a tour as Gartside scholar of the university of Manchester); and the Gartside reports on the cotton industries of France and Germany by Forrester and Dehn respectively. Information will also be found in Diplomatic and Consular Reports, and fragments may be gathered from other books such as G. Drage’s Russian Affairs, Dyer’s Dai Nippon, and Huber’s Deutschland als Industriestaat. Japan has published since 1901 a very full financial and economical annual, and the British government issues annually a good statistical abstract for India. The American census contains much detailed information, and there are, in addition to the statistics issued by the Federal government, those of Massachusetts, the Bureau of Statistics of which has also reported the results of an investigation into the industry in the Southern states. Among official matter the semi-official Bombay and Lancashire cotton spinning inquiry of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce may be included. The census of production of the United Kingdom must be mentioned, and the reports of the International Congresses of Cotton Spinners and Manufacturers. As to labour, see the reports of the International Textile Congresses.
The periodical literature is of good quality and much of it is filed in the Patent Office library. We may notice particularly the Cotton Factory Times; Textile Journal; Textile Manufacturer; Textile Mercury; Textile Recorder; Textile World Record (American); Der Leipzige Monatsschrift für Textilindustrie; and the French Textile Journal. Shepperson’s Cotton Facts is an annual which relates chiefly, though not entirely, to raw cotton, as does also Cotton, the periodical of the Manchester Cotton Association. For technical works we may refer here to the well-known treatises of Brooks, Guest, Marsden, Nasmith and Walmsley, and to Johannsen’s ponderous two-volumed Handbuch der Baumwollspinnerei, Rohweissweberei und Fabrikanlagen.
(S. J. C.)
[1] See the extract from the books of Bolton Abbey, given by Baines (p. 96) and dated 1298.
[2] Vol. ii. p. 206; Baines, pp. 96-97.
[3] Baines, pp. 93 and 94.
[4] Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, vol. ii.