'Terrific Prosperity.'

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imported was only 942,563,889 lbs., that of the two previous years having been 1,368,091,257 lbs. In December, 1844, cotton was 4d. per lb.; in December, 1845, it was still at the same price, the market being glutted, and the cotton-spinners obtaining fabulous profits, as anyone may at once perceive by simply looking at the difference between the price which the spinner paid for cotton at the end of 1844, and the price he obtained for that cotton after it was turned into yarn. A few weeks ago the difference between the cost of cotton and the price of yarn was only about 24d. per lb. In 1844, the margin between the two was upwards of 5d. per lb. Well might one of the largest mill-owners in Lancashire remark, in reply to certain queries made by the writer of this article, that the cotton trade was in a state of terrific prosperity.' In 1846 and 1847, under the influence of failing supplies, the price of cotton rose nearly 3d. per lb.; and then came the cry from Manchester Exchange of a cotton dearth. Hence the movement in 1848 for a committee of the House of Commons, to inquire into the growth of cotton in India. A large amount of evidence was elicited by that Committee sufficient to show that it only required the introduction of English capital, and English enterprise and industrial skill, into India, to enable that country to compete successfully with America in the supply of cotton. The chief obstacle to the settlement of large capitalists, or of the agents of capitalists, in the cotton-growing districts, according to a valuable Report drawn up by the Bombay Chamber of Commerce, was the want of encouragement on the part of the Government. The Report strongly urged, therefore, that the East India Company should grant longer, more liberal, and better secured tenures, to those who might choose to embark in such enterprises. This Report was laid before the Committee of the House of Commons; and they also urged upon the Government the necessity of taking such steps as would encourage capitalists to embark in the India cotton-trade. But 1848, the year of revolutions, was a period in which the people of Lancashire had no time to look after the supply of cotton, or any such ordinary question; and as the East India Company could not be moved out of the ruts of redtapedom, without a large amount of pressure from without, the subject was left, along with the reform of the Anglo-Indian army, and so many other urgent matters, for further conside

ration.

In 1850, the cotton difficulty still continued to disturb the minds of the more thoughtful class of spinners, our imports of American cotton that year having fallen off nearly 300,000 bales, as compared with those of 1849. In June, 1850, Mr. Bright, in

bringing before the House of Commons a resolution relating to the encouragement of cotton-growing in India, complained that the Indian Government had taken no notice of the recommendations of the Committee of 1848. How could he expect that they would take any notice of such a recommendation? As well might the Manchester Chamber of Commerce have complained in 1837-8-9-40, and succeeding years, that Lord Melbourne paid no attention to their memorials for the repeal of the Corn Laws. Had there never been anything more than urgent remonstrances from Chambers of Commerce, and other smoothspeaking corporations, the Corn Law would still have remained on the statute-book as a monument of the long-suffering patience of John Bull, and of his unwillingness to engage in any serious agitation against the established order of things.

The object of Mr. Bright's resolution in 1850 was for an address to the Queen, praying that she would grant a committee of competent persons to investigate the whole subject of cotton-cultivation, the obstacles which retard its development, and the means of surmounting those obstacles. A long discussion took place, but that was all. The Government discouraged the motion; and Mr. Bright, opposed as he was by two governments, at home and in India, said he would not press it to a division. At that time the tone assumed by the Government was very different from what it has lately been. Sir John Hobhouse, as President of the Board of Control, ridiculed the notion that India could ever hope to compete with America in the supply of cotton; and contended that the East India Company had done everything possible to promote the views of the cotton-manufacturers of this country. Between 1790 and 1837, twenty-eight successive measures had been passed for the encouragement of cotton cultivation in India. American planters had been invited over, and sent through the three Presidencies to establish experimental farms, and communicate to the natives the results of their own experience. All these experiments failed; and the conclusion to which the right honourable baronet had come was that the obstacles were insurmountable, and that India could never produce an article good enough to compete with the produce of the United States. It was not legislative opposition, or legislative shortcomings, but natural obstacles, which prevented the Indian peninsula from becoming a great cotton-exporting country. Sir James Hogg did not quite agree with the President of the Board of Control, but still he opposed Mr. Bright's motion. If Manchester wanted a commission, why not send out one at its own expense, or, what would still be better, why not send out some of its capital and intelligence?

The Manchester Commissioner.

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Sir James Hogg's advice to Manchester, in reference to the sending out a commissioner of its own, was adopted in 1851. Mr. Alexander Mackay, who had visited the United States in 1846-7, and who had given the result of his observations in The Western World, a work showing superior powers of observation and judgment, was commissioned by the Manchester Chamber of Commerce to inquire into the obstacles which prevent an increased growth of cotton in India, and into any circumstances which may injuriously affect the industrial condition of the cultivators of the soil, more especially within the Presidencies of Bombay and Madras. After a sojourn of about a year in India, Mr. Mackay embarked for England, but died on his way home, leaving a large mass of information relating to the subject of his mission, which was not published, however, till the end of 1853. The editor, in his preface to the Reports, which he had compressed into a volume, entitled Western India, makes the following remark with reference to the delay which had occurred in its publication:

'It is to be regretted that these Reports were not published in the early part of the year, or, at all events, before the India Government Bill' was carried in Parliament: This delay arose from unavoidable circumstances, to which it is not now necessary to make further allusion.'

So far as the members of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce are concerned this explanation may be deemed quite sufficient; but the public are still at a loss to understand why the evidence of the commissioner, expressly appointed to obtain the most reliable information regarding the obstacles to cotton cultivation in India, did not make its appearance till the India Government Bill was carried. Dr. Buist, late editor of the Bombay Times, an excellent authority on Indian affairs, is of opinion that, if a vigorous movement had been made in Parliament at that time, accompanied by energetic remonstrances from the large manufacturing towns, very important concessions might have been obtained in favour of those objects, which the Cotton Supply Association is now endeavouring to promote. Unfortunately for the cause of India, the United States cotton crop for 1852 amounted to 3,262,882 bales; and Lancashire was too busily employed in working up the lion's share of that large quantity to have any time to think about 'Irrigation in Guzerat,' 'Land Tenures in Broach,' Indian Canals and Railways,' or any of the other branches of the great India cotton-cultivation question, about which we now hear so much. Had there been a single Lancashire capitalist clearsighted enough, and zealous enough, to see the importance of the

matter at that particular juncture, he might have done something to mitigate the severity of the present crisis. But the favourable opportunity was lost. The mere fact of Mr. Mackay's Reports having been suffered to lie unpublished throughout the whole of that important session, shows how much apathy there must have been, even among that class of the community who had paid most attention to the question, and which had the deepest interest in its agitation.

Since 1853, a combination of causes has gradually awakened the attention of the leading spinners and manufacturers of Lancashire to a sense of the danger to which they must be continually exposed, so long as they continue to depend upon the United States for four-fifths of the cotton they consume. What with the dearness of the raw material, and the prospect of its continuing to maintain its present high price for some time to come, coupled with the critical condition of the Slave States of the Union, arising from the agitation caused by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the frightful proceedings in Kansas, the question of cotton supply bids fair to become the subject of an agitation not less determined in its purpose than that which led to the abolition of the Corn Law.

In the year 1834, the people of Great Britain paid 28,000,000l. for the emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies, one of the greatest events in the present century.' During the last three years the manufacturers of Lancashire have raised no less than 20,000,000l. for the promotion of slavery in the United States, one of the foulest blots on civilization. By using their capital and credit in the building of new mills and factories, without calculating how they were to obtain a regular supply of the raw material, the manufacturers have placed themselves completely in the hands of the American planter, who has thus been enabled to absorb the whole of the profits on the cotton trade; and 'this,' says Mr. Henry Ashworth, he will probably continue to 'do until the crop of the United States has become something like four millions of bales, which, according to all appearance, may be two or three years to come.' To Lancashire spinners who have expended their surplus capital and available credit in building new mills and filling them with improved machinery, the prospect held out by Mr. Ashworth is not very cheering, and yet we fear that to speak more hopefully would only be to deceive. At the end of 1856, the Manchester Guardian, in taking a survey of trade for last year, made the following remarks on the staple manufacture of Lancashire :

It is in the position of the great body of spinners and manufacturers that we find the most striking anomaly. They have en

Gaining a Loss.

421

joyed a demand from east, west, north, and south, which has taken off the entire production of their mills, and that too with a regularity and freedom, allowing at no time of more than partial and temporary accumulations, but almost constantly forestalling much of the produce of the throstle, the mule, and even the loom. With all this, however, they have been working from December to December, not merely without profit, but to a positive loss. We speak of those who spin the middle and lower counts of yarn, or who weave those into cloththat is, of the bulk; and we affirm, and that not without warrant, that a fair balancing up of accounts, in which mills and machinery are appraised as they ought to be, would show, on comparison with an equally just statement for last year, that an inroad has been made upon the capital in their hands, and, if the investigation be carried back another year or two, the conclusion will not afford any greater satisfaction. But,' people will say, this is a practically illogical result, and it must therefore be untrue.' Certainly, it seems unaccountable. When the world wants, and is ready to pay for, all we have to sell, one would think that it is prepared to give remunerative prices. Price, however, is the limiting principle to demand: as that grows this declines (all other circumstances remaining equal). That the ability of our customers to go along with rising prices has been fairly tested everybody knows who has witnessed the slow, painful, and fluctuating march of quotations up to a twelve months' gain of 14d. per pound. The evil is, not that yarn and cloth have made little advance, but that the raw material has made greater; and this evil is unavoidable, with supply and demand, as they are in each case. The planter's commodity will continue more elastic than ours, until his quantity renders him as much afraid of holding stock, as our quantity renders us. Experience is proving that Mr. Bazley's sagacity saw what was taking place, when he declared, a considerable time back, that the growth of mills was proceeding too fast for the growth of cotton; that, in fact, capital was flowing in excess towards manufactures at large, as compared with agriculture at large.'

The rapid growth of the cotton manufacture has been so much vaunted by one political arithmetician after another, for the last fifty years, that most people have come to look upon the annual returns of the quantity of yarn and calico produced by Great Britain as the most accurate test of our manufacturing prosperity. Were the raw material a product of our own soil, such a mode of estimating the industrial progress of the United Kingdom would be correct enough for ordinary purposes. But the case becomes widely different when we take into account the fact that the whole of the cotton we consume is imported from other countries.

Mr. Ashworth's remark, that the American planter has lately been enabled to absorb the profits of the English manufacturer, and that he will probably continue to do so for the next two or