cotton industry

cotton industry. Cotton manufacture was introduced to Britain from the Netherlands in the 16th cent. and was established in a number of areas by 1750, including Lancashire, East Anglia, and the west of Scotland. Mixtures of cotton and linen were particularly in demand, and London was the most important market for these fustians. London bills of exchange were an important element in trading capital, but requirements for fixed capital were modest until the advent of the factory, and met generally from profits. Pure cotton goods were very expensive but highly fashionable and were imported from India by the East India Company. These oriental products were commonly imitated in cheaper cotton mixtures. Before the industry started to move into factories, an experienced labour force and commercial networks had been created, and in some places concentration of production in large workshops without significant changes in technology had already begun.

Shortly after 1700 the silk industry fathered the water-powered factory, and this organization was transferred to the cotton industry by Richard Arkwright in the late 1760s. Increasing demand and interruptions to the supply of Indian goods, provoked by wars, encouraged the mechanization of spinning with the introduction of the jenny, water frame, and mule, then improvement of preparation machinery, especially carding, and finally weaving with the power loom. Power was provided at first by horse capstans, windmills, and water-wheels, but James Watt's rotary steam-engine encouraged location near cheap coal supplies in towns, and the industry tended to concentrate in Lancashire and the west of Scotland. Hand-spinning rapidly declined in the late 18th cent. Hand-loom weaving survived much longer, but growing immiseration was the lot of its practitioners by the 1840s.

Cotton created many opportunities for social and economic mobility. On the supply side the most important feature was the emergence of the southern states of America as the world's leading producer; Liverpool soon after 1800 became the most important port for the cotton trade and superseded London. The rise of Liverpool and the growth of machine-making firms in Oldham and Manchester gave Lancashire cardinal cost advantages. Thus Manchester became the main centre for the cotton trade and manufacture in the 19th cent.

One must not exaggerate the importance of cotton to the British economy. Research suggests that it probably never accounted for more than 8 to 10 per cent of national income. Yet the cotton industry had a wide influence. For instance, it pointed the way for other textile industries; it stimulated civil and mechanical engineering, aided the development of the chemical industry, and was significant in the growth of wholesale and retail trade.

The industry slowly came under pressure in foreign markets because of the rise of competition and the transfer of technology to other countries. Competitive disadvantages were compounded by the hardness of sterling before 1914 and the omnipresence of tariff barriers. Yet Britain was dominant in world cotton markets till 1914. The industry had structural weaknesses which were exposed in the period 1919–39: an inability or slowness to adopt the latest technology; undue specialization rather than integration combining spinning, weaving, finishing, and the clothing trades; a refusal to acknowledge the weaknesses of laissez-faire when faced with economic discrimination; a low wage/low productivity strategy which bedevilled industrial relations; and the rise of man-made fibres, beginning with rayon (artificial silk).

The fall in exports in the inter-war years represented not only the success of competitors and the deficiencies of Britain's industry, but also the problems besetting the world economy. Acceptance of the need for tariffs and the rationalization of the industry was rapid after 1929, with state intervention reducing capacity under a Spindles Board (1936) and the Cotton Industry (Reorganization) Act (1939), which established a cartel under the Cotton Board. After 1951 decline was swift and would have been worse without high levels of protection. Yet the progress of artificial fibres and cheap imports, often from the Commonwealth, could not be gainsaid. The state managed further contraction under the Cotton Industry Act (1959), only large integrated multinational firms surviving by 1990. The epic success of the ‘industrial revolution’ became a horror story from the 1920s.

John Butt