Part 17
Factory legislation began in the cotton industry, and in no industry is it now more developed. The first acts were those of 1802 and 1819, both of which applied only to cotton-mills, and the former of which related only to parish apprentices. The first really important measure was that of 1833, which curtailed the abuse of child-labour, enforced some education and provided for factory inspectors, of whom there were at first only four. The next act of importance, that of 1844, was chiefly remarkable for its inclusion of all women among young persons. The proportion of women, young persons and children engaged in the cotton industry is so high, that most regulations affecting them, e.g. those relating to the hours of labour, must practically be extended to all cotton operatives. This act killed night work for "young persons," and children were not allowed to work at night. The year 1847 saw the introduction of what was known as the Ten Hours Act--after the 1st of May 1848 the hours of young persons (women included) and children were not to exceed ten a day and fifty-eight a week. A further limitation of hours to 56-1/2 a week was secured in 1874, and this was cut down by another hour (the concession of the 12 o'clock Saturday) in 1901. "Young persons" now includes all who are not half-timers and have not attained the age of eighteen, and all women. The rules as regards the employment of children, which have steadily improved, are at present as follows. No child under twelve may be employed. On attaining the age of thirteen the child may become a full-timer if he has obtained the prescribed educational certificate (i.e. fifth standard attainment or three hundred attendances each year for five consecutive years). Failing this he must wait till he is fourteen before he can be employed full time. Half-timers may be employed either (a) on alternate days, which must not be the same days in two successive weeks, or (b) in morning and afternoon sets. In the case of arrangement (a), the child when at work may be employed during the same period as a young person or woman, which in Lancashire is almost universally from 6 to 6 with two hours for meals.[44] In the case of arrangement (b), which is the system generally adopted in Lancashire, a half-timer in the morning set works from 6 to 12.30, with half an hour for breakfast, and in the afternoon from 1.30 to 6 except on Saturdays, when the hours are from 6 till 11.30 for a manufacturing operative, or till 12 for other work, for instance, cleaning. The child must not work two consecutive weeks in the same set (that is, in mornings or afternoons), nor on two successive Saturdays, nor on Saturday at all if during any other day of the same week the period of employment has exceeded 5-1/2 hours (i.e. a child in the morning set does not work on the Saturday). Other important features of factory legislation relate to the fencing of dangerous machinery and its cleaning when in motion (the regulations being strictest in the case of children and most lax in the case of male adults), and conditions of health, including the amount of steaming allowed, which was first regulated by the Cotton Cloth Factories Act of 1889.
The Cotton Industry outside England.
A brief survey will now be made of the cotton industry in parts of the globe other than the British Isles, and as a prelude the following broad estimates of the numbers of spindles and looms in the chief national seats of the cotton industry may be put forward.[45] The table is further supplemented by other figures[46] for the number of spindles at different times in the United Kingdom, the United States and the continent; and finally we may add the figures of cotton consumed.
The different average fineness of counts spun in different places must be borne in mind when the consumption of each district at the same time is being considered, but the relations between the amounts consumed in the contrasted districts in the two periods would not be affected much by this difference.
+-----------------+--------------+----------+-------------+ | | Estimated | Million | Thousand | | | Population | Spinning | Power-Looms | | | in 1902. | Spindles | about 1906. | | | In Millions. | in 1909. | | +-----------------+--------------+----------+-------------+ | United Kingdom. | 42 | 53.5 | 700 | | United States | 79 | 27.8 | 550 | | Germany | 58 | 9.8 | 215 | | France | 39 | 6.8 | 110 | | Russia | 139 | 7.8 | 150 | | India | 294(1901) | 5.8 | 45 | | Austria | 26.7 | 4.2 | 80 | | Spain | 18.6(1900) | 1.9 | 69 | | Italy | 33 | 4.0 | 100 | | Switzerland | 3.4 | 1.5 | 30 | | Japan | 46 | 1.7 | .. | | Belgium | .. | 1.2 | .. | +-----------------+--------------+----------+-------------+
_Cotton Spindles (including Doubling Spindles) in Millions._
+--------+---------+---------+--------+----------+--------+ | | United | | United | Other | | | | Kingdom.| Europe. | States.|Countries.| Total. | +--------+---------+---------+--------+----------+--------+ | 1870 | 37.7 | 13 | 7.1 | .. | 57.8 | | 1880 | 44.5 | 21 | 10.6 | 2 | 78.1 | | 1890 | 44.5 | 26 | 14.2 | 4 | 88.7 | | 1900 | 46.2 | 32 | 19 | 7 | 104.2 | | 1903 | 47.9 | 33 | 22.2 | 7.5 | 110.6 | +--------+---------+---------+--------+----------+--------+
_Average Annual Consumption of Cotton in the Period 1831-1835._
Millions of lb. United Kingdom 295 Continent of Europe 143 United States 79
_Average Annual Consumption of Cotton in the Period 1900-1905._
Millions of lb. United Kingdom 1634 Continent of Europe 2486 United States 1995
Roughly the consumption of cotton per spindle in the three areas to-day is, in lb., 35 for the United Kingdom, 70 for the continent, and 95 for the United States.
Before the cotton industry in other countries is described it will be necessary to explain how it could have developed there on a large scale at all. Of course this growth is to be accounted for very largely by the natural protection of cost of transport aided by tariffs. But it would be a mistake for Englishmen to imagine that all foreign cotton mills are the product of a forcing culture, and that if the favourable conditions created by import duties were removed they would totally disappear. No doubt some of the growth is artificial, but much is natural and would have taken place under universal free trade conditions. Much of it, indeed, would have appeared in these circumstances even were cost of production a negligible quantity, difficult though it may be at first to reconcile this statement with certain ordinary conceptions of the operations of the law of increasing returns. Lancashire secured an immense lead at the beginning of the 19th century, and if the cost of production may be represented as varying inversely as the magnitude of the industry, every addition to her success increased her advantages. How could the small industry, with a high cost of production because it was small, compete with Lancashire? The answer is to be found in the peculiar conditions governing international trade and a closer analysis of "increasing returns." "Increasing returns" in any place are a function of two variables, (1) the magnitude of the world market under conditions of world commerce, and (2) the magnitude of the industry in the spot in question. The economies connected with the first variable, which in such an industry as the cotton industry are enormous, and govern ultimately the limits of business specialism, are shared by every national section of the industry whether it be great or small. If Haiti started a cotton factory she might import all her specialized machinery--the specialism involved in producing which is dependent upon the exportation of some of it--and restrict narrowly the work undertaken by her one factory. The cotton goods outside this range she would still import, and if her specialized product were in excess of local demand she could export some of it, if she were favourably placed in respect of cost of carriage, for cost of production in Haiti would not be impossibly high, since machinery and the general system of production would be quite up to date though labour might be highly inefficient. Of course, the country with a large industry enjoys high local economies, and it might be thought that these alone would be a menace to the stability of the small industry, because if the industry in the favoured locality increased these would increase also and the small industry would be undersold. The answer to this difficulty is that foreign trade depends upon ratios between ratios, that is, upon the ratios between the costs of production of all the products of each country in relation to similar ratios for other countries. Relatively, therefore, diminishing returns operate in every country. In every country there must come a time, the utility of commodities being taken into account, when a unit of labour and capital provides less utility when applied to the creation of cotton goods, say, than when applied to producing something else for home consumption or for export in exchange for commodities wanted at home. It becomes apparent, therefore, that cotton industries of widely varying sizes dispersed throughout the world can settle into relations of perfectly stable equilibrium, as that term is understood by the economist. Slow changes, of course, in their relative volumes might be looked for with changes in a mutable world, but very sudden collapses would be impossible unless the general course of human affairs were revolutionized.
_The United States._--The machine-cotton industry was carried to North America almost as soon as it evolved in England. Models of Arkwright's machines were smuggled across the Atlantic in 1786--Arkwright's first mill had not been started in England until 1769--and these with a jenny and stock-card were publicly exhibited. From these models a great mass of machinery was soon constructed. The first mill was erected in 1788 (that of the Beverly Association), the second appeared in 1790, the third five years later, and in 1798 Samuel Slater started with some of his wife's relatives the first mill in which the principle of the water-frame was carried throughout. It is said that it was not until 1814 that power-loom manufacturing was commenced, but in England success with the power-loom was long delayed. As early as 1831, however, there were in the United States--mainly in the New England states--800 factories, a million and a quarter spindles, 33,500 looms and 62,200 operatives. At this time the annual consumption of cotton was about 77,000,000 lb. as compared with some 300,000,000 lb. in England at the same date, and 2,000,000,000 approximately in the United States at the present time.[47] Writing in 1840, James Montgomery said that, in respect of cost of production, the American industry was 19% behind that of England apart from the cost of raw material, which was then a good deal less to the Americans. In 1878, when there was much interest in the question of British efficiency in the cotton industry because the passage of the Factory Act of 1874 had cut down the working hours, the _Economist_ contrasted the result of twenty-five years' growth in England and America:--
"In 1853 the average English production per weaver of 8-1/4 lb. shirting was 825 yds. per week of sixty hours. In 1878 the working hours had fallen to fifty-seven, and the production had risen to 975 yds. An increased production of 23% is thus due to improvement in the processes of manufacture. In 1865 there were 24,151 persons employed in Massachusetts in the production of cotton goods, and they produced 175,000,000 yds. In 1875 the operatives numbered 60,176, and their product was 874,000,000 yds. The operatives had increased 150% and their products had increased 500%. The increase of production due to improved methods was thus in England 23%, and in Massachusetts 100%. I do not, of course, suppose that the American manufacturer is in advance of his English rival to the extent of this difference, for I presume that he started upon the career of improvement from a lower platform. But a progress so greatly more rapid than ours will be admitted to cast much light on the change which has occurred in our relative positions."
The contrast no doubt was not perfect, as indeed it could not be in view of the varieties of product and their changes, but it proves at any rate that Americans were making vast strides in industrial efficiency even before the period when American methods and American enterprise were monopolizing in a wonderful degree the attention of the business world.[48] About a dozen years later the low real cost of production of simple fabrics in the United States was universally admitted, and also that American manufacturers were making more use of machinery than their European rivals. In a typical weaving shed in Massachusetts, for instance, of which particulars were published, twenty women "tended" as many as eight looms apiece, forty-three managed seven, two hundred and thirty-two managed six, and only eleven had five only.[49] Since then, moreover, advance has been rapid, and the sudden development of the South has astonished the business community of other centres of the cotton industry.
Before the lines of development in America are specifically dealt with, and particularly the industrial phenomena in the South, a few words must be said of the general extension of the industry. The consumption of cotton in the United States in million lb. was about 75 in 1830, 390 in 1860, 1100 in 1890 and nearly 2000 on an average of the five crop years from 1900-1901 to 1904-1905: active spindles advanced from 1,250,000 in 1830 to 10,653,000 in 1880 and about 21,250,000 in 1905. Looms which numbered 33,500 in 1830 had reached 226,000 in 1880 and nearly 550,000 in 1905. At the same time population, it must be remembered, was growing at a phenomenal rate: from 31.4 millions in 1860 it had passed to 38.6, 50.2, 62.6 and 76.3 at the succeeding decennial censuses, the decennial rates of increase being in order 22.5, 30, 25 and 20.5 as compared with 8.5, 10.5, 8 and 9 as shown by the corresponding censuses in the United Kingdom. Protection was of course contributory to the growth of the American cotton industry. It may be remarked incidentally that the New World, including the West Indies and the Chinese empire, take the bulk of American exports, which for so large an industry are inconsiderable. The imports have always been well in excess of the exports. The encouragement of home industries by tariffs was definitely aimed at after the war with England during the Napoleonic struggles, and although a sensible reduction of duties was experienced after 1845 the reaction to protection that followed the Civil War was never significantly departed from except by the single act of 1883. In 1790 the duties on cotton goods were 7-1/2% _ad valorem_, and they rose gradually until they reached 25% in 1816. Slight reductions some seventeen years later were followed in the early 'forties by a tariff of 30%. Diminutions were succeeded by oscillations, though at no point was a low level touched. Severe charges were imposed in 1890, and after some relaxation in 1894 the policy of restrictiveness was restored in 1897. According to the calculations made by the English Board of Trade in 1903[50] no fabrics were admitted at a charge equivalent to less than 68% _ad valorem_, and no yarns were admitted at a charge lower than 45% _ad valorem_. Cotton thread is subjected to a rate equivalent to 375%[51]
The character of the growth of the cotton industry in the United States, as revealed by recent census returns, is peculiarly interesting:--
+------------------------+--------------------------------------+-----------------------------+ | | Thousands | Percentage Increase | | +--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | | 1880. | 1890. | 1900. | 1905. |1880-1890|1890-1900|1900-1905| +------------------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+ | Active Spindles | 10,653| 14,188| 19,008| 23,156| 33.8 | 34 | 21.8 | | Looms | 226| 325| 451| 541| 43.90 | 38.7 | 20 | | lb. cotton consumed | 750,344|1,117,946|1,814,003|1,875,075| 48.99 | 62.3 | 3.3 | | Wages | $42,041| $66,025| $85,126| $94,378| 57 | 28.9 | 10.9 | | Capital |$208,280| $354,021| $460,843| $605,100| 70 | 30.2 | 31.3 | | Employees not officers | | | | | | | | | and clerks | 174.7| 218.9| 297.9| 310.5| 25.3 | 36.1 | 4.2 | +------------------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
Cotton small wares are included in the totals for 1880 and 1890, but excluded from those for 1900 and 1905. We must observe further that "capital" is a vague term. Recent events in the United States afford a valuable empirical indication of the effect that improved machinery actually has upon wages. The new automatic looms caused a saving of labour per unit of product which recalled the complete subversion at the industrial revolution of the proportions in which the several factors in production were organized. Displacement of labour and falling wages might not unreasonably have been looked for temporarily, but wages stuck at their old level or rose. The rise was caused by numerous converging forces which brought their united weight to bear. First, prices so fell as the result of the new machinery that the increased volume of commodities which the market could absorb more than counterbalanced, it would seem, the labour-saving of the new machinery, the cotton industry being taken as a whole. It must be remembered that to increase the output from the subsidiary processes where labour had not been saved more hands had to be drafted in. Thus, a contraction of the body of weavers was accompanied by an expansion of the body of cotton operatives. Again weavers' wages were naturally raised in a special degree because automatic machinery called for quick, trustworthy and intelligent hands, endowed with versatility, especially in the days when the machinery was still in the semi-experimental stage. The American employer tries to save in labour but not to save in wages, if a generalization may be ventured. The good workman gets high pay, but he is kept at tasks requiring his powers and is not suffered to waste his time doing the work of unskilled and boy labour. There is, certainly, in the American labour problem no serious grievance on the question of wages. If there is any abuse it consists in excessively fierce work. Mr. T. M. Young, who visited the American cotton districts in 1904 with an informal commission of Lancashire spinners and manufacturers, did not think that the cause of the high wages--allowance being made for the purchasing power of money, they are above those of England, though cotton operatives in England are well paid relatively--was the superiority of the American cotton worker; neither did the representatives of the English cotton operatives who accompanied the Moseley Commission. As often as not "the cotton operative in the United States is a French Canadian, a German, an Italian, a Hungarian, an Albanian, a Portuguese, a Russian, a Greek, or an Armenian." It is the extensive "exploitation" of machinery seemingly, together with the speed of work, which keep wages high, combined with the horizontal and vertical mobility of American labour, which prevents it from accumulating in pools, and causes streams of the best hands to be flowing continuously to other callings and places, and no insignificant proportion to climb the social ladder. The remainder naturally profit, for a local or trade congestion of labour is avoided, and the voluminous recruiting of enterprise by the intensified competition among employers keeps the demand for labour high.
One noticeable point in the table quoted above is that until recently cotton consumed increased much faster than the number of spindles. This might be explained in a variety of ways. Average counts remaining constant, the average speed of the spindle might have risen; or the latter remaining constant, counts might have been getting finer. Speeds have certainly gone up a good deal of late on some counts. And it is quite likely, too, that concentration on the manufacture of coarse goods for export, with stout warps to keep down the breakages and raise the output per loom, may be reckoned as one cause.