CHAPTER III

THE LESSONS OF THE COTTON TRADE

The pessimist view—False assumption on which it rests—Cotton trade not natural to Britain—Climate—Temperature—Fallacy of inherited skill—Cotton workers as they were—Advancing legal restrictions—Rise of wages—Amazing development and prosperity of the British trade—Change in the mills—Change in the workers—Change in the employers—The case of Bristol—The verdict of Mr Schoenhof.

Many people who would gladly see working people better paid, honestly believe that a general rise in wages is not commercially possible. Any attempt at giving a fair wage all round would, they declare, so diminish trade as to throw out of work an additional number of persons whose added competition would inevitably reduce the average wage to below its original level: or who, if their competition were effectually barred by the existence of a legal minimum wage, would be left without employment, in a state more wretched than before. It may be remarked that this view involves an admission that we live under commercial conditions which render dishonesty not only the best, but actually the only possible, policy. Such a belief would appear to furnish an unanswerable argument in favour of the destruction of such commercial conditions, and it is difficult to understand how any human being can hold it and not become a convinced revolutionist. Yet, strange to say, it is from the mouth of upholders of things as existing, that this doctrine is most frequently heard. In some quarters, indeed, there would seem to be actual hostility to the idea of bettering the workman’s lot, an inclination to grudge him any greater share than he now possesses of the comforts and conveniences of modern life. This attitude—to some extent, it must be supposed, a feudal survival—indicates a very ugly spirit of class selfishness which may possibly be dangerous, and is certainly ignorant. Dull, indeed, must be the man or woman upon whom modern conditions of life do not impress the closeness of human interdependence. Never, since the beginnings of history, has the daily life of every man been so wonderfully interwoven with that of all his fellows: never was there a time when the deeds of each were so much a part of his neighbour’s pains or pleasures. Consider for a single moment how changed would be one’s own life, if there were no longer in Great Britain any person very poor, very dirty or very ill mannered, if, in short, no one fell below the standard of that skilled artisan class which is not only the most solidly virtuous, but also, in essentials, the most truly courteous section of our society. Is there one of us, however selfish, however callous, from whose daily existence a burden would not be lifted?

Yes, the pessimist will say, the change would be delightful, but it is not possible. That very interdependence of which you speak makes the whole world but one market, and renders it impossible for any one country to raise wages while other countries keep theirs low. This alleged impossibility rests, it will be observed, upon the assumption that higher wages conduce to higher selling prices, an assumption which experience shows to be fallacious. And since it is always more convincing, especially, perhaps, to the British mind, to narrate what has happened than to declare what must happen, the purposes of my argument will be best served by a brief account of the English cotton trade.

Before entering upon this, let me point out how very remarkable a phenomenon it is that there should exist an English cotton trade at all. We cannot grow the required material: every ounce of raw cotton has to be imported at a price, imported too from a great distance, and owing to its bulky nature, at comparatively a high heavy cost. Originally the possession of coal, iron and a seaboard gave advantages to England: the factory system developed early with us, and we manufactured cotton, as we manufactured other goods, because our energies were turned towards manufacture in general. But the same influences which caused mechanical production to begin here have caused it to arise elsewhere, and the natural development of industry must, one would suppose, eventually carry the manufacture of cotton to regions where cotton can be grown, especially if they happen also to possess the means of motive power. The Southern States of America, where cotton grows, where coal and water power are plentiful, and where population is no longer sparse, would seem to be marked out by nature as the home of the cotton industry. And in fact mills are rapidly rising in that region. Not only so, but the workers in them are employed for much longer hours and paid at a far lower rate per hour than English cotton workers. Readers of the chapter upon child labour, in Part I. of this volume, will be aware that children are working, both by day and by night, in these mills, whereas no child may work full time in any English mill, nor any child or woman at night. Yet these Southern mills, with every advantage of position, with cheap labour, and comparatively cheap land, have not succeeded, and are not succeeding, in winning from the English their immense preponderance in the markets of the world. This undeniable fact is explained in some quarters as being due to our much abused English climate, which is said to provide exactly the degree of temperature and humidity most favourable to the manipulation of cotton yarn. That a very dry atmosphere will not suit some processes of the trade seems to be generally acknowledged, and if England were the only damp country in the world, or even the dampest, we might perhaps regard ourselves as possessing a sort of monopoly advantage. If, however, there be any one state of the atmosphere more favourable than any other for the manufacture of cotton, then it is quite impossible that our notoriously variable climate can always present it. Moreover, it seems to be the case that for some processes at least, a combination of dampness with great heat is desirable: and this combination, natural to some countries, is actually forbidden by the English law. Countries possessing a climate at once hot and damp must, it would seem, have a natural advantage over us, and here again, the Southern States are favoured by nature.

Another explanation sometimes put forward is that the English workers, among whom the manufacture was first established, possess a hereditary skill of manipulation. The physiological possibility of such inheritance seems to be questionable: and, considering the great changes undergone by the machinery employed, the existence of it would be, at least, very surprising. Moreover, this supposed hereditary dexterity would require to have grown up in strangely few generations, since, in 1830 or so, the cotton workers of England are described as being deplorably poor workers, degenerate, physically and morally. Their condition, at that time and for a good many years afterwards, was appalling. A more horrible picture than that presented in Mr P. Gaskell’s “Manufacturing Population of England,” published in 1833, can hardly be conceived. These cotton operatives were, in short, as unpromising in physique, in character and in industrial efficiency as any group of casual, irregularly employed labourers that could be selected to-day from the ranks of unorganised industry: as ill paid, as wretched and as much oppressed as any sweated home worker in a slum garret.

By slow degrees, from that first Act which, in 1802, made some faint attempt at shortening the hours of the unhappy parish apprentices, the law has gone on, steadily diminishing hours of work. From 1854 onward, the working week for women in textile trades became one of 60 hours. Within a few years later, these hours were reduced to 56½; and now, the legal week in the textile trades is one of 55½ hours. At all these stages, the regulations, though nominally affecting only women, have, in practice, decided the hours of men also. Thus, the British textile worker is employed for fewer hours than any foreign competitor. Wages, though not high for the individual, are, owing to the fact that nearly all its members work in the trade, high for the family. Rates of pay have steadily risen; the average nominal wage of 24s. 9d. for men in 1881—itself an immense advance upon the starvation rates of the thirties—had risen, in 1902, to 27s. 3d. For later years I cannot cite figures, but the amazing prosperity of the trade during the last year or two can hardly have failed to affect wages favourably.[77]

Moreover, these rises have coincided with a fall in the price of food so marked that the increase in average real wages, between 1881 and 1902, is reckoned to be more than 36%.

The number of persons employed has also steadily grown, and the returns of the Chief Inspector of Factories show that in 1901 the industry gave occupation to 513,000 persons. The increase in the number of spindles and of looms, however, has been far greater than the increase in the number of hands. Machinery has made vast strides and becomes daily swifter and more economical of labour; so that the total growth of the trade, since the days of employers who vowed that a ten-hour day would ruin them, almost passes calculation. Moreover, the development of the industry tends more and more towards those branches which demand most skill. Our exports increase more largely in fabrics than in yarn, and most of all in coloured fabrics, the prices of which are rising. We are in short “specialising in the more expensive and difficult work.” We are producing those really exquisite coloured cotton stuffs which under various fancy names have, during the last few years, made summer dresses so attractive, and which are well worth the comparatively high price at which they are bought.

On p. 61 of the pamphlet written by Professor S. J. Chapman for the Free Trade League[78] may be found a most interesting table of the comparative increase, all over the world, in the number of spindles, between the years 1870 and 1903. We find that “about a fifth of the total increase in the world’s spindles in a third of a century has fallen to the United Kingdom. The whole of Europe, taken together in a period of industrial awakening, cannot boast a growth of cotton spindles more than twice as great as that which has taken place in this country alone, though in 1870 Europe was almost at the beginning of her cotton spinning, and has since then been fostering it.... In 1870 the American nation had a fifth as many spindles as the United Kingdom, and to-day she does not possess half as many as the United Kingdom.” And this in spite of the fact that the population of the United States is so much larger than ours.

Another table (on p. 66) deals with exports of manufactured cotton goods, and compares the average annual exports, from 1891 to 1902, of Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The absolute increase of British exports in the year 1901–2 was £8,170,000; that of Germany, £4,100,000; and that of the United States, £325,000. All the remaining countries together totalled an increase of only £13,450,000, as against Britain’s £8,170,000. The increase in German exports, which comes nearest to our own, is but slightly more than half of it. “Of the total trade (exporting) done by the chief Western trading nations, Great Britain accounts for 62·5%; Germany stands next with 12%.” Moreover, these figures, reaching only to 1902, take no account of the vast prosperity of the cotton trade in Great Britain since: a prosperity of which some indication is given in the Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories for 1905. From Oldham, Mr Crabtree reports that “About 20 new mills have been erected or are in course of erection for the cotton spinning trade alone. These will contain about 2,000,000 spindles.” (p. 147.) Mr Verney reports that “in the Rochdale district alone three new mills containing 220,000 spindles started in 1905, and at the end of the year there were nine more in course of construction to be equipped with 770,000 spindles. The total number of new mills which have commenced to run in 1905 and which are in course of erection throughout Lancashire is no less than 57, with 5,000,000 spindles. The signification of these figures may be better appreciated when it is remembered that in the whole of France there are but 6,000,000 spindles, and in Germany less than 9,000,000.” (p. 147.) On the same page the following declaration, by Mr W. Tattersall, is quoted from “The Cotton Trade Circular”: “The year’s trading has been the most prosperous in the history of Lancashire.”

On the whole, the story of the British cotton trade—a trade, be it remembered, the very existence of which is surprising—is the story of one of the most amazing developments in industrial history. Raw material that can only be grown in distant countries is brought, naturally enough, at first, to a land of coal and iron, the cradle of the factory system. By and by, other countries, including some in which the raw material can be produced, begin, in their turn, to adopt the factory system and to manufacture cotton. What would naturally follow? Surely, the absorption of the English trade by the foreign competitor whom nature favours. Moreover, Britain, already handicapped by nature, had further handicapped herself by restricting hours of work and by imposing high and expensive standards of sanitation and safety. Yet what is seen to occur? England’s trade goes on steadily expanding, year by year; wages rise, both nominally and, to a greater degree, really; and in the course of last year (1905) not only was all the available adult labour employed, but it was not possible to get enough of it, so that there was actually some increase in half time labour, which previously had steadily declined.

Nor is the contrast less if we consider the mills themselves or the men and women connected with them. In the first third of the last century, the mills were, in general, dirty, ill ventilated, ill provided with sanitary accommodation, frequently overcrowded, the machinery unguarded and the temperature unregulated, so that the operatives suffered from extremes both of heat and of cold. At the present day, there must be a certain cubic space for every worker, there must be proper sanitary accommodation, moderate temperature and—most important of all, perhaps, in this industry—there must be proper ventilation for carrying off the dust and fluff by which the lungs of so many cotton operatives have been injured. The old mills were full of overworked, underpaid children, stunted, wizened, and, if their contemporaries are to be credited, precociously vicious; children who dropped asleep at their looms, and had to be dragged, crying with sleepiness, from their beds to begin work again in the morning, while another relay of little serfs were actually waiting to enter the beds left vacant. The mills ran till late at night, sometimes all night long. Diseases of many kinds, especially phthisis and spinal deformities were rife; while drunkenness and immorality seem to have been rampant. The masters, many of whom were self made men, of little education, vowed that their profits were not large, and that any restriction of the hours of labour would inevitably land them in the Bankruptcy Court. The operatives, however, persisted in clamouring for relief; parliament granted it; and strange to say, instead of being ruined, the trade grew better and better. The workers, seizing their chance, developed strong trade unions that included both men and women, and thus secured themselves against the disastrous results of free competition. Their union helped them to gain better wages; the law helped them to health and to leisure. In less than three generations, the cotton workers of North Western England have become intelligent, independent citizens. They are no longer oppressed, no longer illiterate and no longer vicious. Free libraries and co-operative stores grow and flourish, and the old English passion for music, still dormant in the South, is well awake in the large cotton towns of the North. In industrial efficiency the English spinners and weavers of cotton have no rivals. As the Tariff Commission reported, “Nearly every mill started abroad with English machinery requires a certain amount of British workpeople and overlookers to start it and to train up native labour.” (Sec. 205.) This increase of skill, dependent very largely upon an improved standard of life, has rendered possible a vast improvement in methods of production, with the usual consequence of a greatly enlarged output. The masters, from whom the increasing stringency of the law has demanded an ever rising standard of capacity, are men of a better class than their predecessors, and among the most enlightened of British employers.

Meanwhile, in other countries, many of the evils which Lancashire has left behind, still prevail. Children toil to-day in certain American mills, as they toiled once in ours; in many European countries, hours are still injuriously long and wages inadequate to the demands of a civilised life. Yet employers of this cheap labour cannot produce so profitably as Lancashire can. “On the general efficiency of British labour as compared with that of any foreign country witnesses are practically unanimous,” says the Report of the Tariff Commission. (Sec. 89.) In short, the English cotton manufacturer produces more cheaply and more profitably, upon the whole, than any competitor, and in the highest branches of the trade, can hardly be approached. The reasons of this pre-eminence are that the good conditions enforced by law and the comparatively high wage enforced by the trade unions combine to create for him the most efficient body of cotton workers in the world. Once more, the facts of industrial history proclaim the truth that efficiency is not the cause but the product of fair wages, healthy surroundings and reasonable leisure.

Do not let us be deceived into supposing that, apart from these factors, there is any peculiarity in the cotton trade to account for these developments. If there were, we should behold the ill paid and overworked cotton workers of the Southern States, many of whom are of the same race as ourselves, producing fabrics as good as ours, at the same speed, and equal profit. Indeed, we need not go so far as America for our object lesson. The South West of our own country may provide it. Bristol, no less than the more northerly parts of the island, had its cotton mills. The same advantages were presented: the port open to the Atlantic, the moist westerly climate, the plentiful supply of labour. The same factory law applies, the same hours and conditions are enforced; the employers, of late years at any rate, have been men of capital and of intelligence. One factor only has been absent: the powerful organisation of workers. Because of its absence, wages have fallen to the level of unskilled trades in the district. Men do not work in the cotton trade in Bristol, nor adult women. The employees are girls, earning the low wage of a Bristol factory girl. Of profits there have, for years, been practically none. No employer can afford to make improvements in methods of production; and at the present moment it is, I believe, an open secret that the one remaining mill is only kept open because its owner is unwilling to turn away the hands.[79] But for the strong trade unions of the northern operatives, the whole of England’s cotton trade at the present day might be in the position of Bristol’s cotton trade, and the Lancashire worker might be toiling for as many hours and as small a wage as his German competitor. To the organisation of the workers, English labour owes that comparatively fortunate position which is, as Mr Schoenhof, years ago, perceived, “the only vantage ground which England possesses and which secures to her the safe and indisputable rulership of the commerce of the world.”[80]

In this particular industry of cotton, other nations, as he points out, whose labour is ill paid and whose hours of work are long, are trying to defend themselves by a high protective tariff “against the results of England’s high pay and short hours.”... “Yet it is all machine work driven by steam power and conducted in factories under the best intellectual management which the countries afford. But how world wide the difference in the results!”[81]

World wide indeed—not as to national trade only, but as to national happiness.