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The Cotton Trade in England and on the Continent : a study in the field of the cotton industry / by G. v. Schulze-Gaevernitz. Translated from the german by Oscar S. Hall. [With introduction by Rd. Marsden]
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3-1 the COTTON TRADE IN ENGLAND

export. Therefore England stood, in the first decades of the century, in a social crisis of the most intricate nature, the blame for which was generally laid to the factory system. This is the reason for the attacks from all sides on its standard-bearers, the “bleeding mill lords." The workers were at one in the opinion that it was “ King Steam ” who had seduced them from the “ old merry England.” They had sworn revenge upon him, They considered him the great power of the upheaval which had de­stroyed all that had been; but under his iron rule the people were driven more and more to despair ; they would at last destroy him, as well as all Governments in the world (33). Not much different was the opinion in the aristocratic seats of the South, which were still “undeiiled by the breath of industry.” The factory system was as opposed to Christianity as darkness to light; all social as well as economical evils were laid down to its account (34), especially that “even the Corn Laws were inveighed against.”

What was the reply of Manchester manufacturers to such attacks from right and left! That the industrial system was not- to blame for the distress in the country, but merely the circum­stance that it was only half introduced. On the foundation of free property and contract, on competition and barter, it had developed itself; developed, further, on these foundations, the economical and technical peculiarities of centralised industry, and freed it from the pressure of an agrarian, interested order of tilings. Without examining here the correctness of this point of view, we next ask: How did both occur?

IT. The Cotton Industry under the Influence, of International Competition.

The unprecedented advances of the industry came to a stand­still in the “thirties”—at least according to the idea of the employers, whose profits during that period went down consider­ably. The long-lasting business crises of the “thirties” and of the beginning of the “forties” show, alongside of a series of bad harvests, peculiar economical conditions. By very detailed

33. Committee on Handloom Weavers of 1834 (5,588-9).

34. Committee on Handloom Weavers of 1834 (6,8911.

 
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