3G THE COTTON TRADE IN ENGLAND

fortunes by Arkwright , Peel, and others in an astonishinglyshort time; a proof of this is the quick and unopposable conquestof, say, the Leipsic or Frankfort fairs (4). England 's positionof monopoly lengthened the war in Europe , which occasionallyinvolved the United States . The countries mentioned wereat that time the markets for English cotton goods. Contem-porary authorities were clear about these conditions. Thus Urespeaks of a “ silent monopoly ” which England has possesseddiming the war (5).

All this changed with the conclusion of the war. Localspinning mills sprang into existence everywhere, partly underthe protection of duties, as in France , but also without such, asin Switzerland. Switzerland became pre-eminently a strong com-petitor of Manchester, full of energy, not only in its own, butalso in other Continental and Mediterranean markets (6), forwhich water-power and a relatively damp climate made it suit-able, Switzerland also appears to be the first to have arrivedat the possession of fairly skilled factory labour. Thus Ureremarks that in Switzerland the population preferred, in manycases, factory labour to cottage industry, no easy, but so muchthe more an important alteration in the people’s usages.

Alsace also enjoyed advantages similar to those of Switzer-land . Here there were already in the “thirties,” even if isolated,spinning mills which in number of spindles were equal tothe English ; for example, Nageli’s, in Mulliouse, with 80,000spindles, and that of Schlumberger and Bourcart, at Guebweiler,with 54,000 spindles. Notably was Alsace superior to England in chemical knowledge, and in design for printed muslins. Itmay certainly serve as a sign of industrial strength that theSociete Industrielle petitioned for the introduction of a FactoryAct, and that the president of the Chamber of Commerce, JeanDollfus , supported a reduction of the tariffs. In his evidencebefore the Commercial Inquiry of 1834, and in his answer tocertain attacks on this evidence, in 1835, he declares, strengthened

1. Compare Bein : “ Die Industrie des Voigtlandes,” pp. 121-33. One iscompelled at once, by the appearance of English yarns in Leipzig, to give uphome spinnings and weave English yarns. But as early as 1797 an English merchant put cotton goods also on the market at a reduction of 25 per cent.

5. Ure: “Cotton Manufacture,” II., 398.

G. Ure: “ Cotton * Manufacture, ” I,, Intro., pp. 31-33; Committee onManufactures (670).