64
cotton goods. The English cotton industry, besides being theoldest, is also in many ways to-day the centralised industrywhich shows up most typically the peculiarities of the modernmethod of production in an economical as well as social aspect.
But still it has only to be accepted as a link of a people’seconomy depending upon centralised industry and world barter.As the flourishing cotton industry, before everything else, foundedthe trading dominion and capital power of England , so at presentdoes it receive the harvest of the liiglfly-developed economicallife encircling it. We are thinking, firstly, in tliis connection,of the trade organisations of Manchester and Liverpool, of thedevelopment of English machine^making, etc.
The pressure of the world’s market was the motive element.It compelled a continuous cheapening of cotton goods. With ita permanent lowering of the production costs became the leadingmotive of the whole development. This is shown by the followingfigures:—
Jan.
1779.
1830.
1860.
1882.
1892.
Trice per lb. of 40’s yarn.. ..
10 /-
1 / 2 *
11 |
10 |
73
Price of cotton, 18 oz.
21-
n
GJ
Difference in price .
14/-
GJ
3f
2 |
And so with finer counts: a pound of No. 100’s, which in 1830still cost 3s. 4jd., was in January, 1892, sold up to lC^d. Inthe years 1880-85, which were by no means bad ones for spinners,the difference between cotton and yarn per pound amounted onan average to only 3)-/. d., whilst in the “thirties” doublethe amount (for instance, 1830, for 40’s, Cfd.) was looked uponas unprofitable (5). Similarly with weaving, even though the com-parison between the price of yarn and that of cloth is moredifficult on account of the heavy and variable weighting of manygoods with foreign matter, and on numerous other grounds. Inany case one cannot be far wrong if the lowering of the costs ofproduction is taken as at least one-half.
The possibility of this cheapening lies herein, that under thepressure of the world’s market (competition) those tenets of acentralised industry before mentioned have been meanwhile fullydeveloped.
5. Compare Ellison: “Cotton Trade,” pp. Gl, 310.