Various

“ 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.” ”

“ That American employers have readily been converted to a belief in the economy of the new machinery we are not astonished to learn in view of the American temperament, the intensity of competition among business leaders, and the prevailing spirit of adventure. Thousands of workable old looms have been scrapped, and probably at the present time there are 100,000 automatic looms running in the United States. No other country can point to a rate of substitution which approaches that in the United States. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He fares best if the sale is concentrated in one market, and ‘change’ prices simplify the struggle between buyer and seller. The search for customers, foreign as well as home, and the bearing of all possible risks of disposal, are in any case difficult enough to necessitate the whole strength of a man. The wholesale merchant alone is in a position to pay the manufacturer in cash or on sure, short terms. But especially where export is in question is the dispersal of sales an extreme impediment. ”

“ American organization display intense specialism, but of a type different from that in England, where businesses are specialized by processes; in America they are specialized by products but hardly at all by processes. Independent spinning, independent manufacturing, independent bleaching, dyeing and finishing are the significant features of English industry to the bird’s-eye view; in the United States the typical firm will spin, make up its own yarn, and perhaps complete its fabrics for the market ”

“ India is probably the most ancient cotton-growing country. For five centuries before the Christian era cotton was largely used in the domestic manufactures of India; and the clothing of the inhabitants then consisted, as now, chiefly of garments made from this vegetable product. More than two thousand years before Europe or England had conceived the idea of applying modern industry to the manufacture of cotton, India had matured a system of hand-spinning, weaving and dyeing which during that vast period received no recorded improvement. ”

“ We ought to observe here that the Oldham Spinning list differs from all others in that its basis is an agreed normal time-wage for different kinds of work on which piece-rates are reckoned. But in effect understandings as to the level of normal time-wages are the real basis everywhere. If the average wages in a particular mill are lower than elsewhere for reasons not connected with the quality of labour (e.g. because of antiquated machinery or the low quality of the cotton used) , the men demand “allowances” to raise their wages to the normal level. ”

“ Thus when prices have advanced the manufacturer may find it difficult to obtain delivery of the yarn that he had bought at low rates, for some spinners have a curious, indefensible preference for delivering their higher-priced orders; and, on the other hand, when prices have fallen the manufacturer sometimes ceases to take delivery of the high-priced yarn and actually purchases afresh for his needs. Yet positive repudiation is very rare though compromises are not uncommon, and a good many illogical arrangements are made that imply forbearance and amity. ”

“ The real explanation, no doubt, is that at the cost of Indian labour it is found cheaper to import machinery and coal than to export or cease to grow cotton and import yarn. This was the conclusion of the majority report of the committee of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, which made an inquiry into Bombay and Lancashire spinning in 1888. Besides, as regards Indian exports to China, the remission in 1875 of the 3% export duty on yarns must be borne in mind. The efficiency of labour in India is only a small fraction of that of Lancashire operatives. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Points of honour in the Manchester business may seem to be arbitrarily selected, but they are an important part of the scheme. An immense amount of business is done without any apparent check against repudiation. It is, of course, the verbal bargain that binds, and large transactions are commonly completed without witnesses, though before the contract or memorandum of sale passes the fluctuations of the market may have made the bargain, to one side or the other, a very bad one. ”

“ By far the majority of Lancashire manufacturers sell their goods as they come from the loom, or, as it is called, in the “grey state,” but an increasing number now cultivate the trade in finished goods. Usually the manufacturer sells either directly or through an agent to a merchant who sells again to the shopkeeper, but the last twenty or thirty years have seen a considerable development of more direct dealing. Some manufacturers now go to the shopkeeper, and this has made it difficult for the merchant with a limited capital and therefore a limited assortment to survive. ”

“ Those manufacturers who act as merchants aim to retain the merchant profit and must employ a merchant capital in stocks. There has been a tendency, indeed, to make the manufacturer the stock-keeper, and some merchants do little more than pass on the goods a stage after taking toll. The great improvement in trade during 1905 and 1906 checked this tendency, and probably the manufacturing extensions owed something to the capital set free by the reductions of stocks. ”

“ Previously there had not been enough business done in cotton to make it worth any person’s while to devote himself to the buying and selling on commission of cotton only. The evolution of the distinct business of cotton broking is readily comprehensible when we remind ourselves that the requirements, as regards raw material, of all spinners are much alike generally, and that no spinner could afford to pay an expert to devote himself entirely to purchasing cotton for his mill. ”

“ When weaving dissociates from spinning, both the number of looms in each business and the number of spindles in each business tend to increase; more division of labour is therefore secured, and lower costs of production are reached, and there is a further gain because producers concentrate their attention upon a smaller range of work. Again when producers are freed entirely, or to some extent, from commercial worries, they can attain a higher level of efficiency at the industrial task of mill organization, and a more perfect accommodation of capacity to function will be brought about. ”

“ On the whole it appears that the British cotton trade continues to increase to a satisfactory degree in fancy and special goods, which require for their production a comparatively high degree of technical skill, and are more lucrative than some of the simpler products in which competitors have been most formidable. ”

“ Much buying might take place when stocks were scanty, with the result that prices would be needlessly forced up; and when stocks were plentiful demand might be weak and prices, therefore, be unduly depressed. It is evident that the buying of cotton on the principles suggested would be calculated to cause great unsteadiness of prices, especially as cotton is not continuously forthcoming, but is produced periodically in harvests. Demands for yarn cannot be expected to come always at the most favourable time socially for the distribution of the cotton. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In such circumstances private markets need not be built up, as they must be, for instance, for a new brand of soap which claims some subtle superiority to all others. Soaps under present conditions must be marketed by their producers. Broadly stated, if there be little competition as to substitutes, though there may be much as to price in relation to quality, commercial functions may specialize. On the whole this is the case in the cotton industry; in so far as it is not and firms produce specialities, they undertake much of the marketing work themselves. ”

“ No doubt small hand-looms factories would have become the rule, and more and more control over production would have devolved upon the factory master, and the work to be done would have been increasingly assigned by merchants, had the steam-engine remained but the dream of Watt, and semi-automatic machinery not been invented. ”

“ It was not easy to obtain a sufficiency of good hands for the power-looms, because the operatives, who had acquired their habits under the domestic system, hated factory life. This, in conjunction with the ease with which the art of coarse weaving could be acquired and the cheapness of rough looms, helps to explain the wretched straits into which the hand-loom weavers were driven. ”

“ Some general merchants, indeed, supply what are practically “tied houses,” which give all their trade in return for pecuniary assistance or special terms.
The tendency to eliminate the middleman has not only brought a good many manufacturers into direct relation with the shopkeeper, but in some exceptional cases the manufacturer, adopting some system of broadcast advertisement and postal delivery, has dealt with the consumer. Naturally, the merchant resents any developments which exclude him, and some mild forms of boycott have occasionally been instituted. ”

“ Possessing soil, climate and apparently all the requisite elements from nature for the production of cotton to an almost boundless extent, and of a useful and acceptable quality, India for a long series of years did but little towards supplying the manufactures of other countries with the raw material which they required. Between the years 1788 and 1850 numerous attempts were made by the East India Company to improve the cultivation and to increase the supply of cotton in India, and botanists and American planters were engaged for the purpose. ”

“ Since, as transformed in England, the cotton industry, particularly spinning, has spread throughout the civilized and semi-civilized world, though its most important seat still remains the land of its greatest development. ”

“ A good many firms venture occasionally to buy in anticipation of their customers’ needs, especially when they expect a rising market. During the great trade “boom” of 1905 there was a good deal of buying by exporters in advance of their indents because manufacturers continued to contract engagements which threatened to exclude dilatory buyers. On the whole, however, what may be called the speculative centre of gravity of Great Britain’s export business in cotton goods is not in Manchester but abroad. ”

“ In the United States there has been an arduous struggle over this question, and combinations of merchants have sometimes compelled favourable terms. In England, though the merchant has maintained a great part of the trade with shopkeepers, the developing trade with makers of shirts, underclothing, &c., is mainly done by the manufacturers directly, and perhaps the simplification of relations by direct dealing in the cotton trade has now reached a point of fairly stable compromise. The tendency to direct trading is naturally controlled by the exigencies of capital. ”

“ For some reasons we should expect to find the American method applied even in England for fabrics of the highest qualities, because in their case the adaptation of the yarn to the fabric, and finishing to the fabric, are of great importance, and actually where the American plan is followed in England the explanation is frequently the speciality of the product which is associated with the particular firm producing it. When a firm manufactures a speciality of this kind it cannot always trust bought yarn, or the finishing applied to fabrics in the ton. ”

“ For some unfathomable reason—for the opposition of the weavers hardly explains it, though they expressed their views forcibly and acted upon them violently—this invention was not much applied in the cotton industry until about a quarter of a century after its appearance. The plan was merely to substitute for human hands hammers at the ends of a lengthened lathe along which the shuttle ran, the hammers being set in motion by the jerking of a stick (the picking peg) to which they were attached by strings. The output of a weaver was enormously increased in consequence. ”

“ The risks of anticipating are carried by those who create or hold “futures” without a hedge. In order to facilitate business, “futures” are all drawn in the same unit (100 bales) , and are all based on the same class of cotton, namely Upland cotton of middling grade of “no staple” (i.e. with a fibre of about 3⁄4 in.) and of the worst growth. American cotton, we may remind the reader, is graded into a number of classes, both on the Liverpool and New York Exchanges, and an attempt is made in each market to keep the grades as fixed as possible. ”

“ There is a considerable amount of re-selling both in yarn and cloth, and, though the bulk of cotton goods finds the way through regular and normal channels to the consumer, these channels are not always direct. A good many transactions on the Manchester Exchange are intermediate, without fulfilling any useful function, and could be accomplished by the principals if they were brought together. Agents, of whom there are many, sometimes occupy a precarious position, but they are protected in some degree by law as well as by the custom of the trade and the point of honour. ”

“ 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. ”