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The Hungry Mills - The story of the Lancashire
Cotton Famine 1861-5
by Norman Longmate (published Temple Smith London)
The heroes of this history
are the ordinary working families of Lancashire. From being the most
prosperous workers in Britain they suddenly found themselves faced with
starvation when the American Civil War cut off supplies of cotton to
the mills. Thousands upon thousands were thrown out of work. Once well-to-do
families huddled in cellars and hovels, begging for food and clothing.
The impoverished workers
responded with an extraordinary display of courage and solidarity, and
the appeals for outside help were met. Out of the appalling hardship
emerged a society better equipped to meet such challenges than ever
before. It was a turning point in British social history.
Background
Lancashire it was often said, was clothier to the world and mill-owners
liked to dazzle visitors by displaying the enormous range of qualities
and designs contained in their pattern books. One American visiting
Manchester in 1861 was duly impressed as the pages were turned for his
benefit, concluding that they ' furnished a volume of human nature...
In one book were oriental figures for China, in another sober patterns
for India; a third and a fourth contained tastes of South America and
Africa; in a fifth my conductor astonished me by parading before my
eyes a number of fearful yellow daubs and glaring mixtures in which
brilliant yellow was the favourite shade, informing me that there was
great demand for these at Constantinople as they were the usual costume
of the harems.'
Already individual places
were renowned for particular products, such as Oldham for 'medium counts
of yarn' (thread of middling thickness), Bolton and Preston for 'fine
counts' and Blackburn and Burnley for the various types of cloth. In
general weaving firms tended to be concentrated to the north and north-east
of Manchester and spinning firms to the south, but of 2,270 cotton factories
investigated at the end of 1861 only 890 were devoted soley to spinning
and only 593 exclusively to weaving., The rest making a variety of products
or carrying on both processes in the same establishment. The trade was
to a remarkable extent concentrated in a single county : of nearly 2,300
mills engaged in cotton production in 1860 more than 1,900 were in Lancashire
itself.
The harnessing of steam liberated
the industry from the river valleys, so that soon mills were spreading
across the upland moors. People learned in due time to respond to the
factory bell as the pious villager does to the Sunday chime.
Coal as essential to steam-power
as water, proved almost equally plentiful. All the larger cotton towns,
with the exception of Preston were situated in close proximity to coal
deposits. Coal yielded another by-product in gas.
With gaslight streaming from
the broad factory windows from well before dawn, as the clogs of the
millhands clattered up the cobbled streets in answer to the summons
of the factory bell, till well after sunset, when the workers made their
weary way homewards, the mills were crying out for new labour.
The Times September 1862
: For years cotton manufacture flourished so exceedingly in Blackburn,
and such fabulous fortunes were amassed in a short time, that there
was a general rush to get into it. . . The trade in a very short time
not only absorbed the whole town, but spread out into the county districts
around and the banks of the Blakewater are covered with great mills
right up the valley to Accrington. . . Cotton was everything. In 1760,
it was estimated the value of all cotton goods produced in Great Britain
had been but £200,000. In 1860 it was £85 million.
The storm clouds gather
Following the outbreak of the American Civil War, in the month of
October 1861, the price of cotton advanced at such a rate as as had
never been known in the annals of the trade. In this one month of October
the price of Middling Orleans rose twopence per pound. This medium-
grade cotton, from which the price of other types was calculated, was
soon changing hands at a shilling a pound in place of its customary
8d. There was also a sudden increase for the previously neglected Indian
cotton Surat.. the pariah of the cotton trade because of its short staples,
which rose in the same period from about 7d to 10d per pound
Indian Surat cotton often
contained seeds, seed -pods and peebles which added weight to the bales
that should have contained pure cotton. The waste from natural causes
was double that of American cotton. Even when cleaned of impurities,
Surat was much more troublesome to handle than American cotton, due
to its dryness and short staple, which made it fuzzier and more like
rough wool. To turn Surat into a sufficiently robust thread to work
required twelve turns per inch while American needed only eight. Apart
from the costly adjustment that needed to be made to the spinning machinery,
the thread constantly broke causing not only frustration to the operatives
but seriously reducing their earnings, since they were usually on piece
work.
By the beginning of November
119 mills in Lancashire were on half-time, 49 had stopped work altogether
and nearly 8,100 operatives were known to be out of work. A Wigan firm,
employing some 2,500 hands forewarned them of their intention to close
the mill, and this was repeated throughout the cotton towns.
Times 2nd January 1862, 'The
actual stock of American cotton at the present time is not half what
it was twelve months ago, and it is not likely to be replenished, except
by the termination of the blockade. . . The supplies received in 1861
represented the crop of 1860 and that crop had been pretty well transmitted
to us before the blockade of the Southern ports was established . .
. At this time last year 170,000 bales of American cotton were known
to be at sea, on their way to our shores, whereas at the present moment
there is not a single bale expected. . .Here therefore the pinch will
be felt.'
Stocks in Liverpool amounted
to only 127,000 bales, against five times as many, 680,000, a year before.
People looked to Indian cotton to fill the gap, but there was even less
on the way - 200,000 against 270,000 bales - than a year before. With
normal British consumption at the rate of 45,000 bales a week, the total
stock of all types of cotton in the whole of Europe, not merely Great
Britain amounted to 17 weeks' supply on half-time.
'Trade is at a stand-still,
in every street shops are closed and those who keep open are doing no
business, or next to nothing.'
Report in the Times of a
visit to Blackburn, September 1862. 'With all it was the same tale -
savings spent, credit exhausted, the pawnshop or the auction room, and
last of all, the terrible alternative - starvation or relief. One small
street I found occupied entirely by the work people employed at one
mill, which had stopped twelvemonth ago. Every family had passed through
the last winter without wages, and were now at the end of their resources,
dependent on relief of some kind. Most of them had been receiving it
for weeks past, but in hardly a single cottage was there more to be
found than a couple of chairs and a table, and around walls, a few gay
pictures. . . Some of them lying four or five in a bed, others on a
bundle of straw, and all had run considerable debt.'
One young woman, about thirty
years of age, with a child in her arms, was standing in a bye-street,
singing a sweet plaintive voice, a Lancashire song. It was her first
song in public, and the tremulous voice and downcast eye, as she hugged
with nervous grasp her little one, was very touching. When the song
was over, the poor creature looked around with a timid air to the bystanders
...burst into a passionate flood of tears ...Our feelings were turned
into a hearty gladness when a strong, brawny, Lancashire lad walked
up to the place she had occupied, took off his hat, and saying he would
take their money to her, made a collection on the spot.
During 1862 a wave of enthusiasm
for helping 'the starving cotton workers' swept the country, affecting
all classes and every corner of the land. Every eye is turned towards
Lancashire with its population of 500,000 starving operatives. . . every
heart is strung to sympathy with the distress existing there, and every
hand is contributing to its alleviation.
It began to seem, as the
second winter of the cotton famine gave way to spring, that such an
ordeal could be endured by such a population without a window being
smashed, and barely a stone flung. However March 1863 gave rise to a
series of riots at Stalybridge when such hopes were soon dashed.
At the height of the distress,
in December 1862, the Guardians or Relief Committees were supporting
485,434 people. By June 1863 the number had dropped to 255,578 and by
October 1863 to 167,678. The winter of 1864 brought a further increase
of numbers, so that in February 1864 203,164 people were relieved. In
the following autumn and winter the figures climbed to 136,268 in October
1864, and to just under 150,000 in November 1864. By December 1864 the
total was down to 130,397, by April 1865 the total was 95,763 and May
1865 saw the number drop to 76,000.
The cotton famine had a marked
effect upon the number of marriages in the distressed areas. 'A thousand
loving hearts were kept asunder by the grim spectre.
Between October and December 1862 the number of marriages dropped by
a half from 412 to 181.
The Smokeless Chimney
by 'A Lancashire Lady' (Mrs E.J. Belasis)
Traveller on the Northern
Railway,
Look and Learn as on you speed;
see the hundred smokeless chimneys;
Learn their tale of cheerless need . . .
Weeks roll on and still yon
chimney
Gives of better times no sign,
Men by thousands cry for labour,
Daily cry, and daily pine . . .
Now the things, so long and
dearly
Prized before, are pledged away
Clock and Bible, marriage-presents,
Both must go - how sad to say!
Charley trots to school no
longer,
Nelly grows more pale each day!
Nay, the baby's shoes, so tiny,
Must be sold, for bread to pay. . .
Soon will come the doom most
dreaded,
With horror that appals;
Lo! before their downcast faces
Grimly stare the workhouse walls.
Stranger, if these sorrows
touch you,
Widely bid your bounty flow;
And assist my poor endeavours
To relieve this load of woe.
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