Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/Cotton and the cotton-supply - Part 2
COTTON AND THE COTTON SUPPLY.
PART II.
It is very curious to observe the opinions of a former age in respect of novelties which have been matured and perfectionated—suffered to take root and yield, their fruits only in our own. Montesquieu confessed himself decidedly opposed to all mechanical contrivances, on the ground of their pernicious action upon the manual industry of skilled labour. In a work written by Lancellotti in 1636, there is mention made of a certain genius who constructed a loom, by which haberdashery was so immensely multiplied that the municipal council of Dantzic took fright lest the heads of the citizens should get crushed by cogs and levers, and the hands of their artizans be tied and fettered with the ribbons of an automaton. The sentence which, in virtue of this decision, was pronounced against the artist, was death; a just punishment, or at any rate, a fair retribution for the injuries his mathematical combinations had inflicted upon mankind. Beckmann speaks of the expediency of suppressing this sort of mechanical applications by some general consent among governments, as of a question difficult to handle, but too urgent to be repudiated. In Germany, when this fever of invention was running highest, as fast as looms were set up and their capabilities displayed, they were burnt or proscribed by public authority. In 1719 the Emperor Charles renewed the prohibition he had first promulged on this subject in 1685. Fifty years afterwards, however, things so thoroughly changed that looms of various kinds, and designed for diverse purposes, were not only common, but in Saxony premiums were actually bestowed for such further improvements as would augment their powers of production, and extend their usefulness. No wonder the worth of modern mechanical appliances made itself keenly felt at last through the thick, chilly clouds with which habit, prejudice, and conventional interests had shrouded it; for in those good old times, when they did not exist, a spinner sat at his work a whole year to produce as much yarn as can, with our present aids and expedients, be spun in a single day. One Englishman at his mule turns off daily a deal more yarn, and of a far finer quality, than do two hundred of the most indefatigable spinners that Hindostan ever produced. Velocity of motion is the cause of this immense power of creation. The machinery employed is enormously active. A calculation of results reads like an exposition of astronomical phenomena. Why, the spindles and bobbins on to which the thread is wound revolve in one minute more than five thousand times. One pound in weight of the finest thread made (No. 1000) is so amazingly slender that it stretches in length 477 miles. The first inkling of a progress destined to lead eventually to these grand accomplishments, occurred in 1767, or a few years later, to James Hargreaves, at Stanhill, near Blackburn, in Lancashire. His idea, thoroughly worked out, revealed itself afterwards in the form of his celebrated spinning jenny. This contrivance enabled one little girl, without any external assistance whatever, to work at once no fewer than 120 spindles. Fancy the importance given to a young child by becoming the guiding providence of machinery which with such unerring precision and speed was multiplying thousands by tens, nay by fifties—not of the threads of calicoes and stockings only, but of good Bank of England notes. This of course imparted to 1767 a rubricated distinction which brings it out prominently from among the years of the century, at least in the eyes of a Manchester man and all subsequent Chancellors of the Exchequer. Not of course that the total amount of development to which this industry has attained is ascribable directly either to James Hargreaves or his spinning-jenny; but the inauguration of an era of mechanical contrivances took place when this ingenious and important invention occurred, and accordingly we cannot doubt but that the emotion with which cotton-spinners and financiers look back to it is deep, suggestive, and satisfactory; for whereas before this period only 200,000l. worth of cotton goods were manufactured annually throughout the whole country, occupying about 30,000 persons, since the progress to which it conducted, their production has expanded so rapidly, that at the present moment they are perhaps hardly represented by 37,000,000l. sterling, a sum which it must be borne in mind the lapse of only about ninety years has, by means which may all be traced to this spinning-jenny and the little girl, proved adequate to create.
In 1771, Highs constructed what may be termed a double jenny. This had twenty-eight spindles on each side, and turned by a drum in the centre. To show both the simplicity of its action and its capabilities, Highs’ son, a child only two years old, worked it publicly in the Manchester Exchange in 1772. The reward for this piece of ingenuity was a purse of 200 guineas. This same year was also memorable for the production of calicoes, which were now for the first time manufactured in Manchester, and muslins succeeded about ten years later. But to keep to spinning. As the principle of these modes was adopted in disparagement of the distaff, so Arkwright’s adaptation of rollers to the same purpose had the effect of superseding the clever but inferior contrivance of Hargreaves. Samuel Crompton, who was born in 1753, made an important discovery in his invention of the “mule,” which is by far the most suitable of all instruments for the spinning of fine yarn, specimens of which, from the best quality of cotton,[1] have been sold for lace making at no less than 20 guineas the pound. Arkwright’s throstle, which was at first called the water-frame, spins nothing, I believe, higher than No. 36, but the value of the invention is to be estimated from other considerations. Water-twist has thoroughly supplied a desideratum, the want of which was felt as a sore hindrance to the complete success of the cotton weaver. He is now enabled to fabricate stuffs wholly of cotton, and this advantage alone, derived entirely from the nature of the twist, viewed economically, reflects upon Arkwright so much credit for his ingenuity, and entitles him to so much gratitude for the immensely beneficial consequences it has involved, that apart from the other great and comprehensive objects he accomplished in such signal perfection, he has won from posterity the admiration and blessing of thousands, as the author of a boon so complete.
Mr. Crompton’s mule-jenny combines both the principles which guided his predecessors, and performs such marvels in respect of tenuity, that it requires greater weakness and even credulity than are possessed by the readers of “Baron Munchausen,” to believe the accounts on the subject without first seeing demonstrations of their veracity. But the factory system, as we behold it existing at the present day, constituting a wonderful monument of the highest mental attainments, of the most indefatigable industry, and of phenomena physical and moral such as are combined with equal effect in no other instance,—this most striking spectacle of all which the world of manufactures can present,—owes its origin and happy solution to Arkwright. It was at Cromford that he first tried the experiment, and established its success. In a factory he there constructed he introduced the multifarious processes of spinning, weaving, &c., conducted by a complete organisation of labour. They have constituted the ordinary operations of our gigantic cotton workshops ever since. The oldest mill in Manchester, reared by this benefactor of mankind, and, I believe, still standing, was built on Shude Hill in the year 1780. It was not here, however, that the mighty power of steam was first displayed. Watt applied the steam-engine in 1785, but at Papplewick in Nottinghamshire, where it spun the first cotton yarn produced by the new and wonder-working agent. In 1789 Manchester adopted the innovation. When the power-looms regularly took up their places in these huge bee-hives of human industry, the embodiment of the idea in its full consummation must have afforded infinite complacency to the mind of the projector. A mill with 50,000 spindles and 750 hands, producing three hanks of thread of 850 yards each, per spindle daily, in the opinion of an Arkwright, is a spectacle of vast and paramount interest, affording an amount of satisfaction and delight of which the votary of mere pleasure has never been able to form the slenderest conception. And to this add the beautiful and unerring expedients by which the web is knitted together with a rapidity next to miraculous, and at a cost comparatively so trifling, and the work of elaboration is arrived at its climax. The inventor of weaving by this magical process, that is to say, of these power-looms, I must not neglect to state was the Rev. E. Cartwright, of Hollander House, Kent, who, from a source apparently so little associated with the concerns of a factory, thus contributed that element of integrity which may be regarded as the masterly finishing stroke to the grandness and comprehensiveness of the system. This gradual introduction of mechanical auxiliaries did not fail in this instance any more than in all others, to arouse the antipathies of the prejudiced and the vulgar. Sir Robert Peel, the father of the illustrious statesman, was one among many who suffered from the hostility of a violent mob. His machinery at Altham was totally destroyed, and so much did he take this act of lawlessness to heart, that he withdrew at once to Burton in Staffordshire until a gentler spirit and calmer temper rendered his return safe and desirable.
Now, in order to obtain some notion of the wealth and importance of the “cotton lords” of the nineteenth century, with Sir Richard at their head, let us pause for a moment and survey the area of factories spreading over so wide a surface of the county of Lancashire. The district immediately around Manchester contains two hundred of these town-like workshops, each of the better class of which costs no less than 100,000l. This valuation is equally correct in its application to other numerous factories, uplifting their tall chimneys in neighbouring towns and villages of the same busy locality.
Within the parochial bounds of the town of Bolton we can count some 70; the parish of Bury furnishes 120 more; at Rochdale we reckon 100; in Oldham parish about twice as many; Ashton supplies upwards of 70; and Staley Bridge, taken with Hyde, more than 60; all of which places are situated within half a score of miles of their common metropolitan centre. This makes altogether a total of about 820 in factories, and therefore nearly as much in hundreds of thousands of pounds. Nor does this computation exhaust the subject, for if we extend the range of our circumspection over other districts still watered by the Mersey and its tributaries, we shall find groups and groups in thick abundance wheresoever we glance, without diverting our attention to those other important cotton establishments which have enriched and invigorated such large portions of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and the neighbourhood of Glasgow. The amount of capital embarked in cotton industry, in England only, has been estimated, in the year 1860, at 100,000,000l., which, compared with the 35,000,000l. of twenty-five years ago, serves to give some idea, not only of the absolute immensity of the interest involved, but likewise of the rapidity with which it has attained its present enormous growth.
Manchester, of course, with its population of 500,000 persons, out of which are more than 24,000 spinners and weavers, and 700 calico-printers, by far and beyond all comparison figures the most prominently in this computation; and America is as surpassingly the leading market from which the yearly total of five millions of pounds of cotton is dispatched to satisfy the voracity of these factories. It has been calculated that 1,390,938,752 lbs. of this article was, from the different producers of the whole world, imported into Great Britain in 1860. This importation is, I believe, in magnitude unprecedented, and it will be readily believed it represents a consumption a deal larger than that of every other country on the earth taken collectively. When we consider, too, how rapidly it is increasing, the events of the day, so inevitably destructive of even the ordinary supply, acquire a commercial as well as a political significance, in which this kingdom is very chiefly and profoundly entangled. And to show the vast importance of our transatlantic resources, we have only to remember that out of the 4,321,000 bales, which on an average constitute the European demand for cotton annually, 3,500,000 come from America, of which one-sixth is shipped at Charlestown.
After England, but at a considerable distance, her receipts being not one-third in quantity those of this country, France is the greatest cotton-importing country of all. Her cotton goods are in high estimation, and though perhaps as to quality they may be in the main slightly superior to those of Switzerland, the Swiss, likewise, enjoy a long and well-deserved reputation for skill, taste, and excellence in this manufacture. The Prussians are not famous for their cottons, and the Russians even less so. But the once United States, until bayonets and ramrods monopolised their attention, were actively employed in this species of labour; and as the advance they have made since its commencement among them has been in every way remarkable—from 1810 to 1830 the direct increase in production being more than 500 per cent.—we have long been accustomed to look across the Atlantic for future competition in what is at present almost exclusively our own peculiar branch of industry.
So extensive an organisation of labour as is presented in England by the manufacture under consideration, may well have excited the interference of express legislation. In June, 1825, an Act was passed to regulate the industrial economy of the factory, and it may be regarded as the basis and frame-work of all subsequent enactments which have from time to time been called for as experience ripened and new circumstances arose. Children form so large a portion of the population of a cotton-mill that it was right the law should enforce regulations in regard to labour, which would protect them alike from the hurtful exertions of tyrannous masters and the cupidity of indigent and unnatural parents. The age of the child, the duration and disposition of its hours of labour, and the providing for it ample opportunities for taking meals were, therefore, together with certain other provisions connected with moral and sanitary considerations, the main objects of legislation.
Children below thirteen years are contemplated by the law with more tender mercy than are young persons, or those between this age and eighteen, just as men and women, or those who have passed this latter period of life, are still less the objects of its clemency and protection. In the employment of children a certificate of strength from a surgeon is requisite, and if they have not attained their eighth year their services are not legal. Those below eleven are not to be worked for more than nine hours per day, and none to commence earlier than five in the morning or continue at their occupation later than nine in the evening; and one hour and a-half is the minimum allowance of time for meals. Then the whole of Christmas Day and Good Friday, besides eight half-days, are to be granted every year to children and young persons for holidays and half-holidays, and a variety of other stipulations into which it is needless to enter, manifest the same consideration for the health, enjoyment, and comfort of the little slaves, and reflect great credit upon the legislature for the wisdom and benevolence by which they have been dictated.
The foregoing statements will prepare us to hear—and it is a fact which has been confirmed by the progress of only the last hundred years, before which not a yard was exported—that our exportation of cotton goods nearly equals that of all our other manufactures put together. By way of illustrating this preponderance let us look for a moment into the tables representing the monthly exports of our home manufactures and their declared value. I have taken the month of March, 1860, for no special reason but that of convenience. Here we perceive the smallest figure is that representing the value of telegraphic wire and apparatus, namely, 4745l. Plated jewelry, which short of our textiles constitutes the largest item, is put down at 46,167l. But as we get into the textile class of exports these values considerably augment. Thus, linens are represented by a sum of 326,018l., and linen yarns, 173,725l., in all, 499,743l.; and then woollens give a sum of 987,982l., and woollen yarns of 281,387l., in all, 1,269,369l.; which swells into a very serious amount. But what is it, nevertheless, in comparison with cotton and its magical significance? Here we have cottons of various descriptions, valued at 2,941,759l., not very far from twice as much as linens and woollens put together; and then add to this the yarn estimated at 807,848l., as we have done in the former cases, and we arrive at the prodigious total of 3,749,607l., which, remember, represents (what may be deemed) the monthly value of our cotton exports only; whilst to obtain a complete view of the entire subject, we should add another sum, closely approaching upon 5,750,000l., for the average home consumption of the same recurring period. And now, satisfied that the reader is sufficiently impressed with the magnitude of our stake in cotton husbandry, to feel a more than common interest in its welfare and extension, I shall conclude with a few words—into a very few I cannot compress them—upon the resources we may possess other than those which are now so fatally endangered by the perpetration of political discord and civil warfare.
The interior of Africa produces the cotton plant in rich abundance, and the inhabitants, aware that its linen is much less conductive of heat than that composed of either wool or flax, spin the fibre it affords, and weave the yarn thus obtained into shirts, turbans, and sundry sorts of cloth adapted for other articles of raiment. But more accessible parts of this mysterious quarter of the world might easily be made available for the cultivation of the product in question. In Natal cotton is found equal in quality to the American, and its culture is beginning to attract practical attention. Several other spots of the coast of Africa are well suited for the purpose, and might doubtless, with due energy and knowledge of the subject, be soon converted into little mines of moderate wealth. Before we quit our notice of this region of the earth, I would make one more observation. Suggestions have lately been offered for substituting for cotton other fibres of analogous character. South Africa affords one of the best of these in plenteous profusion. It is an indigenous plant, belonging to the family of Amaryllideæ, and yields a fibrous wool so strongly resembling that of the Gossypium in texture and consistence, that from all accounts it might be readily adapted to precisely the same uses. So long ago as 1847 a patent was granted for the application of this new substance to textile purposes. The late Mr. Crompton, the celebrated paper-maker, turned his thoughts to the discovery, as one which might furnish to his branch of trade an advantageous material. But Mr. Crompton died, and the matter dropped.
Some of our finest cotton comes from Brazil, and is of the same long-stapled class to which the Georgian belongs, this latter being, with the exception of course of the Sea Island, the only cotton of North American growth possessed of this highly-prized characteristic. But the great rivalry set up by the agitators on behalf of the diffusion of cotton planting is between the West and East Indies, in favour of which both claims seem so indisputable that nothing remains but to listen to each. With regard to the West Indies, a number of circumstances conduce to promote its abundant and profitable production, although on the other hand it must be confessed there are difficulties to be met, of which we have not yet received any satisfactory solution. Porto Rico has afforded cotton scarcely inferior to the Sea Island. When American cotton was first imported into England, it was so ill cleaned that but small value was set upon it; and before this period it was the West Indies which supplied us very principally with wools of the best description. In 1787, 6,800,000 lbs. came from these islands as against 6,000,000 lbs. from the French and Spanish colonies, and 5,700,000 lbs. from Smyrna and Turkey. If the spirit of Mr. Bazley, the enlightened member for Manchester, had some three years ago animated the breasts of his fellow-townsmen, Jamaica would probably at this moment be sending us a million of bales a-year. Its growth in that island is as simple as the most propitious conditions of soil and climate could render it. It has been produced experimentally upon the hills within the last few years with trifling labour: and upon the plains, with the average good fortune of fair weather, its cultivation is still more easy and remunerative. And as to fineness, there appears to be from the testimony of those best entitled to pronounce, no question of its excellence compared even with the most renowned which comes into the market. Both in this island and in Demerara it is not an exaggeration to say that hundreds of thousands of acres exist perfectly suited to the cultivation of this plant; and in Trinidad, where the climate is equally favourable, large tracts of land, whose soil is in no respect inferior to that of these other islands, might be with similar expectations applied to this valuable purpose. The difficulties to which I have adverted have, notwithstanding, created hitherto many formidable obstacles. The abundance of labour supplied by Jamaica in particular would seem at first to be a very important element of encouragement in the venture. But it must not be forgotten, that unfortunately the coloured population of these islands, and indeed of all places where slavery does not exist, are in relation to the amount of work they perform almost worthless as compared with other races, or with their own under compulsory treatment. Their demoralisation and constitutional sloth are evils which must be corrected before we can look for that conscientious assiduity which, in these days of keen and active competition, lends so much effect to the struggle with fortune. When men will work but for four hours a-day, and that during only four days in the week, and want so little more than what bare nature gratuitously bestows as to be indifferent to those inducements which stimulate others to acts of exertion, they are altogether incapable of the results constituting the essential conditions of prosperity in the industrial contests of the present day. Those whose natural constitution is such as to enable them to support the fatigues of toil under the exhausting influences of a tropical climate, are by the same cause disqualified to become competitors in the cheap production of the demands of trade or manufactures with either Europeans, with those of European temperament, or with coerced slaves of their own can-but-wont-work race; and hence, as labourers, that numerous class of the population of the West Indies which is poor and unemployed is, it is to be feared, almost wholly unavailable for the exigencies of the case treated on the principle of commercial remuneration. The characteristics both of the native and coolie are discouraging and untractable. To a very injurious and fatal extent the same objections have operated on the profitable culture of the article throughout our Oriental Empire. Meanwhile the great Western Continent springs up, and with its many local advantages and its forced labour, triumphantly disputes the old-established claims of the East.
There are two species of cotton cultivated in India, whose nature is indigenous, besides the one transplanted from America; but the various experiments in relation to both, which have been made with a view to increase the yield, and improve the texture of the wool, seem to establish the conclusion that for the interests of the grower the exotic is in both these respects quite 25 per cent. more valuable than the indigenous plant. Almost the whole of the cotton which comes from this country belongs to the short-stapled class, and from imperfections in cleaning and rough handling in transmitting, suffers a depreciation in the Liverpool market, which could certainly without much difficulty be rectified. Some of the finest Indian cotton wool possesses a natural fibre so extremely delicate, that until our improved machinery for carding enabled us to work it into a state fit for spinning, it was utterly useless to our manufacturers. Among these may be mentioned the Bourbon, which formerly ranked high, and was much cultivated; but of late years, in deference to the superior claims of the Sea Island, its production has considerably slackened, and its importation into England is now in quantities of relative insignificance. Very recently, however, this source of supply appears to have undergone some stimulation, even greater than can be accounted for by the unusually prolific character of the last season; for, comparing the first three months of the present year with those of 1860, Bourbon has shipped off 250,000 bales in excess. However, so short and dirty are the fibres of most of the wools coming from India, that the delicate fingers of the Hindoo female can alone manipulate with advantage upon them. Of this nature is the Surat—pre-eminently. It is classed among the worst imported. The Madras and Bengal are scarcely better; so that, upon the whole, the Levant cottons, which take so low a position, are for the finer purposes of the manufacturer, superior to what at present our great Eastern Empire despatches for the necessities of the mother country; that great Eastern Empire, with its immense extent of districts—Coimbatore, Madura, and Tinnevelley, over which the hand of Nature has so lavishly scattered her gifts, and where British wealth and intelligence exert so much of their powerful and life-giving influence. It is indeed mortifying to find how greatly this inferiority is attributable to causes which have, as I have hinted, their easy and simple remedies. Then, again, until the improved method of cotton culture in India can be made to appear as remunerative as that of indigo, sugar, and grain; until a system of irrigation has been completely effected, and economical means of transportation to the sea-board (which on an average implies a distance of from 100 to 300 miles) have been devised, to turn the attention practically to ginning and cleaning, packing and carrying, is perhaps somewhat premature. Although, doubtless, the last of these objects will in some measure be achieved by a further development of the system of railways now in rapid progress, a cheaper mode of transit seems necessary to enable the Indian grower to compete upon fair terms with the Western world. The Americans send down their corn and cotton by the Mississippi, one thousand miles, at one-twentieth the cost of railway carriage. Look at the only machinery for the conveyance of the precious burden now existing in India, and contrast it with the unapproachable advantages just mentioned. A country cart and pack bullock, or, as the case may be, a pack-horse but little swifter than a bullock, travelling along a rough track which admits of a speed of not more than from two and a half to three miles per hour. The charge made for this means of transport is not, as might be expected, absolutely heavy, but it adds, nevertheless, very materially to the selling price of the cotton when arrived in Liverpool, and causes grave inconvenience on the score of delay. With respect to the former, it has been calculated that on Indian cotton two-thirds of its value, as paid by the English purchaser, goes to defray the cost of transport in and from the country producing it. The Great Indian Peninsular has proved itself the first railway company to introduce into an Indian cotton district the peculiar facilities of its system of intercommunication. With the slight exception of an interruption of nine miles at the Thull Ghât, there now exists a continuous line of 107 miles, extending from Bombay to the vicinity of the cotton plantations of Berar. Then, if cotton is to come down the Ganges, much embarrassment is occasioned by the paucity of steam-vessels and the consequent uncertainty attending its shipment. In the absence of this mode of conveyance, barges, impelled by one large square-sail, are frequently resorted to, but with a reluctance which their ricketty condition and the inefficient crews with which they are manned account for without further explanation. The indolence and carelessness of the parties to whom the merchandise is by this method consigned, generally levy in effect a heavy penalty of risks and losses upon the exporters (a distinct class from the growers), as the price of their imprudence. A slow way and a sure way have no natural alliance in this instance, for as the barges, never very safe, are on these occasions always overloaded, and accordingly very dangerous, the cotton not unfrequently suffers shipwreck; and even if so fortunate as to escape this calamity, the damage it sustains is more or less serious in regard to its market value. This disparity in the whole freight, as between India and America, is a question in which the success of enterprise in the East is very chiefly involved. It has been calculated that, whereas from America this charge upon the article varies between ½d. and ⅞ of a penny per lb., the expense incurred in this way between Madras and Liverpool, should be reckoned at a minimum of 1d.
For complete success in furthering the conduct of this distant traffic, nothing is more desirable than the annihilation of as much space as modern resources can at their utmost accomplish. The six or eight months elapsing between the purchase of the commodity in India and its arrival in England, involves the chances of such fluctuations in the home market as subject the buyer in India to the liability of very grievous loss. And, principally in consequence of the American monopoly, these oscillations in price are enormous—sometimes 50 per cent.; a variation which a more extended field of supply would effectually check and regulate. Hence it is thought by many that a joint-stock company, or some large capitalist, could alone prove equal to confront this shock of fluctuations—fluctuations so liable eventually to terminate in difficulties which, though perchance only temporary, might press too heavily to be resisted. A certain amount of risk might be run by the Manchester manufacturers, and the impulse given to the production of cotton wool in India would recoil advantageously on those who imported it. The cultivators, speculating for the general good, would like to pre-arrange a remunerative price without reference to the vicissitudes of the home market, and be thus freed from that damping, deadening, paralysing condition which enjoins them to send their cotton some thousands of miles, and receive for it just what the prices ruling in the Liverpool market shall at the moment determine. This is certainly the normal principle of trade; but might not India, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, be for the moment dealt with exceptionally? It is perhaps true, that so long as American cotton does not sink below 4d. per lb. in Liverpool, India can compete with Transatlantic producers. But it is well known that samples of good Indian cotton have brought as much as 5d. per lb. in our markets, though at times when the best American staples were selling at 1s. .and 1s. 2d.; so that, assuming that the superior quality of the latter will doubtless always give them the leading place in the price-list, it is more than probable that the demand for inferior sorts at 4d. or 5d. may be, upon the whole, sufficiently steady to encourage the enterprising to make every exertion on behalf of our eligible Eastern dominions, whose growers can contrive to dispose of their produce profitably at this moderate rate. India has certainly every right to be regarded not only as the mother of the manufacture, but as the parent soil upon which this celebrated shrub was originally reared and propagated. The backward position she at present occupies in regard to the quality of her cotton wool, arises mainly from the indiscretion of the residents who were appointed by the late East India Company to superintend ostensibly the cultivation of the plant, but whose conduct practically had the effect of producing results exactly the reverse of their mission. They were an ignorant and inefficient class of men, and matters grew worse and worse under their supervisionary authority. Experiments which, in many instances, contained infallibly the germs of success, failed in their hands; and attempts to do what might have been performed with little difficulty were ere long abandoned in despair or disgust. Who could expect the natives, left to themselves, would prove competent to seize young America by the throat and cry—“Pay me that thou owest!”
All the cotton plantations in India are in the hands of natives; but fear not, gentle reader, I am about to enter into none of those interminable and complex disputes which have raged so violently among zemindars, ryots, factors, and agents. Neither have we time to examine the causes of that failure in which so often experiments in the improved culture of the plant have eventuated. Whilst in Bengal excessive moisture has been said to have spoiled their crops, in the north-western provinces excessive drought brought on the same disaster. American planters, fresh from the fields of Alabama, Florida, and the Carolinas, have invested their capital and devoted their energies, intellectual as well as physical, in furtherance of the Indian cotton cause, and whilst they have themselves found it to be, under existing circumstances, a very unprofitable occupation, and by no means an over-pleasant pastime, Sir John Lawrence, in raptures of delight, has grown cotton luxuriously in his garden in the Punjab, upon terms, too, so commercially advantageous, and with results so thoroughly satisfactory, that its remunerative cultivation and its capability of amelioration are placed beyond all reasonable doubt. The Chinese, who are hardly so particular as ourselves in the quality of their raw material, take a deal of cotton from India—not to make all the nankeen in the world, very much of which my reader may be surprised to hear is manufactured in England, and thence sent out to the land of its baptism—but for purposes of their own, into which, since we have learnt how to make nankeen and grow tired of it, we do not care to inquire. Now, in India, they produce much cotton wool and use but little. In 1847 the crop was utterly worthless for lack of roads by which it might have been conveyed to where it was wanted and would have been prized; and so great was the distress and discontent resulting from this state of things, that, to meet them, the land-tax was remitted though the cotton was lost. As the material may be purchased in India for 1½d. to 2d. per lb., temptations were not wanting to embark a little money and apply a little skill in establishing a factory at Madras or Calcutta, just to see how far they could go concurrently with the rest of the world in fabricating for themselves and for exportation. The languor of the native character soon proved the great obstacle to this achievement. After a few hours of activity, lassitude takes firm hold of the artisan, and he and the gang to which he is attached, give place to fresh hands which, in turn, are also rapidly exhausted and require the same relief and renovation. These coffee-coloured, sun-burnt, hot-blooded fellows are incapable of toil. It takes three or four of them to do the work of one silver-headed Saxon; and hence the yarn comes to a price as long as itself, and would weave into a very extravagant piece of ordinary cloth, much dearer, without being in any respect better, than what we manufacture at home. Some forty years since, when the distaff was first exchanged for the throstle and the mule-jenny, native factories existed which, in Madras only, produced goods to the value of some 100,000,000l., but the importation of British cottons, with their recommendations of superior cheapness and quality, soon overwhelmed the straitened attempts of the Hindoos to struggle with their masters in a race depending so largely upon vigour and science. This miscarriage leaves the question between India and ourselves in this striking position. We bring our cotton staple 5000 miles from India and take it back that distance manufactured in the various forms required, and there sell it at a very considerably smaller figure than that at which the natives can buy the same article, grown, spun, and wove by themselves. It is fair, however, to confess that in the immediate neighbourhood of the spot where the cotton is reared, the yarns spun by the natives by the aid of mechanical power infinitely excel those produced in England with the same wool, in consequence of the great deterioration the raw material endures from packing and carriage. And now, in a few words having reference to the claims of the new Australian colony of Queensland, I will bring my remarks on this great subject to a close.
The climate of Queensland is perhaps the finest in Australia, and in character very strongly resembles that of Madeira. Yet it is remarkably well adapted to the cultivation of cotton, sugar, tobacco, indigo, coffee, rice, and other products of the earth which usually flourish under circumstances highly detrimental to the health of man and the conservation of human life. The soil, too, is all that could be desired, and the European constitution can as well support the exhausting effects of toil here as under European influences. The part of Queensland best fitted for the growth of cotton, is that east of what is called the Main Range. The river Darling, which gives its name to the Darling Downs,—a district regarded emphatically as the garden of Australia, where the land is rich and prolific, the supply of water regular and abundant, the climate moderate, the weather sufficiently constant, and the charms of nature spread around in every graceful variety,—could be made at a very small cost to open up some 5000 miles of country available for the production of the choicest kinds of this valuable textile. Several bales of Moreton Bay cotton have indeed already arrived in England, and the ablest judges, having valued them at very high prices, concur in advocating measures designed to promote a system of regular production. A somewhat peculiar and rare advantage resides in the climate of this district. It is free from anything like severe frost, and this absence of an evil very pernicious to every variety of gossipium, imparts to the cotton plant of Queensland a perennial existence. Here is its paradise. The average yield has been estimated at 400lbs. per acre—mark, in India it is only 50lbs.—and the average value at 1s. 4d. per lb.; and in order to encourage this species of agricultural industry, the government of the colony offers a bonus of 10 acres of land for every bale of cotton of this first-class description, weighing 300 lbs.; all which furnishes data very capable of conducting to inferences of a most important and agreeable complexion, such as make the itching ears of the emigrant to tingle, and his empty mouth to water. I am almost resolved to take out my passage in the next ship sailing from Liverpool.
The most prominent feature in the whole economy of cotton husbandry, which is picking, viewed in relation to Queensland, loses all its formidable aspect. The three months during which this operation continues are May, June, and July, and these compose proverbially the most serene and salubrious of any similar portion of the year. Besides the country above alluded to, there are other immense tracts of alluvial lands on the banks of navigable rivers, and a vast extent of coast from Point Danger to Keppel Bay, embracing altogether many millions of acres, in all respects inviting to the intelligent and industrious emigrant, who with the smallest capital, and the fewest possible number of antecedents, might at once enjoy comfort and independence, and lay the foundation of future opulence. People at home, and people who go abroad, are equally interested in the truth of these facts. Brisbane, the metropolis of the new colony, contains already a population of 7000 souls, and is well stocked with all the necessaries, and many of the luxuries, both of the animal and spiritual life; for even spiritual life has its indulgences. Among things appertaining to the latter may be mentioned fourteen churches and chapels, of nearly as many denominations of religious belief as the sum will admit, a bishop of the English church, and priests of that of Rome being included. Agricultural pursuits are those which are engaged in most actively, and accordingly a demand for men with tastes and habits comporting with these callings is so general and continuous, that, ceteris paribus, agriculturists and field-labourers are the most certain to prosper. The remuneration for labour in general is handsome, taxation very light, provisions exceedingly cheap, and clothing, for a colony, not exorbitantly dear. I have only to add, that although I am not by any means an emigration agent, or, under all circumstances of pressure, a strenuous, out-and-out advocate for tempting fortune in another land; although I have no direct or indirect connection with the welfare and expansion of the colony of Queensland, or with any cotton consuming process, either at home or abroad; I should have no reason to regret the tendency of these remarks, if they turn the thoughts of any number of practical men to the subject of cotton-growing in regions apparently so suitable to the purpose—that grand and profitable purpose of multiplying material for the “silver tissue” which “clothes the world.”
- ↑ >From 1789 till 1792 Mr. Robley cultivated cotton of the rarest quality in the Island of Tobago, and it was from the wool of these plantations that the yarn referred to in the text was spun. Unfortunately the failure of the sugar crops in the neighbouring French islands induced him to substitute sugar-canes for the cotton-shrub, and, in consequence, cotton of equal excellence has perhaps never since been obtained.