Gilmour, spinners at Manchester, state: “In our blowing-room department we consider our expense with new machinery is fully one-third less in wages and hands … in the jack-frame and drawing-frame room, about one-third less in expense, and likewise one-third less in hands; in the spinning-room about one-third less in expenses. But this is not all; when our yarn goes to the manufacturers, it is so much better by the application of our new machinery, that they will produce a greater quantity of cloth, and cheaper than from the yarn produced by old machinery.”[1] Mr. Redgrave further remarks in the same Report: “The reduction of hands against increased production is, in fact, constantly taking place; in woollen mills the reduction commenced some time since, and is continuing; a few days since, the master of a school in the neighbourhood of Rochdale said to me, that the great falling off in the girls’ school is not only caused by the distress, but by the changes of machinery in the woollen mills, in consequence of which a reduction of 70 short-timers had taken place.”[2]
The following table shows the total result of the mechanical improvements in the English cotton industry due to the American civil war.
NUMBER OF FACTORIES. | |||
1858 | 1861 | 1868 | |
England and Wales | 2,046 | 2,715 | 2,405 |
Scotland | 152 | 163 | 131 |
Ireland | 12 | 9 | 13 |
United Kingdom | 2,210 | 2,887 | 2,549 |
NUMBER OF POWER-LOOMS. | |||
1858 | 1861 | 1868 | |
England and Wales | 275,590 | 368,125 | 344,719 |
Scotland | 21,624 | 30,110 | 31,864 |
Ireland | 1,633 | 1,757 | 2,746 |
United Kingdom | 298,847 | 399,992 | 379,329 |
- ↑ “Rep. Insp. Fact., 31st Oct., 1863,” pp. 108, 109.
- ↑ l. c., p. 109. The rapid improvement of machinery, during the crisis, allowed the English manufacturers, immediately after the termination of the American civil war, and almost in no time, to glut the markets of the world again. Cloth, during the last six months of 1866, was almost unsaleable. Thereupon began the consignment of goods to India and China, thus naturally making the glut more intense. At the beginning of 1867 the manufacturers resorted to their usual way out of the difficulty,