apparent that Manchester must presently have a new or an enlarged Exchange. The present building is, however, the largest of the kind in the world, and the history of the various exchanges coincides with the expansion of the Lancashire industry.
According to semi-official records “the first building in the nature of an Exchange” was erected in 1729 by Sir Oswald Mosley, and though designed for “chapmen to meet and transact their business” it appears that, as to-day, encroachments were made by other traders until cotton manufacturers and merchants preferred to do their business in the street. In 1792 the building was demolished, and for a period of some eighteen years there was nothing of the kind. In 1809 the new Exchange was opened, and terms of membership were fixed at two guineas for those within 5 m. of the building and one guinea for those outside this radius. In the following year plans for enlargement were submitted to the shareholders, and various extensions followed, particularly in 1830 and 1847. The present building was opened partly in 1871 and partly in 1874. The area of the great room is 4405 sq. yds. The subscription was raised on the 1st of January 1906 from three guineas to four guineas for new members, but the number of members continues to increase and early in 1906 amounted to 8786.
Of course in this great mart a large variety of types is to be found and the members fall into some kind of rough grouping. Export buyers, attended by salesmen, are commonly more or less stationary and prominent; Burnley manufacturers abound in one locality and spinners of Egyptian yarns in another. The importance of the Exchange as a bargaining centre is fairly maintained, though buyers are assiduously cultivated in their own offices, and the telephone has done a good deal to abbreviate negotiation. As to the amount of business transacted on the Exchange there is no record. The market reporters make some attempt to materialize the current gossip, and doubtless catch well enough the great movements in the ebb and flow of demand, but the sum of countless obscure transactions cannot be estimated. Some few years ago an attempt was made to mark more clearly the course of business in Manchester, and a scheme was prepared for the recording of daily transactions. This could only have been a somewhat rough affair, but its originator maintained reasonably that it would be of interest if some indication of the daily movements could be obtained. For some time a memorandum of the total of daily sales reported was posted on ’Change, but the indifference of traders, together with the distrust that makes any innovation difficult, caused the scheme to be abandoned.
It would be difficult in any attempt to estimate the volume of British home trade to distinguish what may be called the effective movements of goods. 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. 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. (A. N. M.)
COTTON MANUFACTURE. The antiquity of the cotton
industry has hitherto proved unfathomable, as can readily be
understood from the difficulty of proving a universal negative,
especially from such scanty material as we possess of remote ages.
That in the 5th century B.C. cotton fabrics were unknown or
quite uncommon in Europe may be inferred from Herodotus’
mention of the cotton clothing of the Indians. Ultimately the
cotton industry was imported into Europe, and by the middle of
the 13th century we find it flourishing in Spain. In the New
World it would seem to have originated spontaneously, since on
the discovery of America the wearing apparel in use included
cotton fabrics. After the collapse of Spanish prosperity before
the Moors in the 14th century the Netherlands assumed a
leadership in this branch of the textile industries as they did also
in other branches. It has been surmised that the cotton manufacture
was carried from the Netherlands to England by refugees
during the Spanish persecution of the second half of the 16th
century; but no absolute proof of this statement has been
forthcoming, and although workers in cotton may have been
among the Flemish weavers who fled to England about that time,
and some of whom are said to have settled in and about
Manchester, it is quite conceivable that cotton fabrics were made
on an insignificant scale in England years before, and there is
some evidence to show that the industry was not noticeable till
many years later. If England did derive her cotton manufacture
from the Netherlands she was unwillingly compelled to repay
the loan with interest more than two hundred years later when
the machine industry was conveyed to the continent through the
ingenuity of Liévin Bauwens, despite the precautions taken to
preserve it for the British Isles. About the same time English
colonists transported it to the United States. 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.
As early as the 13th century cotton-wool was used in England for candle-wicks.[1] The importation of the cotton from the Levant in the 16th century is mentioned by Hakluyt,[2] and according to Macpherson it was brought over Early history in England. from Antwerp in 1560. Reference to the manufacture of cottons in England long before the second half of the 16th century are numerous, but the “cottons” spoken of were not cottons proper as Defoe would seem to have mistakenly imagined. Thus, for example, there is a passage by William Camden (writing in 1590) quoted below, in which Manchester cottons are specifically described as woollens, and there is a notice in the act of 33 Henry VIII. (c. xv.) of the Manchester linen and woollen industries, and of cottons—which are clearly woollens since their “dressyng and frisyng” is noted, and the latter process, which consists in raising and curling the nap, was not applicable to cotton textiles. John Leland, after his visit to Manchester about 1538, used these words—“Bolton-upon-Moore market standeth most by cottons; divers villages in the Moores about Bolton do make cottons.” Leland, it is true, might conceivably be referring to manufactures from the vegetable fibre, but it is exceedingly unlikely, since the term “cottons” would seem to have been current with a perfectly definite meaning. The goods were probably an English imitation in wool of continental cotton fustians—which would explain the name. Again we may quote from the act of 5 and 6 Edward VI., “all the cottons called Manchester, Lancashire and Cheshire cottons, full wrought to the sale, shall be in length twenty-two yards and contain in breadth three-quarters of a yard in the water and shall weigh thirty pounds in the piece at least”; and from the act 8 Elizabeth c. xi., “every of the said cottons being sufficiently milled or thicked, clean scoured, well-wrought and full-dried, shall weigh 21 ℔ at the least.”[3] These are evidently the weights of woollen goods: further, it may be observed that milling is not applicable to cotton goods. The earliest reference to a cotton manufacture in England which may reasonably be regarded as pointing to the fabrication of textiles from cotton proper, is in the will of James Billston (a not un-English name), who is described as a “cotton manufacturer,” proved at Chester in 1578.[4] It may plausibly be contended that James Billston was a worker in the
