in view of the varieties of product and their changes, but it proves
at any rate that Americans were making vast strides in industrial
efficiency even before the period when American methods and
American enterprise were monopolizing in a wonderful degree the
attention of the business world.[1] About a dozen years later the
low real cost of production of simple fabrics in the United States
was universally admitted, and also that American manufacturers
were making more use of machinery than their European rivals.
In a typical weaving shed in Massachusetts, for instance, of
which particulars were published, twenty women “tended” as
many as eight looms apiece, forty-three managed seven, two
hundred and thirty-two managed six, and only eleven had five
only.[2] Since then, moreover, advance has been rapid, and the
sudden development of the South has astonished the business
community of other centres of the cotton industry.
Before the lines of development in America are specifically dealt with, and particularly the industrial phenomena in the South, a few words must be said of the general extension of the industry. The consumption of cotton in the United States in million ℔ was about 75 in 1830, 390 in 1860, 1100 in 1890 and nearly 2000 on an average of the five crop years from 1900–1901 to 1904–1905: active spindles advanced from 1,250,000 in 1830 to 10,653,000 in 1880 and about 21,250,000 in 1905. Looms which numbered 33,500 in 1830 had reached 226,000 in 1880 and nearly 550,000 in 1905. At the same time population, it must be remembered, was growing at a phenomenal rate: from 31.4 millions in 1860 it had passed to 38.6, 50.2, 62.6 and 76.3 at the succeeding decennial censuses, the decennial rates of increase being in order 22.5, 30, 25 and 20.5 as compared with 8.5, 10.5, 8 and 9 as shown by the corresponding censuses in the United Kingdom. Protection was of course contributory to the growth of the American cotton industry. It may be remarked incidentally that the New World, including the West Indies and the Chinese empire, take the bulk of American exports, which for so large an industry are inconsiderable. The imports have always been well in excess of the exports. The encouragement of home industries by tariffs was definitely aimed at after the war with England during the Napoleonic struggles, and although a sensible reduction of duties was experienced after 1845 the reaction to protection that followed the Civil War was never significantly departed from except by the single act of 1883. In 1790 the duties on cotton goods were 7½% ad valorem, and they rose gradually until they reached 25% in 1816. Slight reductions some seventeen years later were followed in the early ’forties by a tariff of 30%. Diminutions were succeeded by oscillations, though at no point was a low level touched. Severe charges were imposed in 1890, and after some relaxation in 1894 the policy of restrictiveness was restored in 1897. According to the calculations made by the English Board of Trade in 1903[3] no fabrics were admitted at a charge equivalent to less than 68% ad valorem, and no yarns were admitted at a charge lower than 45% ad valorem. Cotton thread is subjected to a rate equivalent to 375%.[4]
The character of the growth of the cotton industry in the United States, as revealed by recent census returns, is peculiarly interesting:—
| Thousands. | Percentage Increases. | ||||||
| 1880. | 1890. | 1900. | 1905. | 1880–1890. | 1890–1900. | 1900–1905. | |
| Active Spindles | 10,653 | 14,188 | 19,008 | 23,156 | 33.8 | 34 | 21.8 |
| Looms | 226 | 325 | 451 | 541 | 43.90 | 38.7 | 20 |
| ℔ cotton consumed | 750,344 | 1,117,946 | 1,814,003 | 1,875,075 | 48.99 | 62.3 | 3.3 |
| Wages | $42,041 | $66,025 | $85,126 | $94,378 | 57 | 28.9 | 10.9 |
| Capital | $208,280 | $354,021 | $460,843 | $605,100 | 70 | 30.2 | 31.3 |
| Employees not officers and clerks | 174.7 | 218.9 | 297.9 | 310.5 | 25.3 | 36.1 | 4.2 |
Cotton small wares are included in the totals for 1880 and 1890, but excluded from those for 1900 and 1905. We must observe further that “capital” is a vague term. Recent events in the United States afford a valuable empirical indication of the effect that improved machinery actually has upon wages. The new automatic looms caused a saving of labour per unit of product which recalled the complete subversion at the industrial revolution of the proportions in which the several factors in production were organized. 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. It must be remembered that to increase the output from the subsidiary processes where labour had not been saved more hands had to be drafted in. Thus, a contraction of the body of weavers was accompanied by an expansion of the body of cotton operatives. Again weavers’ wages were naturally raised in a special degree because automatic machinery called for quick, trustworthy and intelligent hands, endowed with versatility, especially in the days when the machinery was still in the semi-experimental stage. The American employer tries to save in labour but not to save in wages, if a generalization may be ventured. The good workman gets high pay, but he is kept at tasks requiring his powers and is not suffered to waste his time doing the work of unskilled and boy labour. There is, certainly, in the American labour problem no serious grievance on the question of wages. If there is any abuse it consists in excessively fierce work. Mr. T. M. Young, who visited the American cotton districts in 1904 with an informal commission of Lancashire spinners and manufacturers, did not think that the cause of the high wages—allowance being made for the purchasing power of money, they are above those of England, though cotton operatives in England are well paid relatively—was the superiority of the American cotton worker; neither did the representatives of the English cotton operatives who accompanied the Moseley Commission. As often as not “the cotton operative in the United States is a French Canadian, a German, an Italian, a Hungarian, an Albanian, a Portuguese, a Russian, a Greek, or an Armenian.” It is the extensive “exploitation” of machinery seemingly, together with the speed of work, which keep wages high, combined with the horizontal and vertical mobility of American labour, which prevents it from accumulating in pools, and causes streams of the best hands to be flowing continuously to other callings and places, and no insignificant proportion to climb the social ladder. The remainder naturally profit, for a local or trade congestion of labour is avoided, and the voluminous recruiting of enterprise by the intensified competition among employers keeps the demand for labour high.
One noticeable point in the table quoted above is that until recently cotton consumed increased much faster than the number of spindles. This might be explained in a variety of ways. Average counts remaining constant, the average speed of the spindle might have risen; or the latter remaining constant, counts might have been getting finer. Speeds have certainly gone up a good deal of late on some counts. And it is quite likely, too, that concentration on the manufacture of coarse goods for export, with stout warps to keep down the
