relating to the inception of the power-industry are quoted from a
Diplomatic and Consular Report of 1905:—
“The initial experiment on modern lines was made in 1891, when a semi-official Chinese syndicate started at Shanghai—the Chinese Cotton Cloth Mill and the Chinese Cotton Spinning Company. Its originators claimed for themselves a quasi-monopoly, and prohibited outsiders who were not prepared to pay a fixed royalty for the privilege from engaging in similar undertakings. Although certain Chinese accepted this onerous condition, foreigners resented it as an undue interference with their treaty rights, and it was only when Japan, in 1895, after her war with China, inserted in the treaty of Shimonoseki an article providing for the freedom of Japanese subjects to engage in all kinds of manufacturing industries in the open ports of China, and permitting them to import machinery for such purposes, that outsiders were afforded an opportunity of exploiting the rich field for commercial development thereby thrown open. Accordingly, so soon as the Japanese treaty came into force no time was lost in turning this particular clause to account, and the erection of no less than 11 mills—Chinese and foreign—was taken in hand. At that time the pioneer mill, which was burnt to the ground in October 1893, but subsequently rebuilt, and other Chinese-owned mills were together working some 120,000 spindles and 850 looms.”
By 1905 the mills increased to 17, the spindles to 620,000 and the looms to 2250, but there is little inclination to expansion. Yarns for the hand-looms are obtained primarily from India and secondarily from Japan. The following are the recent figures relating to imported yarns:—
In million ℔
| 1898. | 1899. | 1900. | 1901. | 1902. | 1903. | |
| ℔ | ℔ | ℔ | ℔ | ℔ | ℔ | |
| British | 9.1 | 7.8 | 4.1 | 7.0 | 4.3 | 2.2 |
| Indian | 186.7 | 254.2 | 131.5 | 228.9 | 251.6 | 250.8 |
| Japanese | 64.7 | 104.0 | 62.9 | 66.4 | 69.7 | 110.9 |
| Hong-Kong | · · | · · | · · | .7 | .8 | 1.2 |
| Tongkinese | · · | · · | · · | · · | · · | .01 |
| Total | 260.5 | 366.0 | 198.5 | 303.0 | 326.4 | 365.1 |
Japan.—If in China the factory cotton industry reveals no prospects as yet of a great future, the same cannot be said of Japan.
The chief centres of spinning with their outputs in value of yarn for a year at the beginning of the 20th century are stated beneath:
| Thousands. | Thousands. | ||
| £ s. | £ s. | ||
| Osaka | 1226.5 | Nara | 111.5 |
| Hyogo | 495.5 | Hiroshima | 91.3 |
| Okayama | 374.4 | Kyoto | 82.2 |
| Miye | 238.1 | Wakayama | 79.2 |
| Tokyo | 227.9 | Ehime | 70.5 |
| Aichi | 224.3 | Kajawa | 36.4 |
| Fukuoka | 168.1 |
The following table gives other valuable information:—
| Year | Gross Amount of Capital invested. |
Average Number of Spindles used daily. |
Quantity of Raw and Ginned Cotton demanded. |
Total Production of Cotton Yarn. |
Average Number of Male Operatives daily employed. |
Average Number of Female Operatives daily employed. |
Annual Working Days. |
Daily Working Hours. |
Average Daily Wage of Male Operatives |
Average Daily Wage of Female Operatives |
| Thousand £ | Thousands. | Million ℔. | Million ℔. | |||||||
| 1892–1894 | 1123 | 420 | 112.9 | 97.9 | 6,916 | 21,695 | 290 | 22 | 4d. to 4¼d. | 2d. to 2¼d. |
| 1900–1902 | 3569 | 1209 | 335.3 | 288.0 | 13,373 | 50,271 | 312 | 19 | 7½d. | 4½d. to 5d. |
| 1903 | 3441 | 1290 | 375.5 | 322.7 | 13,160 | 57,166 | 308 | 20 | 7½d. to 8d. | 4½d. to 5d. |
| 1904 | 3470 | 1306 | 332.1 | 285.9 | 10,967 | 52,115 | 309 | 20 | 8d. | 5d. |
With amazing adaptability the Japanese have assumed the methods of Western civilization as a whole. But hand-weaving more than holds its own, and power-weaving has as yet met with little success. The custom already mentioned as a cause of the continued triumph of the hand-loom in India and China is strong also in Japan, and the economy of the factory system is greater relatively in spinning than in manufacturing. In Japan it is ring-spinning which prevails: 95% of the spindles are on ring-frames. Ring-spinning entails less skill on the part of the operative, and ring-yarn is quite satisfactory for the sort of fabrics used most largely in the Far East. The counts produced are low as a rule. Generally mills run day and night with double shifts, and the system seems to pay, though night-work is found to be less economical than day-work there as elsewhere. More operatives are placed on a given quantity of machinery in Japan than in Lancashire—possibly more “labour” as well as more operatives, because labour as well as operatives may be cheaper. On the same work the output per spindle per hour is less in Japan than in England, even when day-shifts only are taken into account. Japanese work has been severely criticized, but the recency of the introduction of the cotton industry must not be forgotten.
Bibliography.—The literature relating to the cotton industry is enormous. The most complete bibliographies will be found in Chapman’s Lancashire Cotton Industry (where short descriptions of the several works included, which relate only to the United Kingdom, are given); Hammond’s Cotton Culture and Trade; and Oppel’s Die Baumwolle. The list of books set forth here must be select only.
The development of the English industry can be traced through the following:—Aikin, A Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles round Manchester (1795); Andrew, Fifty Years’ Cotton Trade (1887); Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain (1835); Banks, A Short Sketch of the Cotton Trade of Preston for the last Sixty-Seven Years (1888); Butterworth, Historical Sketches of Oldham (1847 or 1848); Butterworth, An Historical Account of the Towns of Ashton-under-Lyne, Stalybridge and Dukinfield (1842); Chapman, The Lancashire Cotton Industry (1904); Cleland, Description of the City of Glasgow (1840); A Complete History of the Cotton Trade, &c., by a person concerned in trade (1823); Ellison, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain including a History of the Liverpool Cotton Market and of the Liverpool Cotton Brokers’ Association (1886); Léon Faucher, Études sur Angleterre (1845); French, The Life and Times of Samuel Crompton (1859); Guest, A Compendious History of the Cotton-manufacture, with a Disproval of the Claim of Sir Richard Arkwright to the Invention of its Ingenious Machinery (1823); Guest, The British Cotton Manufacture and a Reply to the Article on Spinning Machinery, contained in a recent Number of the Edinburgh Review (1828); Helm, Chapters in the History of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce (1902); Kennedy, Miscellaneous Papers on Subjects connected with the Manufactures of Lancashire (1849); Ogden, A Description of Manchester ... with a Succinct History of its former original Manufactories, and their Gradual Advancement to the Present State of Perfection at which they are arrived, by a Native of the Town (1783); Radcliffe, Origin of the New System of Manufacture, commonly called “Power-Loom Weaving” and the Purposes for which this System was invented and brought into use, fully explained in a Narrative concerning William Radcliffe’s Struggles through Life to remove the Cause which has brought this Country to its Present Crisis (1828); Rees’ Cyclopaedia, articles on Cotton (1808), Spinning (1816) and Weaving (1818); Ure, The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain, investigated and illustrated, with an Introductory View of its Comparative State in Foreign Countries (2 vols.); Ure, The Philosophy of Manufacture; or An Exposition of the Scientific, Moral and Commercial Economy of the Factory System of Great Britain (1835); Watts, Facts of the Cotton Famine (1866); Wheeler, Manchester: its Political, Social and Commercial History, Ancient and Modern (1836).
In addition there are many short papers in the Manchester public library. Much valuable information may be obtained from parliamentary papers; a list of relevant ones is printed as an appendix to Chapman’s Lancashire Cotton Industry, but it is too lengthy to repeat here. The most important are the reports relating to the hand-loom weavers, those on the employment of children in factories (of which a list will be found in Hutching and Harrison’s History of the Factory Legislation), and the state of trade and the annual reports of the factory inspectors. On labour questions there is a list of authorities in Chapman’s Lancashire Cotton Industry and also of parliamentary papers containing useful material. Printed copies of the “Wages Lists” are issued by the trade unions. The Factory Acts are dealt with in Hutchins and Harrison’s History, mentioned above, as well as the literature relating to them; while the handbooks by Redgrave and by Abraham and Davies are specially useful.
On the industry abroad the following are the fullest authorities:—Besso, The Cotton Industry in Switzerland, Vorarlberg and Italy (1910) (a report made as a Gartside Scholar of the University of Manchester); Chapman’s Cotton Industry and Trade (1905); Hammond, The Cotton Industry; Hasbach’s article, “Zur Characteristik der englischen Industrie,” in Schmollers Jahrbuch, vol. ii. (1903); Leconte, Le Coton; Lochmüller, Zur Entwicklung der Baumwollindustrie in Deutschland (1906); Montgomery, The Cotton Manufacture of the United States of America contrasted and compared with that of Great Britain (1840); Oppel, Die Baumwolle (1902); Schulze-Gaevernitz, Der Grossbetrieb: ein wirtschaftlicher und socialer Fortschritt: eine Studie auf dem Gebiete der Baumwollindustrie (1892; translated as The Cotton Trade in England and on the Continent); T. M. Young,
