The Sun.
London, England, 1861-10-30 00:00:00

THE COTTON TRADE.

The population returns of 1851 show that nearly
a million of men,women, and children in this land
are directly dependent upon the cotton manufac-
tures. When the returns of 1861 have been equally
well sifted, we shall probably find that this number
has been very greatly increased during the interven-
ing ten years; and if we add some estimate of the
proportion of our population indirectly dependent
upon the profits of these manufactures, we shall
obtain some insight into the reasons of that intense
interest with which public men of all parties and
commercial men of every grade are now watching
the statistical tables of imports and exports which
are monthly issued from the Board of Trade. The
last of these now lies before us, and its first aspect is
somewhat startling. Eight millions sterling, or, to
speak precisely, £7,929,014, make up a mass of
money not to be overlooked even among the tre-
mendous gold heaps that are accumulated and swept
away in the transactions of British commerce. Eight
millions are the deficit in our imports during the
last nine months. But, as the computation goes on,
the figures become even yet more formidable. Eight
millions upon the nine months return of .£101,724,346
show only a decrease of 73-, per cent. But when we
compare September with September we find that
the falling off in the last month had increased from
73 to nearly 18 per cent. as compared with the
September of 1860. We are, therefore, continuing
to increase our distance from the favourable re-
turns of former years. In September, for the
first time, great adverse figures appear as
unwelcome novelties in our returns. In one month
there is a decrease of a million and a half in our
exports of cottons; our woollens have fallen off to
the extent of a quarter of a million ; linens :have
declined to an equal extent; and metals have sunk
rather more than a quarter of a million below the
amount of the exportations of the September of
1860. A succession of years continually showing
greatincrease of prosperity is thus suddenly broken.
Instead of going on increasing our manufactures in
a ratio which made timid men tremble, and finding
markets for them at prices which made even san-
guine men rub their hands with joy, we find the
flood tide of prosperity first slacken, then stand
still, and now ebb. Already we can mark in mil-
lions the distance between the high-water mark and
the level of the fallen tide.
There is no uncertainty as to the cause of this
disturbance of our onward course of increase in
profitableindustry. The articles in which the
decrease has occurred tell the whole tale. It is in
cotton and in cotton yarn, in woollens and in
silks, in hardware and in metals, that we have gone
backwards. In other matters, such as machinery,
we have not only maintained, but even exceec:ed,
the high standard of the September of last year ;
and in the miscellaneous articles we have advanced
more than half a million beyond the returns of
September, 1860. The decrease, therefore, is
directly referable to one cause—the uncomfortable
condition of the nation which has been our best
customer in ordinary times. Our immediate
neighbours deal with us as ever. We sell more
candles, and cheese, and leather, and sugar, and
telegraph wires; and the great bulk of our cotton
trade works on upon a scale which, though a decrease
from that of last year, is still a tremendous advance
upon the transactions of a few years previous. We
are suffering, as all must suffer who have business
transactions with unfortunate or improvident
people. When, however, we compare our public
returns with those of the Atlantic ports, the con-
trast is stupendous. The consequences of war have
been to the ports of America almost the annihila-
tion of commerce ; to us they have been a startling
check to a continually progressive increase which
we had almost come to consider as a natural law.
Two years ago we were stunned with stories of the
enormous wealth which the engines of Manchester
were hourly creating. Then we saw the efforts
which were made to meet the eager requirements of
the world—how new factories were arising in every
valley in the neighbourhood of the great Cotton
Metropolis, and how every existing factory was
doubled in power of production. It was a great
spring upwards after a long experience of merely
ordinary prosperity—a flood tide coming in, like
the great wave of the Severn. China bad begun
to absorb in her newly opened provinces a small
taste of the barbarian products ; India was subsid-
ing into peace and the consumption of printed cali-
coes ; America was buying lavishly from Sheffield,
Manchester, and Leeds. Few of us ever realized
to ourselves the certainty that this could not last.
Old business men often said, but hardly believed,
that something in some part of the world must go
wrong according to all the doctrine of probabili-
ties. It has happened that disturbance has first
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other purposes than those which will conduce to
their present single object of slaughter. The
Northern States have shut up their own coast by a
prohibitive tariff, and they have shut up the