The Sun.
London, England, 1842-09-02 00:00:00

COTTON TWIST.

OPINION OF A GERMAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ON
THE DEMAND FOR A HIGHER PROTECTING DUTY

ON COTTON TWIST.

When the question with which we are now occu-
pied first was started, about ten years since, our spin-
ning factories were so unimportant, that according to
official returns their production did not exceed
3,000,0001 b. to 4,000,0001 b. The quantity of cotton
now spun within the states of the Zollverein, without
Saxony, is about 7,500,0001 b. annually. The spinning-
mills have consequently doubled since then. At that
time the complaint now made was also brought for-
ward by the spinners. Their demands occasioned an
investigation and mature deliberation, the result of
which was a decision that no increase of the duty on
twist in favour of the spinner could be admitted.
Amongst others the following question was then
started :—" Can the spinning factories flourish, and
will they increase, under the existing duties ?"
The answer of the Commission was—" No. The
spinning factories cannot flourish under the existing
duties, and no addition to their numbers is practicable,
as experience has shown."
The duty was not then raised, and if this prophecy
had been a true one, all the spinners must have been
ruined in the eight years which have elapsed in the
interval. But instead of this we find they have
doubled in number, and we find that they actually
increased in the very period in which (1835 to 1836)
all prospect of greater protection was debarred
_further, that this increase was made by old and ex-
perienced members of the trade at a great outlay of
capital, and that by many who had themselves signed
the representation mentioned above. All these con-
tradictions are reconciled, if we take into considera-
tion the crisis that took place in the cotton manu-
facture of Great Britain, owing to the difference that
obtained between the price of raw cotton and of the
.yarn spun from the same: In October, 1831, fla
price of
A pound of mule yarn, seconds, No. 40, was.. 101
A pound of Georgia cotton* cost ......... 5

Difference ................... .. 51

In October, 1836, a pound of seconds, NO. 40,
cost
A pound of ordinary Georgia .................. 74

Difference

In February, 184.2,. a pounctof iecondi,
cost . ...... ..... : ...... ...
.....
No. 40,
A pound of Georgia cotton ........ •••

..... . . . .
..

Difference
This shows the great fluctuations in favour of or
against the spinner which take place. All the
charges which have affected the German spinning
factories within the last eight years, from the com-
plaint of the impossibility of their continuance to the
silent confession of their prosperous condition, in the
establishment and enlargement of expensive establish-
ments, may be traced to this cause, which cannot be
removed unless all influence on the part of British in-
dustry is totally excluded from Germany.
But how is this practicable in the relation in which
the spinning factories at present stand to the other fac-
tories within the Zollverein ? A slight augmentation of
the import duty would not suffice to produce this ef-
fect ; for the differences which we have pointed out are
too considerable to admit of it. On the other hand, an
increase of the duty sufficient to destroy the influence
of British industry for a continuance would evidently
injure most seriously the other branches of the manufac-
ture, which would inevitably be gradually destroyed,
unless the sale of foreign twist and yarn when manu-
factured were facilitated by a drawback, and the inland
consumption of the home-spun material were pro-
tected by a corresponding increase of the duty on
cloths. Such a measure would, therefore, be far
from adding to the national prosperity, and in our
opinion nothing, warrants the dangerous experiment
of risking what is already established, and which has
'been found in a long course of years to be condu-
cive to that prosperity, in order to achieve a gain of
less importance, which moreover can have no ex-
istence if that which is thus established be destroyed.
It appears, moreover, to be beyond all doubt that
the other branches of the cotton manufacture are
much more adapted to increase the national prosperity
than spinning. According to the English export
lists for 1841, Germany, Belgium, and Hol-
land imported in that year 63,868,3001 b. of twist.t If
we assume that the Low Countries, Switzerland, and
part of Austria took 10,000,0001 b, from this quantity,
there remained about 54,000,0001 b. for the States of
the Zollverein. We estimate the present production
of yarn within the Zollverein at 15,000,0001 b.
some, indeed, rate it at 20,000,0001 b. ; but this we
consider too much. In the statement made by M.
Putter, at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, on the 4th of
September, 1841, the number of spindles within the
Zollverein is estimated at 719,000. Assuming this
estimate to be correct, if it be considered that a number
of these belong to old machines, and that only those of
a better description, and which are constantly worked,
can produce 251 b. per spindle, our estimate will not
be found to deviate much from the truth. Accord-
ing to this, the total consumption of twist within the
Zollverein amounts, at present, to about 70,000,0001 b.
Now, in order to see the relation that spinning
bears to the other branches of the manufacture in the
Zollverein, let us assume that these States spin their
whole amount of consumption themselves, and we ob-
tain the following results :—The spinning of this
quantity would employ 6'2,130 hands, whose wages
would amount to $3,948,708 ; the other branches of
the manufacture would require 311,532 hands, whose
wages would amount to $33,218,556. The spinners,
therefore, are in proportion to the other manufac-
turers as 1 to 5, while their wages stand in the pro-
portion of Ito 8 2-5. The variation in the latter
value arises from the circumstance that in the spinning
factories mostly children are employed at very low
wages, while the other branches of the manufacture
require grown-up people, mostly heads of families,
who require and receive a higher remuneration.
If we return to the actual condition of the trade,
where 15,000,0001 b. of yarn are produced by 13,313
workmen, whose annual wages amount to 864,154
dollars, we find a proportion of but 4 to 39 1-3. These
figures are more eloquent than all the observations
which we might add upon the subject.
* The raw cotton consumed in the Zollverein
amounted, in 1836, to 200,953 cwt ; in 1838, to 204,474
cAt. ; in 1840, ti 294,056 cwt. ; in 1841, to 251,942 cwt.
t Probably yarn and twist ; in the original, twist only
is named.—Edit.

ERRATUM.—The Secretary of the London and
Blackwall Railway Company is Mr. Kennell, not Kin-.
naird, as given in The Sun yesterday,

Sydney,-March 30, 1842.
The Sydney district, or New South Wales proper,
comprises, as is generally known, but nineteen coun-
ties. Viewing it as a grain growing country, I may
safely aver, that, with the exception of Illawarra, and
the alluvial soils of the Hunter and Hawkesbury rivers,
there is little land where grain can be raised with any-
certainty except that of loss. Owing to the warmth
of the Sydney climate, wheat raised there is coarse,
thick-skinned, and deficient both in quality and quan-
tity; and when the rate of wages is considered, the
great outlay required to clear land so heavily tim-
bered, and the frequent and withering droughts, the
produce per acre is far too insignificant to cover these
heavy outgoings. Whether these natural drawbacks
are in themselves sufficient to swamp the energies and
exertions of a numerous body of colonists I will not
take upon me to determine ; but it can no longei be
disputed that the Hunter's River settlers are, with
some few exceptions, now in a state of insolvency and
ruin.

So much for the condition of the agricultural inte-
,
rest in the most favoured localities of New South
Wales.- Shall we find, and I beg you will mark the
term, the land-owning grazier in a better position?
Certainly not; he has become a large purchaser of
tracts, which, owing to the arid character of the cli-
mate, rather than to any inherent badness of soil, are
absolutely unfitted for any but pastoral purposes, and
this, at an average cost of from twelve to fifteenshillings per acre. Now, when• it is borne in
mind that three acres of such land are required
to feed one sheep throughout the year, it seems
tolerably self-evident, that, at the usual rate
of colonial interest (ten per cent.) this unfortu-
nate landowner and flock master is paying, besides
the shepherd's wages and rations, six shillings a-year
for what ? The maintenance, the simple " ingesta"
of each sheep, from whose back he gets in return, per-
haps, three shillings' worth of wool—the thing is
monstrous, butthe vanity of being considered a landed
proprietor, coupled with the want of forethought so
conspicuous in this class of men, daily proves the ruin
of many, added to which the purchases are mostly
effected upon the fearful system of credit.
Last, not least, in the catalogue of these Sydney
incurables, we come to the squatters, or occupiers of
Crown lands lying beyond the limits of the nineteen
counties. The wise officials at home, struck no doubt
by the quaintness of the name, and ingeniously pro-
fiting by their gleanings froth the pages of a Yankee
novelist, have compared these gentlemen in a recent
most luminous dispatch, to the back-woodsmen of
America, styling them " pioneers of civilsation,"
and " these people," as if they were a set of half
savages and wood cutters, while, in reality, they
are, both by birth and education, the real aris-
tocracy of the colony. The only fault of
" these people" is, that they spend too much of
their time in Sydney, dine too often at the club or
the mess, ride too many races and steeple chases,
drive tandem too much, drink too much champagne,
and consequently neglect their more important affairs.
However, " revenons a nous moutons," a phrase, by
the bye, peculiarly apropos to this sheepish country,
which might be advantageously stuck up over every
chimney piece in Sydney—it might strike the con-
science of those who ought to feel that their time
should be differently occupied. Our squatter, then,
or settler, as he is here indifferently styled—the latter
term I presume to have been waggishly given him by
his Sydney agent, with whom he makes it a rule to
settle as seldom as possible—pays, besides some trifling.
head-money, 101. per annum to her Majesty for per-
mission to range over an extent of country which
was originally limited only by the requirements of
his flocks and herds. This squatter is, or rather
might have been, the prosperous man, so long as wool
maintained a fair price; the distance of the port where
he was compelled to carry it for shipment, and from
whence he had to draw his supplies, was compara-
tively nothing. So long as he could find pur-
chasers for the surplus produce of his stock at
a high prize, the enormous wages that he paid to his
men was a matter of no importance. He had then,
moreover, plenty of convict labour at almost a nominal
cost. This state of prosperity is now to be num-
bered with the things that have been. Champagne
corks have ceased to fly—wool has fallen in price—
real capitalists have become alarmed, and buttoned up
their pockets—bankers will no longer discount—the
man of straw, the fictitious capitalist, to whom these
vile bankers had been looking only for their own im-
mediate and enormous profits on discounts, utterly
reckless of the ultimate consequences to the colony,
and whom they had most wickedly bolstered up and
encouraged by every means in their power—this man
can no longer make his wild purchases and specula-
tions, and his alarm and exaggerated fears deter the
newly arrived capitalist from effecting those cheap
and really favourable purchases now to be so advan-
tageously made. Wheel is thus locked between wheel,
and no one can tell where the " Schmeere Gelt" is to
come from that will set them all in motion again.
This is certainly a most deplorable state of affairs ;
but with respect to the younger Australian colonies,
I think the evil is only temporary; they have youth
and stamina on their side, and when once the present
difficulties are surmounted, it is only fair to expect
that they will experience the same current of pros-
perity as has characterised the older settlements.
With the Sydney district the case is different,
there exist two fatal bars to her future prosperity;
'one, the abolition of the assignment system, which,
while it lasted, was equivalent to an annual bounty
or gift of 600,0001. in the shape of labour, thus
enabling the inferior soil and arid atmosphere of
New South 'Wales to compete successfully with the
richer lands and moister climate of Van Diemen's
Land and Port Phillip; the other, and the still more
fatal, because irremediable, drawback is the fact, that
nearly all the available land of this part of the
colony is now taken up and fully occupied, indeed
overstocked, and there are no longer any fresh
stations or grazing grounds which can, as it is here
termed, be " given in" by the would-be disposer of
his surplus produce, and without which such produce
is generally quite unsaleable.
So much for New South Wales. Let us next con-
sider that portiqn of Australia Felix of which Port
Phillip may be considered the nucleus. This dis-
trict has become pretty extensively known, and is
beginning now to be as justly appreciated as it was
once over-rated ; and when we compare the luxuri-
ant, lightly-timbered, and park-like scenery with the
dense monotonous and worthless forest, the product
of the sandy regions about Sydney, desolate 'and
even appalling in its silence and sterility, we
can scarcely wonder that at first it should, by com-
parison, have been so over-estimated. When Aus-
tralia Felix was at length thrown open to the accu-
mulating flocks and herds of the elder colonist, it
proved to him for a time a new " El Dorado."
Capitalists from England poured in and bought
largely the woolly treasures, thus realising the
ancient fable of the golden fleece, their fortunate
owners becoming all at once immensely rich.
As a pastoral country this district of Port Phillip
can scarcely be excelled ; but as an agricultural and
grain-growing province, it was soon found that
though immeasurably superior to her elder sister,
Port Phillip has still to contend with two serious
evils, which experienced colonists are alone capable
of fully appreciating.
These are, first, the extreme prevalence of the hot
winds occurring about the time the wheat is in blos-
som, and but too frequently blasting in a day the
hopes, the labour, and the expectations of many
months—a serious liability—which the newly-arrived
immigrant scarcely deigns to Consider ; and, secondly,
the physical impossibility that a country so wanting
in that first necessary of life, fresh water, can ever
become densely populated, or even extensively culti-
vated. The great deficiency of running, or even
stagnant fresh water, is a peculiar and striking cha-
racteristic of the Port Phillip district, and is a fact
very much overlooked or misapprehended at home.
Indeed few people, once fairly committed to a locality,
are willing to in;ike known its disadvantages ; and
thus has this very important deficiency been stifled
and concealed. Could fresh water be procured, even
at the expense of sinking wells, the objection would be
in some degree removed; but, as far as experience
goes, water, even when obtained, which is rare, un-
fortunately is not simply brackish, but as fairly salt
as the briny ocean, and frequently holding alum in
Thdse, then, are the fatal objections which

We now arrive at the last, and by far the most im-
portant district, which has yet been discovered in New
Holland—l mean Gipps' Land. The only unfortunate
thing about it is its name. This noble territory ex-
tends from Cape Howe to Corner Inlet, and runs
back a distance of nearly one hundred miles to the
foot of the Australian Alps. The soil is for the
most part a chocolate loam, of an alluvial character,
entirely free from even the smallest stones, gently
undulating, lightly, timbered, fertile to excess,
yet sound enough for sheep. It is watered by many
large and deep rivers, with numerous smaller
streams, which, having their sources. in the
lofty Alps, and being fed by the never-failing mois-
ture of dissolving snows, are not, as is but too often
the case in other parts of Australia, mere beds of
shingle, showing the occasional rush of devastating
torrents. In the possession of this very important
feature, a central spine, or back-bone, of stupendous
elevation, Gipps' Land, it will be observed, differs
most essentially and remarkably from every other
known portion of New Holland, where, in general,
nature seems to have stopped prematurely short in the
laborious process of up-heaval, and where the want of
ranges of sufficient elevation to precipitate moisture,
has cursed the country with eternal barrenness.
Count Streleski's observations make the altitude
of Gipps' Land chain vary between eight and ten
thousand feet, snow lying on the summits during
summer, while in no other part of this vast continent
is there any known mountain-range of one-half the
height. These mountains are also, from their great
elevation, quite near enough the coast to precipitate
the moisture from the ocean, yet sufficiently removed
to attract and draw its vapours over an extensive line
of fruitful country. There is yet another, and by no
means the least advantage, which this noble mountain
crescent gives to the fair and wide-spread plains, that
lie, as it were, sheltered in its majestic bosom and
half encircled in its stupendous arms ; it guards them
thoroughly and effectually from the withering hot
wind that, sweeping from the vast interior wilds, is
as baneful as the simoom of the Arabian desert.
The numerous fine rivers from the mountains,
after crossing through, and of course well watering,
the extensive alluvial plains before alluded to, empty
themselves into a noble fresh water lake, about thirty
miles long by ten or twelve wide. This fine expanse
of water, with its many tributary streams, some of
them navigable for miles, is fortunately in the centre
of the most valuable land, and will be a means of con-
veying produce to within fifteen or twenty miles of
Port Albert, or as it is more often, but erroneously,
called, Corner Inlet, which harbour, though inferior
to that of Sydney or Hobart Town, is second to none
other in this part of Australia, Port Phillip not ex-
cepted. Taking into consideration all these elements
of future greatness and prosperity, and speaking in a
spirit of the shictest and most sober truth, I can safely
affirm that there has not yet been discovered any por-
tion of Australia so calculated to ensure a certain and
large profit to the industrious agriculturist of mode-
rate capital as Gipps' Land, and one, at the same time,
so congenial in climate and so peculiarly suited to the
habits and feelings of Englishmen.
The plains, by which I mean land naturally clear
of timber, are numerous, yet not too extensive, well
sheltered by the many river belts of noble trees, said
by those who are judges of colonial timber, to be of
the most valuable description for splitting and sawing,
and to use the words of an old settler, who has seen
all parts of the colony, " there are tens of thousands of
acres in which a ploughshare might be driven for miles
through the finest vegetable mould the world ever saw,
without the possibility of striking against a stick or a
Ante." Such is Gipps' Land, and what a country to
have lain so long undiscovered, and unproductive to
man ! This tardy discovery is the more extraordi-
nary when we consider its central position, between
the ports of Sydney, Hobart Town, Launceston, and
Port Phillip, and it certainly does not add much to
the credit of the late Home Government, that the
interior of this valuable province should have been
first explored by a wandering foreigner, and its har-
bour discovered and made available by the enterprise,
and at the expense of a few stirring Port Phillipians
(who, by the by, as a reward, and as an incentive to,
future exertion) have since been ousted from the land
they honestly bought and paid for in the neighbour-
hood of Port Albert.

In a week or two I am off by sea to Port Albert
with supplies, to meet the overland expedition, which
I some time ago dispatched with 7,000 sheep, and
when I get settled in this Land of Canaan, I will
write again.