The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-11-26 00:00:00

FRIDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 26, IS4I

When it has been objected to the advocates of a free
trade in corn that the withdrawal of all protection from
the agriculture of the country must inevitably throw
a large portion of our corn lands out of cultivation,
and vast numbers of our agricultural population out
of employment, the objection has always been met, by
the organs of the manufacturing interest, with the
confident assurence that the increase of trade and con-
sequent demand for labour in the manufacturing dis-
tricts would at once provide employment for those
whom the pursuits of agriculture could no longer
support. We have ever strongly denied this conclusion.
We have doubted, in the first place, whether the adop-
tion of the proposed measures of free trade will give
any permanent increase to our existing commerce;
and we have doubted still more, and we have additional
reason now to doubt, whether, supposing such increase
to arise, it would be to such an extent as to provide
employment for more than the population at present
embarked in manufacturing and trading pursuits.
For the means of arriving at a solution of this
question, we have looked anxiously for the publication
of the population returns. The large increase which,
under our existing commercial policy, has for years
past been taking place in the population of the manu-
facturing districts has been pointed to, not only as
showing the importance of adapting that policy, ex-
clusively or principally, to the maintenance of this
mass of industry in comfort and security, but also as
proving the capability of those districts to absorb the
surplus labour of the remainder of the kingdom. But
so long as the amount of this increase and its propor-
tion to the increase of the manufactured commodities
produced was unascertained, no conclusive and safe
argument could be founded upon it. Production had
increased, and the labouring population employed in
manufacturing pursuits had increased also; but the
census alone could show whether this increase of pro-
duction and of population went hand in hand, or
whether there was not another instrument—the powers
of machinery—whose advance was fast outstripping,
and was destined ultimately to arrest altogether, the
progress of the demand for human labour.
The census, however, is now before us, and we shall
cadeavour briefly to apply the data, with which it fur-
nishes us, to the elucidation of this important question.
And first let us examine the evidence which the returns
afford us with respect to the comparative growth of
the trade and the population of Lancashire, which may
fairly be considered a purely manufacturing county, as
being the seat of almost the whole of our cotton
manufacture. In 1831, the population of this county
was 1,336,854 ; and at the census of the present year
it had grown to 1,667,064, showing an increase of 241
per cent., whilst that of the entire kingdom was only
14k. The additional increase must, of course, be attri-
buted to the migration which is constantly taking
place from the agricultural into the manufacturing
districts; and amounts to 10 per cent,—the difference
between 24k, the increase in Lancashire, and 14k, the
increase throughout the kingdom,—which the popula-
tion of this county has sustained during the past ten
years by absorbing the surplus labour of other parts
of the empire.

Now, we humbly suggest to the admirers of our
manufacturing system, that there is little in this amount
to warrant the anticipations which have been so pro-
minently and loudly put forward with respect to the
capabilities of that system to provide employment for
our increasing population. Nay, there is little to
assure us that it will even continue to support the
population already dependent upon it. During ten
years of vastly increased production—ten years of
stimulation—the manufactures of Lancashire have only
been enabled to extend the means of employment
beyond its native population, at the rate of one per
cent. per annum; and we think the wildest dreamer
amongst the anti-corn-law leaguers will scarcely con-
template, as the result of his favourite specific, a
greater increased production of manufactured goods
than has taken place since 1831.
When we come, however, to the comparison of
figures, the fallacy of these anticipations must be still
more obvious. In 1831, as we have shown in former
articles, the quantity of cotton consumed throughout
the kingdom, computed in bags of an average weight
of 3001b5., was 16,583 weekly. In 1840 the quantity
had risen to 30,089, the increased production being
thus 82 per cent„ or in a ratio, upwards of three times
that of the population employed in it in Lancashire ! In
addition to this increase in the "otton manufacture, how-
ever, we must bear in mind that several branches in which
the labouring population of the county is employed has
sustained a similar, although not perhaps a proportion-
ate increase, by becoming concentrated, from other
localities, to this, the heart and market of the manufac-
turing industry of the empire. The linen and silk
manufactures are now extensively introduced into Lan-
cashire ; the dying and printing of mixed fabrics of
woollen and cotton have also become important trades,
and employ large numbers of the operative classes
The manufacture of machinery of every description,
for export and for use in other parts of England and
Scotland, has sustained a large increase and afforded
new sources of employment to a numerous body of
mechanics, and when these and others are taken into
consideration, and the proportion of labour which they
have absorbed is deducted from the general increase of
the population throughout the county, we are pretty
confident that they will fully account for all the increase
which it has derived from extrinsic sources, by the
migration of labourers, and establish the fact that the

1 Cat MililllfiZeirife, tvlllldt sus tatting the vast ilereas

's, Ims, in 1

aford-

ing the means of human employment, barely kept pace
with the regular increase of its awn .native population I

We hear it said, however, by the o

1 traders,

give us t

ans of tho free

privilege of exchanging our

goods for provisions in the open markets of the world,

and we will do far more than we have hitherto done in

providing for the employment of the labouring corn-

munity ; give us the means of competing, in cheapness
of production, with the lightly taxed foreign manufac-
turer, and. we will drive his commodities out of every

tray, it

foreign market." Be it so—(which, by the
never will be,)—concede for a moment that it is possi-
ble for us to displace a portion of the manufactures of

• other countries by our cheap commodities, yet to what
extent can this take place ? Let us examine. From
1826-28 the consumption of cotton in Great Britain,
as compared with that of the whole world besides, was
as 100 to 76 ; in 1840 it still maintained the same pro-
portion, being as 100 to 75. That the adoption of
any policy which can be devised will enable us to se-

cure any great quantity of this manufacture, now car-
ried on in foreign countries, we do not believe. '►'lie
manufacturers themselves anticipate little more than
upylying the continental markets with their yarns. and
:Lnd how much of the la-

with machine-made good

bour of our surplus population such an increase of
our cotton trade will absorb, may be judged of from
the comparatively unimportant extent to which an in-

creased production, during the past ten years, of 82 per
I cent—or more than the amount of the whole of the fo-
reign production—has absorbed that surplus labour.
The irresistible conclusion which we draw from a
consideration of these facts and data, is, that no in-
crease of the cotton manufacture which can reasonably
be anticipated to flow from the adoption of free trade
measures, simply, can enable the manufacturers of
Lancashire to draw off largely, if at all, the surplus
population, which the repeal of the existing protection
afforded to British agriculture will create in the farm-
ing districts throughout the country. The improve-
merit and the extension of the powers of machinery
have of themselves, for the past ten years, kept pace
with the increased production of cotton goods, or so
nearly to it, that we can scarcely draw the line of sepa-
ration. The Iron man has for the past ten years been
able to intercept from his human competitor nearly the
whole of the vast supply of labour which should have
been derived from the large increase of production
which we have witnessed ; and who can say, in specu-
lating for the future, where his illimitable power is to
be arrested ? Who can set bounds to the perfection
or the increased adaptation of which this untiring and
sleepless workman is susceptible ? Who shall say
that the powers and the application of machinery to
manufacturing purposes are not capable of being in-
creased in a ratio sufficient to shut out human labour
from a participation in the largest increase of manufac-
turing production which the most sanguine amongst
us dares to contemplate ?

Let it not he said that we are endeavouring in these
remarks to direct the attention of the suffering portion
of our fellow countrymen in the manufacturing dis-
tricts to the use of machinery as the cause of their dis-
tress. We have no such unworthy and wicked object
in view. We should loathe ourselves if we could de-
scend to the level of anti-corn-law morality in arguing
this or any other question. But we cannot, neverthe-
less, allow it to be discussed, separate from this, its
most important feature. The subject of the increasing
application of machinery in manufacturing pursuits
must be looked in the face, steadily and earnestly ; and
the statesman who should presume to enter upon any
great change of our present commercial system, with-
out fully considering its operation upon the interests of
the labouring classes of our population, would, in our
humble opinion, incur a responsibility of a fearful