The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-06-04 00:00:00

EXPORTED TO UNITED STATES.

1848 1849 1849
Plain calicoes £212,107 260,324 48,217
Printed „
Bilk
Linen

Woollen

1,627,321 1.936,782 309,461

Twist and Thread.... 93,574 145,215 51,641
Other Cotton Manfrs 251,043 331,001 79,958

£3,591,085 4,651,224 1,060,139
The increase here, it will be seen, was little over
a million sterling. Yet in the latter of these years
we paid the United States no less than three mil-
lions and a half sterling additional price for our
supply of cotton ! The following ‘vere the respec-
tive imports and prices for the two years :

IMPORTED FROM UNITED STATES.
lbs. d.
Cotton wool, 1849... 6-10,535,130 at 54- 14,012,362
/I 1848 592,775,983 at 44- 10,497,116
Increase in 1849.. £3,515,246
We have done this, too, whilst stimulating by
our imports of bread stuffs, the agriculture of the
American farmer, and ruining our own. Nor is
the worst told. We have enabled the United States
to increase very largely their domestic manufactures;
and now find them amongst the most powerful of
our competitors, as exporters of cotton goods to
foreign countries. In low yarns and heavy cloths
the American manufacturer beats us already in
every foreign market ; and in our Eastern posses.
sions and China, is making rapid strides towards a
complete supremacy. As a proof of this fact we
quote the following from the circular of an Ameri-
can house recently established at Shanghae :
"American yarn has found its way to Shanghae;
and, though inferior to British, can be bought
cheaper in the low numbers, and is found by the
Chinese to answer their purpose." The same cir-
cular contains the following table, from which it
may be seen that whilst the tonnage of America in
the eastern seas is steadily increasing, that of Great
Britain is retrograding :

VESSELS INWARDS TO CANTON AND SHANGHAE IN

1847 AND 1848.
American. British.
1847. 1848. 1847. 1848,
Canton Ships.. 60 I 67 221 I 171
Shanghae...... 20 I 17 I 75 I 76

293 247

80 84
Increase of American.. 4 ships.
Decrease of British.. 49 „
Yet whilst our enterprising transatlantic neigh-
bours are thus stealing on our track, and, by the
transfer of a portion of their commercial energies
to the waters of the Pacific and the site of their
golden stores, will shortly be in the possession of
the means of competing with us on terms of in-
creased advantage, statesmen in this country—men
even who regard our cotton manufacture as one of
the leading sources of the country's strength—com-
placently assure us of the safety of our position,
and boast that our superiority as a manufacturing
country cannot he shaken.
We shall indulge in no lengthened comments
upon the few facts which we have above placed
before our readers ; but content ourselves with
commending them especially to the careful and
candid consideration of those who will, on Thurs-
day next, be called upon to review and remark
upon the nation's position under our present
policy. They are not the doctored facts of sta-
ticians—not mere figures of arithmetic—but facts
which are capable of being verified by practical
men of business, and which carry with them their
own tale like that material leaf in a nation's, as of an
individual's ledger, which contains the record of
profit and loss. Apart from ail consideration of
the injury inflicted upon the agricultural portion of
the community by our one-sided system of free
trade, they prove, and we are prepared to maintain,
that we have been of late wantonly sacrificing the
commercial interests of this country, which in our
selfishness we sought to advance by the robbery of
other interests ; and that our condition as a com-
mercial people is one of rapid and ruinous deca-
dence.

THE Manchester Guardian has discovered a mare's
nest in the following paragraph, which he quotes
from our last publication :

" The failure of last year's cotton crop, and the proba-
bility of a deficiency in the season now before us, are
Minified facts, Our manufacturing population must be
content to suspend working for two or three days in the
week, until some fresh source of supply is opened to the
world. Nor has this dilemma come upon us without full
warning having been given. It was foretold, as one of
the consequences of opening the markets of Great Britain
to the grain growing states of America, that the cultiva-
tion of this indispensable staple would be neglected, and
that -we should shortly find ourselves at the mercy of one
of our most powerful rivals for the means of employing
our industrious population. The historian who pens the
events which have occurred in the present generation,
will record it as one of the most signal instances of human
fatuity that we neglected to provide in time for such an
emergency."

The italics are his own, and are introduced we pre-
sume to bring into stronger relief his own views as
to the cause of our present scarcity of cotton, viz.,
that it is " due to unfavourable weather and its con-
sequences—to .killing. frosts in spring, to heavy
rains and wide-spread inundations in summer, and
to the ravages of Insects, promoted by excessive
humidity." Very wittily he urges that, upon our
theory, we are suffering from "a deficiency.by act
of parliament ;" and, taking comfort from the idea,
expresses the readiness with which he would re-
verse our recent policy in order to procure an abun-
dance of that necessary staple. We beg leave,
however, to reiterate our assertion, that the culti-
vation
of the cotton crop has been neglected during
the past few years, " as one of the consequences of
opening the markets of Great Britain to the grain
growing States of America ;" and, we may add, of
our free trade policy generally. We have been
looking for cheap grain, cheap sugar, cheap coffee
and other commodities, and wantonly neglected to
provide for the great increase anticipated in the
consumption of cotton fabrics as the result of our
new fiscal system.
The Guardian reminds us as a fact strongly con-
demnatory of our argument, that "in 1839-40 the
crop amounted to 2,177,835 bales, which in the
following year sunk to 1,634,946 bales, a diminu-
tion of very nearly .25 percent. Again, in 1844-5,
the crop amounted to 2,394,503 bales, but declined
in the following year to 2.100,537 and in the next
year after that (namely, in 1846-7,) to 1,778,651
bales, a decrease, as compared with 1844-5 of 211
per cent. If the present crop should reach, as ex-
pected, 2,100,000 bales, the falling off as compared
with last year, will be about 23 per cent." In each
of these cases of falling off, the cause, he says has
been " unfavourable weather." Such an assertion
at least requires proof; and we have before us the
strong fact, that during.fhe. period over which our
contemporary's figures extend, and whilst the pro-
duce of the cotton cultivation has made no apparent
progress, we have received from the United States
an unprecedented supply 'of grain of all kinds,
more especially Indian Corn, at very extravagant
rates. And what is still more remarkable, the
largest quantities were received and the highest
prices paid coincidently with deficient crops of
cotton. With respect to the abundant crop of
1849, it must be borne in mind that in the preced-
ing year the consumption of Indian meal had fallen
off, and prices so far declined as to diminish the
temptation for its growth. All this quibbling of
our contemporary, however, about dates and coin-
cidences is highly absurd. He knows well enough
that the farmer, like the manufacturer, will always
produce whatever pays hitt best ; that a low price
of cotton is generally followed by a decreased
growth, and vice versa ; that when a country can
exchange more commodities than one for its im-
ports, it will cease •to be very anxious for the
growth of that one, by replanting and other re-
sources adopted to repair the effects of unfavorable
weather.

What we urge most strongly against the manu-
facturing community is that they have neglected
to provide an abundant supply of the raw material
upon which they depend for the subsistence of
their operative population, and have, at the same
time, by their free-trade measures, rendered the
countries from which they daw their supplies,
independent of the cultivation. Upon the Guardi-
an's own showing no material progress has been
made in the growth of cotton during the past ten
•