The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-03-05 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

THE ALLEGED PROSPERITY OF THE MANU

FACTURERS.

Mrs. Glasse's sage remark, prefixed to one of her les-
sons on the Art of Ccokery,—" first catch your hare,"—
and another equally good old English maxim—" don't
halloo until you are out of the wood"—might with great
advantage have been borne in mind by her Majesty's
Ministers, whilst penning the congratulation upon the
improved and flourishing condition of the manufacturing
interest, contained in the Royal Speech. We have already
given a few facts, showing such congratulation to have
been a little premature, to say the least of it ; and further
experience leads us to fear the approach of a state of
things the very opposite of prosperous.
The writer of the trade article in the Manchester Cou-
rier of Saturday last, after noticing the dull state of the
market for goods, and especially for home consumption,
states :

"In the present state of the market, both spinners and
manufacturers are following out the only judicious course, viz.,
extending the working of short time. The number of manu-
facturers who have reduced their hours of working has in-
creased considerably during the week, and spinners of the
coarser yarns_ have done the same. At Heywood and Roch-

dale, many of the mills which were previously on short time
are to be still further restricted, whilst some will be entirely
stopped. Messrs. Fielden Brothers have commenced working
only four days per week at their extensive mills at Waterside,
near Todmorden, and it is said that their other mills will be
entirely stopped for the present, Messrs. Fielden paying the
hands three days' wages Der week in the interval. Other con-
cerns have also reduced their hours of labour to three days per
week."

Messrs. Du Fay and Co., in their trade report, for the
past month, atter giving their opinion that the manufac-
turers of domestic and heavy cloths are not doing well,
even with a reduction of 8 per cult. in the raw material,
state that,—
" 12,000 domestic looms are now working short-time, and
the intention is to increase the number to 30,000, in order to
prevent the further accumulation of stocks, and by that means,
if possible, to enhance the price to something like a remune-
rative one."

There is something significant, and indeed startling, in
the paragraph which succeeds the above :
"It seems that the wants of the world, however large, ar
not urgent enough to pay the dowesticmanufacturerafairpricee
for a fair quality, and in order to meet the demand at fair
prices, thinner and lower goods must be made, which take of
course a less weight of the raw material. 1850 will form no
exception in this respect to previous years ; we are changing
from heavy goods to lighter and inferior descriptions, in order
to turn out of the looms the usual quantity of yards at about
the same amount of cost."

The trade in these domestic cloths—the sort of goods
which rival manufacturing nations first learn to make for
themselves—is passing out of our hands ! The conclu-
sion is irresistible ; and the resort to coarser fabrics—to
" cheap and nasty" goods—will not retard the consum-
mation, although it may tend to throw increased discredit
upon our other manufactures in every foreign market.
Messrs. M'Nair, Greenhow, and Irving, in their circu-
lar, remark upon the fact, as a newly-discovered one, that
high prices here produce no "corresponding response
from foreign markets." The conclusion to be drawn is
that the foreigner is not quite so dependant upon the
cotton manufacturers of this country as they have all
along wished us to believe. He can smoke his pipe and
enjoy his schnaps,, or his eau de vie, although all the
looms of Manchester stand idle. He sees the pretty fix
in which our manufacturers are placed. He looks on,
whilst Brother Jonathan, with his Californian wealth,
aided by a plethoric state of our home money market, is'
enabled to raise the raw material to famine price ; and in
reply to the pressing appeal—" buy our cotton goods !"
he intimates politely that he can wait, at least until, the
contending parties having worn out eachother's temper and
means, things find their proper level.
Messrs. M'Nair add the following admission :

"The demand for the home trade, daring the month, has
been unimportant, a fact scarcely reconcileable with the sea-
son of the year, but consistent enough, to a certain extent, with
the distress which undeniably exists in many of the agricultural
districts."

The Free-traders of Manchester will yet have more occa-
sion to lament the loss of this important trade.
But we need not go out of our own town—nor need we
to refer to any other than a free trade authority—for
proofs of the present fearful commercial depression. The
writer of the money article in yesterday's Albion—a
liberal paper of the first water—says :
" Nearly every branch of trade, the farming interest, and the
great national undertakings of the day, appear each and all to
be going out of joint. Not only are railway shares diminishing
in value,..without reference to the real position of the compa-
nies, but the sales of produce for the last few weeks have been
very limited, the price of the farmer's produce, food, continues
to decline, and Manchester is curtailing the labour, and con-
sequently diminishing the wages, of the manufacturing opera-
tive. Turn where we will all is for the moment gloomy, and
prosperity nowhere apparent. To us this is unaccountable.
We see a national bank languishing from satiety, and the trade
of the nation, as well as the wealth of .the people, rapidly de-
clining; at the same time. The means are there, but the im-
pulse is wanting!"

INCREASE OF THE SHIPPING AT LIVERPOOL

The following table exhibits the number of vessels
entered outwards and inwards, during the two last years,
at this port. The increase it proves in our shipping is
extremely gratifying :

INWARDS

British—Cargoes .
„ Ballast .
Foreign—Cargoes
„ Ballast .

Increase in 1849

OUTWARDS

1848. 1849.
2353 2886
9 8
1036 1078
163 70

British--Cargoes
„ Ballast
Foreign—Cargoes
„ Ballast

3561 4042

2843
234
1195

Increase in 1849.

3249
189
1269

4318 4751
4318

ANALYSIS OF THE LIVERPOOL WATER BY

DR. BRETT

Dr. Brett, our celebrated resident chemist, has, at the
request of the Parochial Water Committee, addressed an
important letter to the chairman of that body, embodying
the result of his experiments in determining the compo-
nent ingredients in the water of the several wells which
supply the town. He first directed his attention to the
relative proportions of lime, magnesia and common salt
in the different samples, and he furnishes a tabular state-
ment of the result, by which we learn that in the imperial
gallon there now are the respective proportions of the in-
gredients stated :

Lime. Salt. Magnesia
Bevington Bush .... 7.76 23.03 5 27
Hotham-street 4 4B 5.54 5.42
Bootle 3

The quality of the water is equally defined in the Wind-
sor, Soho, Park, and Green-lane wells, which vary a little,
and the average of the whole is,—lime, 3.74 ; salt, 6.39;
and magnesia, 4.so,—the quantity of these ingredients
being now less than as determined by the same operator
in 1816. We quote the following passage of Dr. Brett's
letter entire:—" With respect to the effect which these
lime salts produce on the water in question, they are
doubtless the substances which communicate what is
called hardness to the water, but are not at all calculated
to injure the water for internal use; but, on the contrary,
espeeially the sulphates of lime and magnesia, tend to
prevent that injurious action upon lead, which decidedly
soft waters are well known to produce, Numerous expe-
riments; moreover, have been made at different times, by
myself and others, which clearly show that, by boiling the
Liverpool water so as to expel carbonic acid, and separate
the lime and magnesian salts, which exist in the water as
carbonates, the hardness is materially reduced, and this
more especially when a little common washing soda is
em ployed." _ _

The qUantity of salt is (the writer proceeds to say)
much less than that stated by Mr. Spencer; the average
from seven wells differing little from that given by Dr.
Playfair in 1846, and more recently by Mr. Gage, junior.
" With regard," he adds, " to the presence of common
salt in water, in a sanatory point of view, every medical
man knows perfectly well that, instead of being injurious,
it is positively beneficial ; fo,. health could not be main-
tained without a certain quantity of this ingredient enter-
ing into our articles of food."

The analyser has not, in his experiments, detected the
presence of nitrates, end the assertion of the existence of
animal matter producing them by decomposition, is, he
states, by no means proved. On the contrary, the water
is remarkably free from vegetable and animal matter, and
" it would be ridiculous to assign any injurious property
to the mere presence of nitrates in the Liverpool water,
which, if they exist at all, must be present in extremely
minute quantities."

The water from these wells does not act upon lead so
as to render the water unwholesome, which rain water
does. Dr. Brett concludes by saying,—" From my
knowledge of the water supplied to this town for the last
ten or eleven years, and, speaking as a chemist as well as
a medical man, I am decidedly of opinion that it would
be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to obtain a sup-
ply possessing superior qualities in a sanatory point of
view, and the results of certain experiments go to show
that its hardness may be materially reduced, so as to ren-
der it applicable for those purposes where softer water
may be required."

THE JEWS AMONGST THE GOLD.—The wealthy mem-
bers of the Jewish fraternity appear to be embarking
freely in the lucrative branch of trade in their favourite
metal—gold—opened out to them by the recent Califonia
discoveries. Amongst the list of consignees in this
country of gold from San Francisco, by a late arrival,
the name of Rothschild appears opposite a shipment of
some 200,000 dollars ; and as, at the date of the advices
per Niagara, 1,000,000 dollars were stated as about to be
forwarded home on English account, we may predict, with
confidence, that another considerable amount of the same
metal will find its way to the strong-box of the same
eminent capitalist. The trade is too good and safe to
escape the keen eyes of his tribe. Unlike all other articles
of import, there is always a market, with a fixed price
and an excellent customer for this article. It can be
picked up at San Francisco for from 12 to 16 dollars an
ounce, or, in English money, from £2 16s. to £3 6s. Bd.
per ounce, of standard firmness, whilst the Bank of Eng-
land generously opens her coffers to receive all that is
offered to her at £3 17s. 9d. nett. The trade, we repeat,
is a good one for the Rothschild tribe. It remains to be
seen whether it will prove an equally good one for the
bank.