To the Editor of the ""Norra-Cuina Dairy News."
Sm,—In your Week's Finance Notes of September 20, you publish some of the incorrect statements made by Mr. Ellis Barker in the "Nineteenth Century."
If there is o trade in Great Britain that has prospered in the past, and depends in the future for its prosperity on Free Trade, it is that of cotton manufacture. In considering the question of the Lancashire cotton industry and its export trade, it might be remembered that ever since our sea trade oe-gan we have always relied to a very large extent upon the takings of the Eastern and Far Eastern markets. The population in India and China of many millions makes this part of the world our most likely customer, and it should also be borne in mind that the climate is more suitable for the wearing of light cotton clothing, which accounts for 40 per cent. of Lane production. In Europe, and in the northern part of the world generally, the same consumption per head of the population, cannot be expected, as during certain parts of the year much warmer clothing is necessary for the people.
Great Britain possesses 40 per cent. of the total number of spindles existing in the whole world. The United States with a population which is twice the size of ours, possesses only 21 per cent., and Germany, with 50 per cent. more people than we have, possesses only 6.7 per cent. of the world's spindles. It is sometimes represented that the Briish cotton industry is losing ground because the proportion of: les to the world's spi large as it was thirty or forty years ago. The representation is fallacious because it does not take into 905 ton goods in the world. Our proportion of the supply of the world's cotton goods may be, in relation to that of the other countries, less than it was, but the actual quantity we supply is greater, because the demand is greater. We have twenty million spindles more than we had in 1874, and the speed at which they are run is probably double that of thirty-five years ago.
As we have 54 per cent. more spindles than we had thirty-five years ago and as the speed at which the spindles run is doubled, it follows that our output must be more than treble that of thirty-five years ago, and the volume of our profits and employment is much greater.
The following table gives the imports of cotton piece goods into Great Britain from all countries for the past five years. a 904 71,993,466 89,503,194
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.