Lancashire Cotton Industry Research Articles

King Cotton: A Tribute to Douglas A. Farnie

Professor Douglas Farnie made a lasting impression on everybody who was fortunate enough to meet him. His enthusiasm for, and his encyclopaedic knowledge of, Lancashire's industrial and regional history (and specifically the region's hallmark, the cotton textile industry) was unprecedented. As the pre-eminent historian of the Lancashire cotton industry, his best known work was The English Cotton Industry and the World Market, 1815–1896 (1979; rev. ante, xcv [1980], 635–6). This comprised an empirical examination of the industry's search for foreign markets and its internal structural constraints, while also introducing new topics to the field, including the problems attributable to the co-operative model of ownership and the rise and fall of vertically integrated firms. In addition to his exemplary scholarship, Farnie will also be remembered for the support and kindness he demonstrated to both students and fellow researchers. Many of us were privileged enough to receive at least one file card of information which either answered a specific question or provided material he thought might be helpful for our research. It is therefore only fitting that a Festschrift be written to honour one of the most acclaimed economic historians in recent years, who influenced scholars around the world and whose scholarship will continue to influence historians for years to come. And, to that purpose, this book fulfils its aims.

'If We Depart from These Conditions…': Trade Union Reactions to European Immigrant Workers in the Textile Industry C. 1946–1952

Trade union attitudes towards European immigrants have rarely been studied in a post-war context. As a response to this, this article focuses on trade union reactions to European workers in the Lancashire cotton industry between 1946 and 1951. Highlighting the merits of local case studies of labour relations, the focus is predominantly on the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton Spinners and Twiners. Evidence is presented of a defensive attitude on the part of the Association that limited the number of European workers in individual mills, as well as acting as a barrier to such workers advancing into the echelons of skilled labour. The paper recognises, however, the complexities of the period, characterised as much by the consequences of capitalism and the decline of the cotton industry, as trade union jingoism. It also alludes to the conflicts that existed between individual districts and Executive Committees, between negotiated agreements and circumstances at individual mills and between employer...

‘They More or Less Blended in with Society’: Changing Attitudes to European Migrant Workers in Post-war Lancashire

European volunteer workers have received comparatively little attention in the history of British post-war immigration, with greater coverage given to, for example, demobilised members of the Polish Resettlement Corps. This paper is based upon oral history interviews with a group of European immigrants, predominantly European volunteer workers, and local Lancastrians who started work in the Lancashire cotton industry between 1946 and 1951, and examines perceptions of how they integrated into British life in a variety of domains. The paper emphasises that ‘blending-in’ was context-dependent, with a sense of being welcomed and fitting-in applying to certain domains and in certain situations but not necessarily in others. It argues that migration fosters particular cultural attitudes and practices amongst both migrants and hosts as social identities are produced and reproduced, changed and challenged.

Financial institutions and corporate strategy: David Alliance and the transformation of British textiles, c.1950–c.1990

This article introduces and assesses a conceptual model of institutional and corporate change. In particular it seeks to integrate strategic choice and associated corporate structure with the role of the market for corporate control (MCC) as a governance mechanism. The model is illustrated using longitudinal case studies from the British textile industry with particular reference to the acquisition policy of David Alliance as he built up the Spirella Group and then used this as a vehicle to acquire, in turn, Vantona, Carrington Viyella, Nottingham Manufacturing Company and Coats Patons. These policies are contrasted with the acquisition strategies of the Lancashire Cotton Corporation (LCC) and Courtaulds and Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). The evidence indicates that there was no relationship between the depth of the MCC and restructuring success, but to the extent that the market lacked depth, abnormal profits accrued to market-making entrepreneurs such as Alliance. There is evidence that decentralized market-led strategies were more successful than strategies based on the integration of production for the achievement of scale economies. Successful adoption of these strategies was also based on the acquisition of financial resources through appropriate network connections and associated political lobbying channels.

The Neglected Legacy of Lancashire Cotton: Industrial Clusters and the U.K. Outdoor Trade, 1960–1990

This article considers the neglected legacies of the Lancashire cotton industry and their impact on the U.K. outdoor trade. Studies of the decline of the Lancashire cotton industry after the Second World War have concentrated on the collapse of coarse cotton spinning and weaving, largely ignoring the impact of the knowledge and skills related to the finishing trades. The examination of the evolution of rainwear, coatings, and high-performance fabrics in the nineteenth century provides a backdrop to a study of the innovation process that emerged in the U.K. outdoor trade after 1960.

The Neglected Legacy of Lancashire Cotton: Industrial Clusters and the U.K. Outdoor Trade, 1960–1990

This article considers the neglected legacies of the Lancashire cotton industry and their impact on the U.K. outdoor trade. Studies of the decline of the Lancashire cotton industry after the Second World War have concentrated on the collapse of coarse cotton spinning and weaving, largely ignoring the impact of the knowledge and skills related to the finishing trades. The examination of the evolution of rainwear, coatings, and high-performance fabrics in the nineteenth century provides a backdrop to a study of the innovation process that emerged in the U.K. outdoor trade after 1960.

Footprints in the cotton fields: The Industrial Revolution as time–space appropriation and environmental load displacement

This paper offers a method for quantifying the global exchange of (natural) space and (labor) time underlying the economic success of the British textile industry in the late 18th and early 19th century. Using historical statistics on inputs of land and labor embodied in cotton and wool production, respectively, estimates are made of the amount of British land and labor that were ‘saved’ by displacing fibre production to North America. By comparing inputs of land and labor in the textile exports of England with those in some commodities imported from its colonial periphery, and juxtaposing these data with exchange rates, estimates are also made of unequal exchange. Using such methods, it is possible to bring together the Marxist concern with unequal exchanges of labor time, on one hand, with the more recent concern with ecological footprints, on the other.

Culture and Know-How in the 'Satanic Mills': A Response

Richard Biernacki's article in a recent issue of this journal (33:2, 2002) has suggested that up until the First World War the textile industries in Britain were in a primitive state, using machinery which was crudely engineered and thus unpredictable in operation. This response argues that this view is incorrect through examination of wage lists in the Lancashire cotton industry. While it is true that the industry depended on tacit knowledge in certain areas, its machinery met contemporary engineering standards and could be set accurately to produce the yarn and cloth required. The wage lists depended on this accuracy.

Industrial Milling in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: A Survey of the Evidence for an Industrial Revolution in Medieval Europe

In 1934 and 1935, Lewis Mumford and Marc Bloch published two very different pioneering works in the history of technology, Technics and Civilization and "Avènement et conquêtes du moulin à eau," the first an ambitious attempt to trace the development of technology in human civilizations over several thousand years, the second a historical overview of the development of milling technology from Greco-Roman times to the end of the Middle Ages.1 What was to prove an extraordinarily influential thesis about the development of medieval technology appeared in both publications, namely, that the second half of the European Middle Ages witnessed a rapid increase not only in the number of mills powered by water and wind but also in the range of industrial processes to which waterpower and wind power were applied. These phenomena were, according to Mumford and Bloch, emblematic of a medieval revolution in the use of power technology that laid the foundations for what happened in the Industrial Revolution [End Page 1] several hundred years later and helped to explain how European society was subsequently able to transform itself in the way it did.2 In 1941, Eleanora Carus-Wilson added some empirical flesh to the bones of Mumford's and Bloch's thesis. Her widely read article, "An Industrial Revolution of the Thirteenth Century," argued that during the thirteenth century traditional methods of fulling by hand and foot in the urban cloth-manufacturing centers of England were largely replaced by mechanized fulling in a number of rural wool-producing areas, leading to large-scale social and economic changes comparable to those that occurred in the English textile industry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.3 Until the postwar period, to suggest that the Middle Ages had made any meaningful contribution to later scientific or technological achievements was to invite ridicule. The prevailing academic and popular view was that scholastic religiosity and superstition suppressed natural philosophical, mechanical, and mathematical interests. Scientific and technological stagnation reigned in the Middle Ages as it had done in the ancient world.4 Although they approached the subject in very different ways, Mumford, Bloch, and Carus-Wilson captured the imaginations of a younger generation of scholars in the emergent field of the history of technology with their [End Page 2] new vision of medieval technological prowess. Samuel Lilley, Robert J. Forbes, W. H. G. Armytage, Bertrand Gille, and Lynn White Jr. were some of the more prominent of the young converts. Over the succeeding decades, these pioneering historians of technology articulated what was to become a core set of claims about an exploratory medieval culture exemplified by a number of technological innovations. These included mechanical innovations such as the cam, crank, and clockwork; administrative innovations such as double-entry bookkeeping, annual accounts, and audits; and agricultural innovations such as the horse harness, heavy plow, and three-field crop rotation. The effects of these technological changes were so profound, they argued, that a revolution in social and economic conditions took place in the second half of the Middle Ages. The most compelling evidence for a medieval technological revolution was, however, the rapid growth in the use of nonhuman sources of power from the tenth or eleventh century onward. By the late 1960s, a relatively detailed account had emerged of how the industrial revolution of the Middle Ages had unfolded. Its basic assumptions appear to have been ultimately derived from Bloch. The first was that the Romans had failed to make widespread use of waterpower, even though they possessed the relevant technology for at least five centuries before the collapse of their empire. The second was that Christian monasteries were leaders in the reintroduction of Roman water-mill technology to Western Europe at the end of the so-called Dark Ages. The third was that monkish inventiveness had acted...

Firms, Networks and Business Values: The British and American Cotton Industries since 1750 (review)

An up-to-date comparative history of the British and American cotton industries is long overdue, and that need has now been filled by Mary Rose, a senior lecturer in business history at the University of Lancaster. Rose brings to this project considerable expertise on the cotton industry of the northwest England (see, for example, The Lancashire Cotton Industry: A History Since 1700 [Preston, 1996], which she edited and to which she contributed). That she has also read deeply in the literature on the United States cotton industry is apparent not only in her five-hundred-item bibliography but also in her insightful discussions of American developments in every chapter of this book.

The Culture of Credit in Eighteenth-Century Commerce: The English Textile Industry

In this article, I seek to expand the relatively narrow focus of most work on commercial credit in eighteenth-century England by incorporating culture into an economic analysis. I argue that the various credit regimes that operated in the regional branches of the English wool textile industry are best understood as having a cultural dimension. A comparative analysis of business strategies in these regions suggests that the different cultures of credit had important implications for the development of the textile industry during the eighteenth century, shaping the character of the entrepreneurship of each region's merchants and producers.

The Culture of Credit in Eighteenth-Century Commerce: The English Textile Industry

In this article, I seek to expand the relatively narrow focus of most work on commercial credit in eighteenth-century England by incorporating culture into an economic analysis. I argue that the various credit regimes that operated in the regional branches of the English wool textile industry are best understood as having a cultural dimension. A comparative analysis of business strategies in these regions suggests that the different cultures of credit had important implications for the development of the textile industry during the eighteenth century, shaping the character of the entrepreneurship of each region's merchants and producers.

Mondays without dread: the Trade Union response to byssinosis in the Lancashire cotton industry in the twentieth century.

Trade unions have often been criticized for their failure to address occupational health issues. This article explores their response to byssinosis-a chronic respiratory disease caused by exposure to cotton dust that was rife in the Lancashire cotton industry in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using the archives of the cardroom and spinning unions, it is demonstrated that trade union efforts to combat byssinosis began before the First World War and were sustained for over 70 years. During that period, byssinosis became a recognized medical condition and a compensatable disease, due in no small measure to the trade unions campaigning tirelessly for better dust control, compensation for all affected workers, and more medical research.

Poisoned by the Fluff: Compensation and Litigation for Byssinosis in the Lancashire Cotton Industry

The literature on the history of industrial diseases is scanty, especially for byssinosis – a chronic respiratory illness caused by exposure to cotton dust that was prevalent in Lancashire cotton mills from the early nineteenth century. This article uses government, legal, medical, and trade union records to explore the development of state compensation for byssinosis. This began in 1941, but not until the early 1970s did compensation extend to all affected workers. Even then, dissatisfaction with state benefits for byssinosis ensured a steady stream of common law actions after 1975. Most of these were settled, highlighting the failure of government and industry to control dust and safeguard workers’ health. Government aversion to increasing costs in a declining industry was a major factor in the development of an inequitable compensation system, which shifted many of the costs of industrial disease onto cotton workers.

External economies of scale in the Lancashire cotton industry, 1900–1950

This article provides three types of evidence for external economies of scale in the Lancashire cotton industry. Anglo‐American productivity differences are used to demon‐strate external economies at the industry level. Econometric evidence of dynamic (Marshall‐Arrow‐Romer) external economies of localization in spinning and weaving is provided using individual earnings data. A case study of a merchant firm demonstrates the build‐up of dynamic (Jacobs) externalities of urbanization. It is argued that the persistence of a large merchant community generating external economies of scale helped to delay Britain's loss of comparative advantage to low wage producers.

Education policy and the question of child labour: the Lancashire cotton industry and R. D. Denman's Bill of 1914

Education policy and the question of child labour: the Lancashire cotton industry and R. D. Denman's Bill of 1914

Education policy and the question of child labour: the Lancashire cotton industry and R. D. Denman's Bill of 1914

Education policy and the question of child labour: the Lancashire cotton industry and R. D. Denman's Bill of 1914

Dressing Up and Dressing Down: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Seventeenth-Century English Textile Industry

John Dunton's 1696 parable about the dangers of middle-class women dressing like "persons of quality" has its roots in the more or less endemic anxiety that prostitutes' "excellent Art . . . can easily turn a Sempstress into a waiting Gentlewoman." Recent scholarship on early modern prostitution and pornography interprets the time-honored conflation of women's bodies and the clothes they wear largely in economic terms, emphasizing English culture's treatment of prostitution as a degraded expression of capitalist production and consumption. But Dunton's allegory eludes this economic account of clothing's relationship to prostitution and pornography as he insists that clothing causes middle-class women's social and sexual degradation, rather than masking it. This insistence situates Dunton's warning within a half-century-long tradition of antidemocratic political pornographic satire that used clothing as a political rather than a social or economic signifier.

Early Modern

A Provincial Elite in Early Modern Tuscany: Family and Power in the Creation of the State. By Giovanna Benadusi Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500–1800. By Anthony Pagden Country House Brewing in England, 1500–1900. By Pamela Sambrook John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland 1505–1553. By David Loades Fear in Early Modern Society. Edited by William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England, 1550–1750. By James Sharpe The Sound of Virtue: Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Elizabethan Politics. By Blair Worden Law, Order and Government in Caernarfonshire, 1558–1640: Justices of the Peace and the Gentry. By J. Gwynfor Jones The Making of the French Episcopate, 1589–1661. By Joseph Bergin Spanish Naval Power, 1589–1665: Reconstruction and Defeat. By David Goodman Cathedrals under Siege: Cathedrals in English Society, 1600–1700. By Stanford E. Lehmberg The Independent Highland Companies 1603–1760. By Peter Simpson The Sultan's Seraglio: An Intimate Portrait of Life at the Ottoman Court. By Ottavio Bon (from the Seventeenth‐century Edition of Robert Withers). Introduced and annotated by Godfrey Goodwin Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, c.1640–1649. By David L. Smith The Lancashire Cotton Industry: A History since 1700. Edited by Mary B. Rose Habsburgs and Ottomans between Vienna and Belgrade (1683–1739). By Ivan Parvev Women and Work in Eighteenth‐century Edinburgh. By Elizabeth C. Sanderson The Decade of the United Irishmen: Contemporary Accounts 1791–1801. Edited by John Killen The Engraved Record of the Jacobite Movement. By Richard Sharp

The Lancashire Cotton Industry: A History Since 1700. Edited by Mary Rose. Preston: Lancashire County Books, 1996. Pp. xii, 404. £24.95, cloth; £14.95, paper.

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