The Cotton Famine

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The boom years of 1859 and 1860 had produced more woven cotton than could be sold and a cutback in production was needed. There was also an over abundance of raw cotton held in the warehouses and dockyards of the ports and the market was flooded with finished goods, causing the price to collapse, while at the same time the demand for raw cotton fell. The price for raw cotton increased by several hundred percent due to blockade and lack of imports. The inaccessibility of raw cotton and the difficult trading conditions caused a change in the social circumstances of the Lancashire regions extensive cotton mill workforce. Factory owners no longer bought large quantities of raw cotton to process and large parts of Lancashire and the surrounding areas' workers became unemployed, and went from being the most prosperous workers in Britain to the most impoverished

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The Relief Effort

Local relief committees were set up. They appealed for money locally and nationally from two major funds in Manchester and London. The poorest applied for relief from the Poor Law Unions. Local relief committees experimented with soup kitchens and direct aid. In 1862, sewing classes and industrial classes were organised by local churches, and attendance triggered a Poor Law payment. After the Public Works (Manufacturing Districts) Act 1864 was passed local authorities were empowered to borrow money for approved public works. They commissioned the rebuilding of sewerage systems, cleaning rivers, landscaping parks, and building roads.

Photo: LIFE Photo Archive/Wikimedia • Believed to be in the Public Domain (Age - Copyright expired)

A 1862 newspaper illustration showing people queueing for

food and coal tickets at a district Provident Society office

Commemorative stained glass window preserved at North Manchester General Hospital. Originally commissioned for the Cotton Districts Convalescent home, Southport, in 1896

Rebuilding the Industry

The severity of the famine in different towns depended on many factors. Some towns were built around mills using short fibre American cotton, while others used the longer fibre Egyptian cotton that continued to be available. Some mills had mules that could be adjusted to use a different cotton, others did not. Owners of "integrated" (mills that both spun and wove) could better balance the workload, thus preserving the precious raw material for longer. Some cautious mill owners always held stock in hand, others bought as required.

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The older paternalistic millowners who lived among the local community were quick to divert their neighbours and workforce to maintenance work at their own expense. For example, in Glossop, Lord Howard called a family meeting of millowners, clergy, and "respectable" residents to take charge of the situation. Two relief committees were formed which experimented unsuccessfully with soup kitchens then set about distributing thousands of pounds worth of provisions, coal, clogs and clothing. Calico printer, Edmund Potter, loaned money to his workers and Howard took on extra workers on his estate. They set up schools, provided free brass band concerts, and gave public readings from the Pickwick Papers and, after the enactment of 1864 Public Works Act, took a loan to extend the waterworks. The only recorded tension was when the Relief Committee mistakenly decided to auction, instead of distributing free, a gift of food from the American federal government.

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Towns with room and power mills and a strong cooperative tradition were quick to mitigate the social damage. The firms using them would rent the space and buy the machines on credit; cotton was cheap and the profit from the cloth was used to pay off the loan and provide a return for the risk. When cotton was unavailable they were the first to go bankrupt. After the famine the need was for more advanced machines and bigger mills. The investment required was too much for many private mill owners, and limited companies built the new larger mills. Limited companies developed fastest in the areas with a room and power tradition. Municipal authorities did not have the legal power to borrow money to finance public works until the 1864 Act; before this they had to use their own reserves, which varied from town to town.

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A trickle of raw cotton reached Lancashire in late 1863, but failed to get to the worst affected regions, being swallowed up in Manchester. The cotton was adulterated with stones, but its arrival caused the principal operators to bring in key operators to prepare the mills. The American Civil War ended in April 1865. In August 1864, the first large Consignment arrived and Wooley Bridge mill in Glossop was able to reopen, giving all operatives a four and half day week. Employment then returned to normal. Raw cotton prices had risen from 6½d in 1861 to 27½d in 1864.

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Cotton imports were finally fully restored, the mills were put back into production but some towns had diversified and many thousands of workers had emigrated.

The American Civil War and President Lincoln

In December 1862, a meeting of cotton workers at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, despite their increasing hardship, resolved to support the Union in its fight against slavery during the American Civil War.