MY KINFOLKS MODEST ROLE IN BLACK LIFE MATTERS
By Michael Kininmonth
The Golden Valley
In the mid-1970s, my mums’ friend, Hazel, let me know about a job going at a local factory. Hazel was “in-the-know” as she was the Personnel Manager at a local yarn spinner (the concept of Human Resources was yet to reach the North of England). The factory was one of several textile operations that still existed in my hometown, Rawtenstall, a market town in the Rossendale Valley situated in North East Lancashire. The area had once been a cradle of the industrial revolution, and as such was affectionally known as “The Golden Valley.” It’s wet and damp climate were ideally suited to the development of watermills, and later to the mechanization of the wool and cotton spinning and weaving industries. As the textile industry developed, so did the manufacturing of slippers, so footwear also became a major employer in the area.
The Golden Valley prospered prodigiously, and if Rossendalians had heard of Karl Marx, they would have laughed him off the stage. At the very moment he was predicting revolution by the downtrodden poor, the locals were enjoying the fruits of their endeavors. So wealthy did this corner of Lancashire become, that both British and foreign investors regularly sought finance there.
Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, I was showered with stories of an age that was, by then, rapidly vanishing. When I took the job at the local mill—intending only to stay for the summer before going off to university—it was at the rump end of the textile industry in the U.K. Whilst some cotton mills were still in action, it was clear that they were living on borrowed time, desperately holding on for survival. Industrialization and cotton manufacture were spreading to countries whose labor costs were significantly lower; leaving many of the mills, in which my family had once worked, falling silent. In some ways, history was coming full circle. It is certainly true to say that cloth production had begun outside of Britain, in places like India, and after a 200 year respite in the North of England, it was very clearly heading back home.
Rewind a century or more from my initial sojourn in the textile industry to the nineteenth century and England’s textile industry was booming. By the 1830s cotton textiles had become the country’s most valuable export. As the industry boomed, so too did Manchester (of which Rawtenstall was a satellite town), which was busily gaining the soubriquet ‘Cottonopolis’.
The Reign of Wool
In the mid-1700s, wool was one of Britain’s largest and oldest industries and the major source of wealth for the nation. Wool was produced by the “domestic system,” a vast network of local people working from their homes, when they were not otherwise engaged in the agricultural sector. Wool would remain the main British textile until around 1800 when its dominance started to be challenged.
Wool had benefitted from the English government’s protectionist policies. Effectively, the 1665 Parliament witnessed lots of sheep, lots of imported linen, and lots of death. The bubonic plague contributed to 219,601 registered deaths by year’s end. Most of those corpses, by custom, were buried wrapped in linen shrouds. This was of great benefit to England’s cross-channel rival, France, since it provided a third of all the country’s linen—England’s second-biggest import after food.
Many members of parliament had constituencies in the woolen cloth and yarn producing areas, or were themselves landowners receiving rents paid by tenants who relied on wool and sheep for their living. Subsequently an Act of Parliament was passed to try and maintain the demand for domestically produced wool. The first act was passed in 1666 and the second in 1678 repealing the first. Its aims were “for the lessening the importation of linen from beyond the seas, and the encouragement of the woolen and paper manufacturer of the kingdom.” The act required that when a corpse was buried, it should only be dressed in a shroud or garments made of wool.
The Importance of Cotton
When considering cotton textiles during the early modern
period, India was the world’s main producer, with a substantial export trade. During
the 17th and 18th century Indian textiles were exported
to Britain on a large scale, partly due to wages in Britain being more
than four times as high as those in India. Tariffs and other protectionist
measures proved insufficient, so in order for England to develop a cotton
industry, something had to change. Local labor costs could never be as low as those
in India, so the only way to reduce costs was bydecreasing the amount
of labor needed to produce cotton textiles.
Making cloth by hand, at home, had always required a great deal of skill and time. As the population increased in England, the demand for textile goods also grew and so the cottage industry system just could not keep up with this growing demand. Instead, starting in the late 18th century, a series of technical and engineering innovations (originating out of the North West of England) shifted textile production to a new factory system, and it was cotton that led the way. Inventions included the Kays’ Flying Shuttle, Hargreaves’ Spinning Jenny, Arkwright’s Waterframe, Samuel Crompton’s Mule and Cartwrights’ Power Loom. The textile industry was transformed through the mechanisation of processes when these machines were introduced.
The production of cotton yarns was the first to be mechanized; with the textile manufacturers in Manchester leading the way, Lancashire soon became the cotton manufacturing capital of the world. At this time cotton became the world’s most important non-food agricultural product. The automation of the textile production played a significant part in the birth of the Industrial Revolution. By the early 19th century, Britain had become the world’s most important cotton textile producer, dominating world export markets, and even exporting to India.
North America – King Cotton
Mills were somewhat later to develop in North America than in Britain. British-born Samuel Slater is the man responsible for bringing British textile technology to North America and is recognized as the “Father of the American Industrial Revolution.” At this time in Britain, it was illegal to export textile machinery because the British government sought to maintain a monopoly on their technology. However, Slater memorized the designs for British textile machinery and emigrated to the United States, where he subsequently replicated them. Because of this, in Britain he became known as “Slater the Traitor.”
Slater set up a mill in Rhode Island in the 1790s, creating what has come to be known as the “Rhode Island System.” This system was modeled on traditional New England family life, and whole families worked together at the mill. By the early 1800s, New England was the center of American textile manufacturing; with mills located along waterways. In many cases, textile mills led to the development of full-fledged towns as schools and other social institutions were built nearby.
As technical know-how went from Britain to America, cotton imports from the US to Britain went the other way. Britain was looking for cotton that was cheap and of a high enough quality. Both a consequence and an enabling factor of Britain’ s rapid expansion of its cotton industry was an equally rapid growth in cotton production in the United States as plantation numbers soared and trade was further enhanced by the invention of the cotton gin.
Dark, Satanic Mills
At its peak, Manchester and surrounding towns were consuming 32 percent of global cotton fiber production, with the number of cotton mills peaking at 108 in 1853. Manchester became a major commercial hub for warehousing and banking, servicing 280 cotton towns and villages within a 12-mile radius. Manchester was now the largest urban area outside London and the center of a network of canals and in 1830 became the inland terminus of the world’s first modern railway.
Such unprecedented economic change was accompanied by profound social change. Manchester was depicted as a city of contrasts: a place of enormous wealth that was also a byword for poverty and squalor. Visiting Manchester in 1835, the French political thinker, Alexis de Toqueville, noted:
“From this foul drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilize the whole world. From this filthy sewer gold flows. Here humanity attains its most complete development and its most brutish, here civilization works its miracles and civilized man is turned almost into a savage.”
Cotton was the leading American export throughout the 19th century, and according to Gene Dattel, a cultural and economic historian:
“Britain, the most powerful nation in the world, relied on slave-produced American cotton for over 80 percent of its essential industrial raw material. English textile mills accounted for 40 percent of Britain’s exports. One-fifth of Britain’s 22 million people were directly or indirectly involved with cotton textiles.”
Professor Steven Deyle, who specializes in 19th century U.S. social and political history, explains that in 1860, the value of the slaves was “roughly three times greater than the total amount invested in banks.” It was “equal to about seven times the total value of all currency in circulation in the country, three times the value of the entire livestock population, 12 times the value of the entire U.S. cotton crop and 48 times the total expenditure of the federal government that year.”
Starting in 1861, overproduction started to hit the British cotton industry and unemployment became widespread. The boom years of 1859 and 1860 had produced more woven cotton than could be sold and a cutback in production was needed. The situation was exacerbated by an overabundance 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. At the peak of this unemployment, in November of 1862, about 60 percent of the labor force of the Lancashire cotton textile industry was idle.
Circumstances were such that the depression in Lancashire coincided almost exactly in time with the American Civil War; the North U.S. states blockaded southern ports so goods could not be brought in or out. This meant the export of raw slave-grown cotton dried up. Additionally, Liverpool cotton traders suspended trade as they waited for prices to increase. A combination of all these issues resulted in what has become known as the “Cotton Famine.”
Lancashire folk show support for US anti-slavery movement
Politically, Lancashire had split loyalties regarding what actions should be taken to end the famine. The shipping and finance bosses in Liverpool openly sided with the confederacy, and organized both warships for the south and merchant ships to beat the blockade. The mill owners even lobbied the British government to deploy the Royal Navy to break the Union blockade—effectively putting Britain on the side of the slave owners’ revolt.
By contrast, the impoverished Lancashire mill workers had unwavering support for the Northern states in the U.S. Civil War by refusing to work in the mills, even though the blockade was doing so much damage to their livelihoods. The anti-slavery movement had a long history in Lancashire, dating back to the days when Britain was one of the leading countries in the international slave trade. Even after Britain had stopped her own role in the slave trade, ordinary working folk still gave their support to the cause of freeing those slaves who still existed around the world. After all, if you worked long hours in difficult conditions in a Lancashire textile mill to earn enough money to keep your family fed and clothed, the thought that in other parts of the world slaves were picking cotton (or sugar cane or tobacco) for no wages at all was enough to inspire your sympathy. All told more than 500,000 workers became unemployed, which led to a “total destitute population” of almost 2 million people who received assistance from “relief committees.”
Even so, up to 20,000 died in the Lancashire cotton famine. Yet despite this extreme hardship for themselves, Manchester’s mill workers continued to support the boycott of slave-grown cotton.
The US reciprocates the support
In 1863, the American North dispatched two Union ships to Liverpool containing an aid package to the millworkers of North West England, sent by Abraham Lincoln and the people of New York and Philadelphia. Food was destined for the starving people of Lancashire in recognition of their support of the Northern states during the American Civil War.
On Feb.9, 1863, the relief ship George Griswold docked at Liverpool, carrying boxes of bacon and bread, bags of rice and corn, and 15,000 barrels of flour (one barrel remains and is housed in the Rochdale museum) It was greeted on the dockside by an enthusiastic crowd of nearly 4,000 people. Additionally, the North contributed $2.6 million to English charities.
At a mass meeting in Manchester’s Free Trade Hall on New Year’s Eve 1862, attended by a mixture of cotton workers and the Manchester middle class, a motion was passed urging Lincoln to prosecute the war and abolish slavery, which also supported the blockade—even though it was by now causing them to starve. The meeting convened despite an editorial in the Manchester Guardian advising people not to attend.
President Lincoln, in a letter dated Jan. 19, 1863, replied with the words that are inscribed on his statue that resides in a small square in Manchester:
“I cannot but regard your decisive utterances on the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed an energetic and re-inspiring assurance of the inherent truth and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity and freedom…Whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace and friendship which now exists between the two nations will be, as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual.”
The end of the Civil War in 1865 was welcomed in Northern England, as it meant that the Lancashire Cotton Famine was over. While conditions had been improving during the last year of the war, the return of the flow of cotton to the textile factories was an economic boost that was much needed. The workers in Lancashire were also very proud of their contributions to human rights throughout the war, having maintained their pro-Union stance despite the financial difficulties that accompanied the decline in cotton imports.
The Lancashire Cotton Famine certainly had a major impact on the American Civil War, with the textile workers supporting human right and the North, despite the negative effects of the Union blockade on Northern England. Whilst the English Parliament often came close to aiding the Confederacy in their secession from the United States, the influence of the people of Lancashire left Great Britain with no choice but to remain neutral, which was extremely beneficial to the war effort of the North. For the Confederacy, however, the inability to obtain British support was seen as one of the most prevalent reasons for their defeat in the American Civil War.
Poems of the People
Only as recent as 2018, hundreds of moving poems written by desperate Lancashire cotton workers facing hunger and homelessness because of the American Civil War were uncovered by experts. There was an explosion of working class poetry in that era, which were mainly published in local newspapers and through letters between 1861 and 1865. People took to verse to explain the devastating impact the conflict had on their lives. The poems describe the poverty, hunger, and homelessness of the time, as well as war, slavery, and Victorian globalisation. The Lancashire dialect pieces in particular are fiendishly difficult to recite, and I only have a small insight to pronunciation, as I remember my Granddad speaking in a very similar way.
Here is one of the Lancashire cotton famine poems written by Williffe Cunliam and a link to the audio:
HOAMLY CHAT
“Aw say, des tu yer theer, heigh! Tum,
Just stop fur a miunit or too;
Is t’ woife, un all t’ bairns weel, ut whoam;
Un aoh gets tu on wi’ owd Sue?”
“Wha! weighving ull hardly meight find;
Aw wish all t’ Surat wur i’th pop,
Foaks seyn, ut if things dunnot mend
Aur maisters ull soon hev tu stop.
Un cotton, they seyn, ’s getting dar,
Un sich stuff it is, railly,
It’s all through this ’Merikay war;
Aw wunther wot th’end on it ull be.”
“Aye! ut aor haose we hennot ainr’d salt,
Eight childer, un Dick, un mysel;
Aw’st caper abaot like o’ cault,
If aw nobbut yeard t’ factory bell.”
Summot like thirty weeks they’n bin stopt,
Un nobbut hoalf-time afore hed,
Aor brass wur soon done, un things popt,
Fur we hed tu do summot for bread.
Un Dick, when he couldent get wark,
Sum urn dree, un daon-hearted did look;
We’d sit theer, baot fire, un th’ dark,
All shiv’ring un huddled I’th’ nook.
Un aw’ve cried to see th’ childer baot meight,
Un cloas, till my e’en couldent see;
Un aw thought, though I didm’t think reight,
Foaks ud leove uz tu starve un to dee.
But, aye, when they brought the relief,
Un gie’d uz o’ shilling ‘o yed,
Aw thought it aboon all belief,
Wi’ two bran, span, new blankets fur th’ bed.
Aor owd cloas wur fettled un petch’d,
Till they wouldent petch up ony more,
When they coom, un then fresh uns wur fetched;
God bless em fur helping the poor.
Naoh, Dick looks as slick as o’ snig,
They’ve drest him so weel – top tu toey,
They’ve gin him o’ second-hand rig;
Un us foine uz a fiddler is Joey.
Awm soa fain, aw mun oat wi ‘t un tell;
Un mi haort, sithee, Tum, ‘s in sich glee,
Aw hardly can hold wi myself-
God bless em! – whoaever they be.”
And here is the audio: https://soundcloud.com/university-of-exeter/hoamly-chat-williffe-cunliam