THE CRISIS IN ENGLAND ” 

Today, as fifteen years ago, England faces a catastrophe that 
threatens to strike at the root of her entire economic system. As is 
known, the potato formed the exclusive food of Ireland and a not 
inconsiderable section of the English working people when the 
potato blight of 1845 and 1846 struck the root of Irish life with 
decay. The results of this great catastrophe are known. The Irish 
population declined by two million, of whom one part died of 
starvation and the other fled across the Atlantic Ocean. At the 
same time, this dreadful misfortune helped the English Free Trade 
party to triumph; the English landed aristocracy was compelled to 
sacrifice one of its most lucrative monopolies, and the abolition of 
the Corn Laws* assured a broader and sounder basis for the 
reproduction and maintenance of the working millions. 

What the potato was to Irish agriculture, cotton is to the 
dominant branch of Great Britain’s industry. On its manufacture 
depends the subsistence of a mass of people greater than the total 
number of inhabitants of Scotland and than two-thirds of the 
present number of inhabitants of Ireland. For according to the 
census of 1861, the population of Scotland consisted of 3,061,117 
persons, that of Ireland now only 5,764,543,” whilst more than 
four millions in England and Scotland live directly or indirectly by 
the cotton industry. Now the cotton plant is not, indeed, diseased. 
Just as little is its production the monopoly of a few regions of the 
earth. On the contrary, no other plant that yields clothing material 

thrives in equally extensive areas of America, Asia and Africa. The 
cotton monopoly of the slave states of the American Union is not a 
natural, but an historical monopoly. It grew and developed 
simultaneously with the monopoly of the English cotton industry 
on the world market. In the year 1793, shortly after the time of. 
the great mechanical inventions in England, a Quaker” of 
Connecticut, Ely Whitney, invented the cotton gin,* a machine for 
cleaning cotton, which separates the cotton fibre from the cotton 
seed. Prior to this invention, a day of a Negro’s most intensive 
labour barely sufficed to separate a pound of cotton fibre from 
the cotton seed. After the invention of the cotton gin, an old 
Negrowoman could comfortably supply fifty pounds of cotton 
daily, and gradual improvements have subsequently doubled the 
efficiency of the machine. The fetters on the cultivation of cotton 
in the United States were now burst asunder. Hand in hand with 
the English cotton industry, it grew swiftly to a great commercial 
power. Now and then in the course of development, England 
seemed to take fright at the monopoly of American cotton, as at a 
spectre that threatened danger. Such a moment occurred, for 
example, at the time when the emancipation of the Negroes in the 
English colonies was purchased for £20,000,000.”7 It was a matter 
for misgiving that the industry in Lancashire and Yorkshire 
should rest on the sovereignty of the slave-whip in Georgia and 
Alabama, whilst the English nation imposed on itself so great a 
sacrifice to abolish slavery in its own colonies. Philanthropy, 
however, does not make history, least of all commercial history. 
Similar doubts arose as often as a cotton crop failure occurred in 
the United States and as, in addition, such a natural phenomenon 
was exploited by the slaveholders to artificially raise the price of 
cotton still higher through combination. The English cotton 
spinners and weavers then threatened rebellion against “King 
Cotton”. Manifold projects for procuring cotton from Asiatic and 
African sources came to light. This was the case, for example, in 
1850.” However, the following good crop in the United States 
triumphantly dispelled such yearnings for emancipation. Indeed, 
in the last few years the American cotton monopoly attained 
dimensions scarcely dreamt of before, partly in consequence of the 
free trade legislation, which repealed the hitherto existing 
differential tariff on the cotton grown by slaves; partly in 

consequence of the simultaneous giant strides made by the English 
cotton industry and American cotton cultivation during the last 
decade. In the year 1857 the consumption of cotton in England 
already amounted to nearly 1,500 million pounds. 

Now, all of a sudden, the American Civil War menaces this 
great pillar of English industry. Whilst the Union blockades the 
harbours of the Southern states, in order to cut off the 
secessionists’ chief source of income by preventing the export of 
their cotton crop of this year, the Confederacy lends compelling 
force to this blockade with the decision not to export a bale of 
cotton of its own accord, but rather to compel England to come 
and fetch her cotton from the Southern harbours herself. England 
is to be driven to the point of forcibly breaking through the 
blockade, of then declaring war on the Union and so of throwing 
her sword into the scale of the slave states. 

From the beginning of the American Civil War the price of 
cotton in England rose continuously; for a considerable time, 
however, to a less degree than was to be expected. On the whole, 
the English commercial world appeared to look down very 
phlegmatically on the American crisis. The cause of this cold- 
blooded way of viewing things was unmistakable. The whole of the 
last American crop was long ago in Europe. The yield of a new 
crop is never shipped before the end of November, and _ this 
shipment seldom attains considerable dimensions before the end 
of December. Till then, therefore, it remained pretty much a 
matter of indifference whether the cotton bales were held back on 
the plantations or forwarded to the harbours of the South 
immediately after their packing. Should the blockade cease at any 
time before the end of ‘the year, England could safely count on 
receiving her customary cotton imports in March or April, quite 
as if the blockade had never taken place. The English commercial 
world, in large measuré misled by the English press, succumbed, 
however, to the delusion that a spectacle of about six months’ war 
would end with recognition of the Confederacy by the United 
States. But at the end of August, North Americans appeared in 
the market of Liverpool to buy cotton, partly for speculation in 
Europe, partly for reshipment to North America. This unheard-of 
event opened the eyes of the English. They began to understand 
the seriousness of the situation. The Liverpool cotton market has 
since. been in a state of feverish excitement; the prices of cotton 
were soon driven 100 per cent above their average level; the 
speculation in cotton assumed the same wild features that 
characterised the speculation in railways in 1845.” The spinning 

and weaving mills in Lancashire and other seats of the British 
cotton industry limited their labour time to three days a week; a 
number of mills stopped their machines altogether; the disastrous 
reaction on other branches of industry was not wanting, and at 
this moment all England trembles at the approach of the greatest 
economic catastrophe that has yet threatened her. 

The consumption of Indian cotton is naturally increasing, 
and the rising prices will ensure further increase of importation 
from the ancient home of cotton. Nevertheless, it remains 
impossible radically to change the conditions of production and 
the course of trade at, so to speak, a few months’ notice. England 
is, in fact, now expiating her long mismanagement of India. Her 
present spasmodic attempts to replace American cotton by Indian 
encounter two great obstacles: the lack of means of communica- 
tion and transport in India, and the miserable condition of the 
Indian peasant, which prevents him from taking advantage of the 
momentarily favourable circumstances. But, apart from this, apart 
from the process of improvement that Indian cotton has still to go 
through to be able to take the place of American, even under the 
most favourable circumstances it will be years before India can 
produce for export the requisite quantity of cotton. It is 
statistically established, however, that in four months the stocks of 
cotton in Liverpool will be exhausted. They will hold out even as 
long as this only if the limitation of the labour time to three days a 
week and the complete stoppage of a part of the machinery is 
effected by the British cotton spinners and weavers to a still 
greater extent than hitherto. Such a procedure is already exposing 
the factory districts to the greatest social sufferings. But if the 
American blockade continues over January! What then?