Cotton Industry

Especially with regard to the linen and woollen industries, however, it is true that the comparatively slow development was caused by the expansion of the cotton industry, an expansion which was unique, and, in the eyes of contemporaries, quite phenomenal. Here there is no doubt that we are brought face to face with an effect of the Continental System; for, on one side, the whole of this branch of industry was comparatively undeveloped before the Revolution, while, on the other side, the competition of Great Britain was more overwhelming here than anywhere else in the industrial life of France. The French people had already accustomed themselves to cotton goods to such an extent that the prohibition on imports in 1806 was all that was required to speed up the domestic production amazingly, especially as the foundation had been largely laid by the many prohibitions and embargoes during the whole of the preceding decade.

Here again it was two incorporated territories that exhibited the most violent growth, namely, Mülhausen in Upper Alsace, with old traditions in that line, and Ghent, which under the leadership of one man, Liévin Bauwens, the great captain of industry, stands out as a striking example of one of the two kinds of development due to the Continental System. Ghent, it is true, had old and boasted textile traditions, dating from the Middle Ages; but long before the Revolution almost all manufacture had disappeared there, and as the revolutionary wars put an end to the little that remained, this old manufacturing centre had come to be looked upon as a dead town. In 1801, however, Liévin Bauwens started there a machine cotton-spinning mill and also a hand weaving establishment. To begin with, he was almost alone in the matter, being helped merely by his brothers, but as early as 1803 he had no less than 227 workmen. It was not long before his example began to be followed by a number of other persons, especially relatives, who entered into violent competition with him, particularly for the altogether inadequate supply of labour. An enormous expansion thereupon began; the whole of Flanders and northern France were covered with spinning-mills and home weavers, the new enterprises extending, in fact, as far as Paris and its environs. But Ghent remained the main centre, and for a fairly long time it was the only place in the empire where cotton goods were manufactured on a large scale, especially for military requirements; and it also obtained as markets, not only France and Belgium, but also Holland, Italy, Spain and the larger part of Germany. At the summit level of this prosperity the former 'dead town' was stated to have fifty factories and ten thousand workers in the cotton trade; and the shortage of labour was so great that wages jumped up to what was then the amazing amount of 5-8 francs per diem.

In contrast with this production for sale on a large scale there existed in Mülhausen, and in southern Alsace in general—and had long existed—a flourishing manufacture of the finest qualities of calicoes and printed cotton goods. The real impetus, however, came with the annexation of the town by the French republic in 1798; and the Continental System made it the leading centre for calicoes and prints upon the Continent, at the expense both of Basel and of British sales in Europe. The importance of the development at Mülhausen appears best, perhaps, from the population statistics, which show an increase from 6,628 in the year 1800 to 8,021 in 1805 and 9,353 in 1810, a growth of 41 per cent. in ten years. Alongside this, however, there were also very important and comparatively new centres for the cotton trade within the limits of old France, especially in the old textile districts of northern France and in Paris and its suburbs. One of the most celebrated French leaders of industry, Richard Lenoir, was stated by a German observer who is generally regarded as reliable (Fahnenberg) to have had in his factories such for that time incredible numbers of workmen as 10,600 in 1808 and 14,000 in 1810. According to the statements of Chaptal, who is throughout obviously a partisan of the new industry, it is true, but who in spite of this is in many ways our most reliable source of information, the production of cotton yarn was already sufficient for home requirements almost up to the highest number (finest grades)—in reality, however, up to number 100 only. Even as regards woven cotton goods, in his opinion, the imports had declined to about 6 per cent. of the figure for the last year of the ancien régime; but in this estimate a considerable amount of smuggling, for which an overwhelming evidence exists, was assuredly left out of account. It is also worthy of note that what was at times a very considerable export of piece goods had begun.

Evidently this development was calculated to give Napoleon himself and his helpers a great certainty of victory, both as an evidence of the profitableness of the Continental System to France and as a blow against the economic supremacy of Great Britain. To what a great extent the whole thing was regarded as an important item in the struggle against Great Britain is shown by many facts. When Napoleon visited Oberkampf, the most famous of the leaders of the cotton industry, who as early as 1760 had laid the foundation of calico printing in old France by the establishment of his famous works at Jouy, outside Versailles, he decorated him and added the explanation: 'We are both carrying on war against the British, but your war is the best.' And Liévin Bauwens produced a wonderful judgment on the part of the British Court of King's Bench, by which, on the accusation of Lord Erskine, he had been condemned to death in contumaciam, because, 'not content with having stolen the secrets of England in the art of tanning, he had also robbed her of the most important branch of her trade, the cotton manufacture, which was the apple of her eye.'

In reality, however, there was no point where the two opposing tendencies of the Continental System were so much in conflict with one another as here; and the reason was, of course, that the industry was based on a raw material which was for the most part unobtainable by other means than by the forbidden route across the seas. From the very first moment, therefore, the shortage of raw materials hung like the sword of Damocles over the head of the flourishing new development, causing continual fluctuations and constant changes. During the year 1808, for instance, Liévin Bauwens, according to his own statement, employed 1,269 workmen on May 1, but only 230 on November 1; and the same state of affairs was said to prevail among his competitors. Moreover, according to the same authority, the price of raw cotton rose at the same time from 5.25 to 11 or 12 francs per half a kilo and then sank to 6 or 7. As early as 1807 the shortage of raw cotton had begun to make itself felt in France, and in the course of 1808 it produced a genuine crisis in the cotton industry, which found expression in many forms. Thus, for instance, the prefect of the Aube department declared that the closing of the spinning-mills in Troyes caused by the 'equally sudden and unique rise in the price of raw cotton' had reduced 10,000 people to misery; and on this account he submitted a placard which was apparently insurrectionary. According to another statement, the difficulties of the French weaving mills were further increased by the fact that the weaving mills in Germany and Switzerland, owing to the scarcity of yarn prevailing there, had gotten hold of French cotton yarn and thus rendered that dearer. The difficulty was partly overcome this time, and the state of prosperity continued into the year 1810, which as a rule marks the summit level of the industrial prosperity of France, as also of England and the non-French parts of the Continent. But then, as we know, came the great crisis, of which the shortage of raw cotton formed one of the most obvious causes; and this shortage was made worse by Napoleon's Rambouillet decree, issued in the spring of 1810, which dealt a severe blow at American shipping. During the following years of the empire the shortage became more and more acute, and in 1813 it led to a complete stoppage of operations.

The whole of this position is not in the least degree difficult to explain, but its importance is worthy of illustration with figures. The available statistics especially show how practically impossible any real competition with the British industry—or, to be more explicit, the impossibility of creating an industry that could provide the whole population of the Continent with cotton goods on approximately the same terms as were offered to British and American consumers—must have been made by the mere fact that raw material was scarce or unobtainable. (See next page.)

On examining the columns for North and South American cotton we note the enormous distance between British and continental prices. During the years 1808-13 the prices, even in Leipzig, the centre of the European cotton trade, are almost without exception twice as high as in London, and in certain years (1808-9) they are four times as high. To a far greater extent than one would have expected beforehand, the figures follow one another at similar distances—a fact which appears with particular clearness in the increase of price on Georgia cotton in 1808 (autumn) and in the fall of prices corresponding to both qualities in 1811. This illustrates what has been previously said concerning the almost uniform increase of prices caused by smuggling. It is quite true, indeed, that we have no security here for agreement in quality between the different quotations; but the conclusions here put forward may be said to hold good a fortiori, as at least one factor is excluded which would increase, and not diminish, the distance, namely, the heavy depreciation of British currency, which makes the British prices too high when, as here, they are converted to francs at par. A levelling-down tendency first appeared in 1813, in connexion with the Anglo-American war, which raised the British prices, and the fall of the Continental System on the European mainland, which lowered the continental prices; and the year 1814, owing to the continuance of the former factor and the peace on the Continent, led to a unique situation, in that Georgia cotton was cheaper in Leipzig than in London.

However, the table shows something more, namely, that the French prices without exception stood higher than the Leipzig prices. Nor is this surprising, in view of the stricter customs watch in France; but it is none the less a fact which made still more difficult the position of the French cotton industry. Unfortunately, it is precisely these figures that least bear comparison in the table; but light can be thrown on the matter by other figures, based on French consular reports, for a number of different places at the same two points of time, namely, the two crises of May 1808 and June 1811. If we arrange these places as nearly as possible in accordance with the magnitude of the prices, the figures assume the following shape (francs per kilogram):

As we see from this table, the French industrial centres come last, with the sole exception, at the later time, of Bremen.

As all this necessarily followed from the nature of the self-blockade, it could not take Napoleon by surprise; and in point of fact he was prepared for it, although his counter-measures were somewhat hesitating. At times the only expedient he saw was to replace the colonial cotton by some other cotton which did not have to be obtained by sea. The most obvious kind was Levantine, but here, too, there were great difficulties, arising partly from its short staple and generally inferior quality and partly from the great delays and inconveniences of transportation, as it could not be conveyed across the Mediterranean and as a very expensive transport in wheeled vehicles had consequently to be arranged through Bosnia via Genoa and Marseilles. The figures given above also show how the French prices for Levantine cotton ran up, even in comparison with the British prices for the far more valuable American cotton. The situation was all the more unsatisfactory because Napoleon would by no means be satisfied with the coarse goods that alone could be produced from Levantine cotton. Thus there arose the idea of starting the cultivation of cotton nearer home, preferably within the borders of the empire; and in this connexion the most obvious choice was Naples. Naples, to use the expression of the French envoy there, was to be 'France's richest colony', or, to borrow a phrase from a French historian, 'the tropical element' in the Continental System; it was this fact that caused Neapolitan cotton alone to be excepted from the enormously increased customs duties imposed by the Trianon tariff. But the cotton that could be obtained from Naples (Castellamare), even in combination with that which was admitted in later years from Spain (Motril) and with what could be otherwise scraped together from places nearer home (from Romagna, &c.), supplied but a small fraction of the total requirements; on the basis of Chaptal's figures for the output of the spinning-mills in 1812, one may perhaps calculate this supply at 12 per cent. of the whole.

All this was so obvious that Napoleon could never feel unmixed joy at the prodigious development of the cotton industry, but, on the contrary, time after time occupied his thoughts with the idea of rooting out cotton goods and replacing them by other textiles, such as had long been manufactured in France and were based on domestic raw materials. Even as early as 1809 he declared that 'it would be better to use only wool, flax, and silk, the products of our own soil, and to proscribe cotton forever on the Continent, because we have no colonies; but as we cannot control the fashions, of course,...'

The same thought lay behind his resolution, effected in the following year, to offer a prize of no less than a million francs for the invention of a flax-spinning machine; but after the outbreak of the crisis of 1810-11, he took such a strong step against what was after all largely his own work as, in January 1811, to banish cotton goods from the imperial palaces. But for the very reason that Napoleon had given two years previously, the extirpation of cotton goods—at which he assuredly did not even aim at this stage—was a hopeless undertaking; and he, like his people, had to take the consequences of a situation from which there was no escape.

The development of the cotton industry is characteristic of the effects of the Continental System, not only through the dualism that existed between the exclusion of raw materials and the forcing of manufacture, but to an equal extent through the violently enforced stimulation of a production that had not grown up out of increasing natural requirements for an article but out of a sudden embargo in combination with state measures of all kinds. There is no doubt that great over-speculation had occurred in the industry and had had its share in the French crisis of 1810-11, just as a similar over-speculation in the colonial trade gave the impulse to the crisis in Great Britain. Mollien, an observer who formed unusually cool judgments, pointed this out in a letter to Napoleon, and especially called his attention to the insufficient supply of capital possessed by the industry and its consequent dependence on loans and bills of exchange. In his memoirs he is, on the whole, very critical not only of the heads of factories, especially Richard Lenoir, whose untenable business position and reckless way of living he says that he explained to the Emperor, but also of the industry itself, where, in his opinion, many millions had been invested in what could have been made equally serviceable at half the expense.

When, after some months, the crisis of 1810 reached the cotton industry, it hit it very hard and effectively, especially the spinning-mills, which as a rule seem to have seen their number of workmen decline by a third in the course of 1811. There was a general improvement in the course of 1812 which continued in places during most of the following year, at least if we may credit the deliberately roseate reports of the home secretary to Napoleon in the latter half of 1813. But the Ghent industry declined steadily early in 1813, and later on in the same year, that is to say, before the fall of Napoleon, the decline spread in ever-widening circles. Probably with great exaggeration, but certainly not without grounds, the Executive Committee for Cotton of the Council of Manufactures expressed the view in the following year, immediately after the Restoration, that the whole of this branch of industry was ruined in 1813 to such an extent that 600,000 individuals had to choose between begging or putting an end to their misery on a battlefield. Capital to the amount of 300,000,000 francs was paralysed and working power to the value of 230,000,000 francs was lost. The most comprehensible picture of the decline from the summit year of 1810 to the autumn of 1813 is offered by the official figures for the Ghent industries, reproduced on the next page.

We note in these figures the powerful effect of the crisis of 1811 as regards the spinning-mills, but, in contrast with this, no effect at all as regards the weaving-mills or printing works, while the decline in 1813, with a quite different kind of uniformity, extends over all branches of the industry; and, if we judge by the number of spindles, it implies a reduction of almost a half.

The strongest evidence of the enforced stimulation of the industry, however, is shown in the events occurring at the fall of Napoleon. When the frontiers were opened in connexion with the march of the allied armies, and later, in April 1814, formally opened by a series of decrees issued by the Provisional Government, the cotton industry collapsed altogether, and almost all the leading manufacturers were ruined. The majority of them—chiefly Richard Lenoir, but also Liévin Bauwens—had received liberal support in the form of loans from Napoleon during the crisis of 1810-11, which they had not been able to repay; and with the fall of the empire all prospect of their ever repaying them disappeared. Bauwens, who had been lauded in every conceivable fashion as the benefactor of his town and as a pillar of the prosperity of France, saw his property sold by distraint, and he himself had to flee to Paris to escape imprisonment. Chaptal particularly regrets the ruin of the great nankeen manufacture owing to the overwhelming competition of Indian and British goods, which were allowed to enter on payment of duty; and the amount of the duty was in reality, according to circumstances, 45-50 centimes per metre, which can not have been less than 20-25 per cent. of the value of the goods and consequently no mean protection in itself. But, of course, this was a very considerable step from complete embargo, despite the smuggling.

Whatever construction one may put on the matter, the fate of the French cotton industry on the fall of Napoleon shows that it had by no means become capable, during the time of the blockade, of holding its own against foreign competition. Nor is the great prosperity which, after a quite short interval, occurred under the Restoration any real evidence of its competitive efficiency, inasmuch as a prohibition of the imports of foreign textiles was almost immediately re-introduced; and the protection of the industry was thereby even considerably increased, as raw cotton now came in free. Indeed, as will be shown throughout this chapter, the technical advances in French industry were not, on the whole, very great under the Continental System, and they still fell far behind Great Britain in almost every respect. Without the help of Englishmen very little progress could as yet be made in anything which had to do with engineering or metal working industries; and Liévin Bauwens, for instance, started his machine spinning-mills with the help of five foremen whom he had virtually kidnapped from England, and whom he detained half with their consent and half by violence. As has been indicated before, however, it was almost inevitable that the blows of the Continental decrees against everything living or dead which bore the name of English should have a restraining effect on the spread of English ideas and the removal of English mechanics or inventors to the Continent; and, indeed, Mollien said somewhat bitingly, in connexion with his general criticism of the new industry, that the machinery was built by 'roving Englishmen who were not the best mechanics of their country'. Chaptal's complacent account of how, through his far-sightedness, machines were procured which were the best in Europe and were continually being developed by improvements from without and by native invention, must also be taken cum grano salis.

This appears best from what, in the main, is distinctive of the two great branches of industry that were revolutionized by the inventions of the immediately preceding generation (the textile and iron industries), namely, that France and the Continent in general were even at the time of Napoleon's fall far from being in a position to take up the new fundamental processes on which the industrial life of England had been based for quite a long time.