The Cotton Industry

by Chris Aspin

Cotton was Britain's largest industry for more than a century and its principal source of wealth during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. This book tells the story of the cotton industry from its spectacular growth during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to its devasting decline in the twentieth century. The impact of the British cotton trade was enormous. Goods mass-produced in busy factories undercut all competition, and the industry became the first to make the whole world its market. Cotton inaugurated a new way of life for the thousands who flocked to the mill towns of Lancashire, and there the world's first industrial society produced a remarkably wide range of social, religious and political movements. The development of the processes used to transform raw cotton into finished goods is also well illustrated.

32 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1997

Reviews

[Adrian Buck]

Succint pamphlet on "Britain's greatest - and in retrospect, most unlikely - industry". Perhaps not so unlikely if he had considered the skills long developed in the British wool trade, that were transferred to cotton production. At least that was the origin of my own family's adventure in cotton. For a while 'Bucks' in Carlisle were weaving wool and cotton alongside each other. My great-grandfather moved to Manchester in time for the gold rush between 1900-1914, but he had already moved up the value chain into garment manufacture - no covered in this book, which stops at 'finishing the cloth'. My grandfather advised his sons to look elsewhere for future employment, and Bukta passed out of family control in 1982. My father's cousin, Christopher, who had been marketing director, committed suicide as a result. Clogs to clogs.

Perhaps a little too succint, and could have benefitted from a glossary. Excellently illustrations throughout, using both enginneering drawings and political cartoons, but mostly black and white photography.

[Deborah Siddoway]

A rather nifty little pamphlet with enough information to cover the history of the cotton industry within the industrial North. The accompanying images were particularly adept at helping you to visualise the processes.