iams must either be very innocent, or expect his readers to be.
He apparently has forgotten that the most important element in the price
of cotton yarn is the price of the raw cotton out of which the yarn is
spun. What the Lancashire spinner cares about is not the absolute price
of yarn or the absolute price of raw cotton, but the margin between the
two. If that be satisfactory his profit is secure. Therefore, the mere
statement that the prices of yarn have fallen so much in so many years,
by itself explains nothing. As a matter of fact the price of cotton yarn
has followed, and continues to follow, very closely the price of raw
cotton, the spinners' margin remaining fairly constant. It is useless to
go back to 1865, when the most careless economist might surely have
remembered that the American war made cotton dear, and machines were
less efficient than they now are. But I have taken the trouble to work
out for the last ten years, from figures kindly supplied by the
Manchester Chamber of Commerce, the average margin between the price of
a pound of standard yarn (32's twist) and a pound of standard cotton
(middling American). The result shows that while the spinners' margin
was slightly less in 1895 than in 1893, it stood at practically the same
figure as in 1892 and 1894, and was a good deal higher than it had been
in 1886. So that here again there is no real foundation for Mr.
Williams's statement.

THE DAYS OF BIG FORTUNES.

It is undoubtedly true that big fortunes are no longer made in the
cotton trade, or at any rate not so rapidly as in the days when cotton
spinners waxed fat on the labour of tiny children who had to be flogged
to keep them awake. It is also true that many joint-stock spinning
companies have paid no dividends, and that many have collapsed
altogether. But those who know anything of Lancashire know that a very
large number of these companies were not started in response to any real
increase in the demand for cotton goods, nor on account of any genuine
anticipation of such an increase. They were started, as a good many
companies are started in a county south of Lancashire, in order to put
money into the promoters' pockets. Having served that purpose they were
allowed quietly to collapse. Lancashire does not miss them. That the
cotton trade, as a whole, is in a healthy condition in spite of these
manoeuvres of the company-promoter will be seen from the figures relating
to cotton in the following ta