Other | |
| | Kingdom.| Europe. | States.|Countries.| Total. |
+--------+---------+---------+--------+----------+--------+
| 1870 | 37.7 | 13 | 7.1 | .. | 57.8 |
| 1880 | 44.5 | 21 | 10.6 | 2 | 78.1 |
| 1890 | 44.5 | 26 | 14.2 | 4 | 88.7 |
| 1900 | 46.2 | 32 | 19 | 7 | 104.2 |
| 1903 | 47.9 | 33 | 22.2 | 7.5 | 110.6 |
+--------+---------+---------+--------+----------+--------+

_Average Annual Consumption of Cotton in the Period 1831-1835._

Millions of lb.
United Kingdom 295
Continent of Europe 143
United States 79

_Average Annual Consumption of Cotton in the Period 1900-1905._

Millions of lb.
United Kingdom 1634
Continent of Europe 2486
United States 1995

Roughly the consumption of cotton per spindle in the three areas to-day
is, in lb., 35 for the United Kingdom, 70 for the continent, and 95 for
the United States.

Before the cotton industry in other countries is described it will be
necessary to explain how it could have developed there on a large scale
at all. Of course this growth is to be accounted for very largely by the
natural protection of cost of transport aided by tariffs. But it would
be a mistake for Englishmen to imagine that all foreign cotton mills are
the product of a forcing culture, and that if the favourable conditions
created by import duties were removed they would totally disappear. No
doubt some of the growth is artificial, but much is natural and would
have taken place under universal free trade conditions. Much of it,
indeed, would have appeared in these circumstances even were cost of
production a negligible quantity, difficult though it may be at first to
reconcile this statement with certain ordinary conceptions of the
operations of the law of increasing returns. Lancashire secured an
immense lead at the beginning of the 19th century, and if the cost of
production may be represented as varying inversely as the magnitude of
the industry, every addition to her success increased her advantages.
How could the small industry, with a high cost of production because it
was small, compete with Lancashire? The answer is to be found in the
peculiar conditio