CH ANGUS IN VALUES OF PRECIOUS METALS. i8i 



the official statistics of the trade between the two countries since 1873 

 (notoriously undervalued) fail to show that any serious interruption 

 has occurred ; the domestic exports from the United States to Mexico 

 having increased from $3,941,000 in 1873, to $11,089,000 in 1884; 

 while the exports from Mexico to the United States during the same 

 period increased from $4,276,000 to $9,016,000. 



In recent years there has been a notable increase in the cotton- 

 manufacturing industry of India — i. e., from fifteen factories, with 

 450,156 spindles and 4,972 looms in 1873, to seventy factories, with 

 1,698,000 spindles and 14,635 looms in 1884 ; and the cause of this in- 

 crease, which is enabling India to compete (as never before) with 

 Lancashire (England) in supplying cotton yarn and fabrics to the 

 Indian and other Eastern markets, and to the alleged serious detri- 

 ment of English interests, is popularly believed and asserted to have 

 been occasioned mainly by the decline and fluctuations in the price of 

 silver. The cross-examination of experts in the Anglo-Indian trade 

 by the British Gold and Silver Commission conclusively showed, how- 

 ever, that the prime cause of the increasing ability of India cotton- 

 manufacturers to compete successfully with those of England is to 

 be found in the advantages which accrue to the former from the 

 lower wages and longer factory-hours* of their employes. But the 

 existing differences as respects the condition of labor in England and 

 India have existed from time immemorial ; and the only novelty of 

 the present situation is, that now India, with railroads and factories, 

 and the advantage of cheap ocean freights, is emancipating herself 

 from chronic sluggishness and beginning to participate in the world's 

 progress ; and under English auspices, and largely with English capi- 

 tal, is, for the first time, extensively utilizing her cheap and abun- 

 dant labor in connection with labor-saving machinery. And it is to 

 be further noted that her progress in cotton manufacturing exhibited 

 itself unmistakably some years before the commencement of the de- 

 cline in silver ; that the first shipment of cotton yarns from India 

 to China, in competition with yarns of English make, was in 1866, 

 and that between 1865 and 1873 the increase in the number of cotton 

 spindles in India was in excess of 57 per cent. 



The belief is also very general that the decline in silver has ab- 

 normally stimulated exports from silvei'-using countries, to the great 

 detriment of the wheat-growers of the United States and Australia, 

 who offer their surplus in competition with the surplus of India upon 

 the European market. Nothing is easier than to get into a state of 

 mental confusion in respect to this matter, and, in fact, there seems 

 to be no assignable limit to the multiplication of words upon it. 



* The hours of labor in the factories of Bombay are reported at eighty per week in 

 comparison with fifty-six per week in England. The wages of skilled labor in Bombay, in 

 common with the wages of similar labor in cotmtries of the western hemisphere, arc re- 

 ported to have materially advanced in the recent years. 



