98 COTTON IN EGYPT AND THE SUDAN. 



farther up the Nile Valley, spindles and looms were to be met with, 

 -working for domestic requirements. The necessary raw material 

 was not grown entirely in Egypt, but w r as partly imported from 

 Syria. The factories of Egypt supplied not only the domestic require- 

 ments, but exported also yarn and woven goods to Central Africa, 

 Tunis, Algiers, and the Christian countries of the Mediterranean Sea, 

 but none to Syria or Asia Minor, which made their own goods. 



It was Mohammed Ali's aim to introduce the modern factory- 

 industry into Egypt, on the basis of a States monopoly ; according 

 to this the trades concerned had to work solely for the State, which 

 supplied them with the raw material, and they had to furnish to 

 the government stores a fixed quantity of finished goods at a previ- 

 ously determined price, but this was always an extraordinarily low 

 one. 



A first silk-spinning mill was erected in Cairo in 1816, 

 with the help of workers from Florence, and this mill 

 was re-modelled, after the discovery of Jumel cotton, into a cotton- 

 spinning and weaving mill. Shortly after the second cotton-spinning 

 and weaving mill, called the " Malta " mill, was established in 

 Cairo-Bulak, under the management of Jumel himself. This mill 

 wove all kinds of cloth, from the coarsest to the very finest muslins, 

 and it was followed until 1830 by about 24 other mills, which had been 

 erected in the Delta and in Central and Upper Egypt, so that the 

 number of pieces of cotton goods delivered annually to the monopoly- 

 dep6t amounted to about two millions. Then Mohammed AH com- 

 menced to have even the necessary machinery made in Egypt, instead 

 of buying it from Europe, as at first ; the motive power was supplied 

 partly by steam engines and partly by oxen, and over 30,000 work- 

 men were engaged in the various modern factories. 



This artistically built-up industry, however, soon declined. The 

 fellah proved to be quite unsuitable for factory work, and the 

 monopoly system had the natural effect that all competition ceased, 

 the productions became continually worse, because the workers, who 

 never received a higher wage than the one fixed, had no stimulus ; 

 besides, the Government management proved to be incompetent, 

 corrupt, and costly, so that the imported English cotton goods, which 

 only paid 3 per cent, duty, came into Egypt at about 20 to 30 per 

 cent, less than the cost price of the Egyptian goods, and thus, even 

 before the death of Mohammed Ali, this monopoly-industry came to 

 ruin. 



The ancient hand-loom cotton industry, which had, meanwhile, 

 been oppressed by the State monopoly, however, never recovered 

 its former position, although it again gradually developed and the 

 Census of 1907 showed the number of weavers to be 39,000. These 

 are spread all over the more important places of Lower Egypt ; they 

 supply mainly the ordinary local consumption, and weave on their 

 hand-looms cheap yarn up to No. 40 's, which has mostly been 

 imported from abroad, three-quarters of it coming from England 

 and East India. The Egyptian cotton, generally spun by the village 

 spinners, comes principally from the very last picking, and is of quite 

 an inferior fibre. The cotton-weaving in Assiut and Girgeh 

 supply two kinds of Galabieh material for the gowns of the native 

 population, and in various places, for example, in Mehallet-el-Kebir, 



