70 THE DECENTRALISATION 



the spindles.* It was thus losing ground while 

 the others were winning. And the fact is quite 

 natural : it might have been foreseen. There is 

 no reason why Britain should always be the great 

 cotton manufactory of the world, when raw 

 cotton has to be imported into this country as 

 elsewhere. It was quite natural that France, 

 Germany, Italy, Russia, India, Japan, the 

 United States, and even Mexico and Brazil, 

 should begin to spin their own yarns and to 

 weave their own cotton stuffs. But the appear- 

 ance of the cotton industry in a country, or, in 

 fact, of any textile industry, unavoidably becomes 

 the starting-point for the growth of a series of 

 other industries ; chemical and mechanical 

 works, metallurgy and mining feel at once the 

 impetus given by a new want. The whole of the 

 home industries, as also technical education 

 altogether, must improve in order to satisfy 

 that want as soon as it has been felt. 



* The International Federation of the Cotton Industry 

 employers gave, on March 1, 1909, the following numbers of 

 spindles in the different countries of the Old and New Worlds : 



United Kingdom . . 63,472,000 = 41 per cent. 



United States . . . 27,846,000 = 21 



Germany .... 9,881,000 = 8 



Russia 7,829,000 = 6 



France 6,750,000= 5 



British India . . . 5,756,000= 4 



Other nations . . . 19,262,000 = 15 



130,796,000 = 100 



