170 REPORT—1858, 
to the world’s population 3s. worth each of cotton clothing, or, represented in calico, 
fourteen yards per annum for every man, woman, and child in existence. Presuming 
the cotton industry of this country to amount to sixty-four millions in value for the 
current year, and the cost of the raw material to be twenty-four millions, then the sum 
remaining for wages, interest of capital, rent, taxes, fuel, freight, carriage, and other 
requisites, would be forty millions, The population employed in this trade exceeds 
half a million, and, as every worker is said to be connected in his family with three 
non-workers, who depend upon the single worker for subsistence, two millions of peo- 
ple are therefore supported by it. Engineers, founders, machine-makers, and other 
auxiliary traders employ vast numbers of well-paid workmen, who are constantly en- 
gaged and sustained at the cost of the capital invested in the constructive department 
of the cotton trade; hence these further sources of support increase the total number 
of people dependent upon this extraordinary industry. Viewing Lancashire as the 
chief seat of this industry, if we refer to its population a hundred years ago, we 
find it to have been about 300,000, whilst now it was 2,300,000, making an increase 
greatly in excess of any of the old trading and agricultural communities of this or any 
other country. After noticing the numerous other places in different counties of Eng- 
land and Scotland in which the manufacture of cotton has become the great support 
of labour, Mr. Bazley proceeded to discuss the question of increasing the supplies of 
the foreign raw material, and urged the importance of opening up new fields for its 
cultivation, Africa and Asia could grow more cotton than the most sanguine could 
contemplate the demand of the whole world would ever require; and to extend its 
production in those two quarters of the globe would be at the same time to extend 
civilization and to diffuse the comforts of life. Workpeople, manufacturers, merchants, 
statesmen, and philanthropists had all the deepest interest in this vital question, 
which hitherto had been shrouded in almost fatal apathy. At home and abroad the 
wonder was that the British East and West Indies had not supplied the largest por- 
tion of the cotton needed in this country. For much of the unproductiveness of those 
portions of the British empire misgovernment was responsible. Roused, however, by 
the salutary influences of public opinion, the legislature of our country had given to 
the East Indies a new existence. No intermediate spoiler would hereafter prevent 
the queen and a direct executive from developing the resources of India. An en- 
lightened and just policy applied to every British colony would yield the benefits of 
an extended commerce, blessing, like charity, those who gave and those who received. 
Notes on Self-supporting Dispensaries, with some Statistics of the Coventry 
Provident Dispensary. By Cuarves H. BRAcCEBRIDGE, 
The statistics of the self-supporting Dispensary at Coventry are offered to this 
Section as an example of those institutions projected by Mr. H. L, Smith, of Southam, 
Warwickshire, which, when supported by a sufficient number of members, have been 
successful. ‘The statistics of that at Northampton are fully as favourable, though not 
carried over so long a period; this latter having been instituted in 1845, and the for- 
mer in 1831*, The queen’s visit to Warwick gave occasion to the formation of a 
Central Society for the promulgation of the principle, to whom application might be 
made for information as to rules, books, and other details, by the possession of which 
the founders might proceed safely, and without danger of failing in their objects, pro- 
* The following are the statistics for 1857 of the Dispensaries at Coventry and North- 
ampton :— 
Paid to | Paid by 
Place, | Members| atrended,| Cases.” | Drugs. | Medical | Pree 
pr len So AG ea eIO NT dot ee & 
w"ounded 1682)...f| 4500 | 2927 | 48 | 251 | an” | 7a 
Nefownded 1843).,, }) S420t | 14960 | 222- | 166 578 | 761 
+ In 1851. 
