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character. With that view of its composition also I am in 
sympathy in another than my official capacity, because I 
happen to be a Member for a division in Lancashire, in the 
very heart of the spinning and weaving district of the cotton 
trade. There you may be sure that my friends and I look not 
so much to the nationality or to the origin of the cotton, as to 
its quality, its abundance and its price. Lancashire would like 
to see the whole world production of cotton greatly and 
rapidly increased so long as markets were available for the 
finished article of their manufacture; and we must always 
remember that cheapness of production invariably, or nearly 
invariably, carries with it or produces a corresponding increase 
in the demand and the consumption. We in Lancashire have 
suffered at times from scarcity of the raw material, which has 
been an experience common to the whole world, but we have 
also suffered and resented certain operations for cornering the 
supply, which have brought no profit to the producer and 
have sometimes produced destruction to the manufacturer. In 
times of scarcity in the past we have looked to other and to 
unaccustomed sources of supply, but strange varieties and 
qualities do not readily commend themselves to, or become 
immediately popular amongst, the masters or the operatives. 
I recall the often quoted story of the prayer of the old 
Lancashire spinner at the time of the American cotton famine 
of 1863: “‘O Lord, send us more cotton, but no more 
Surat.” Well, I daresay that the protective prayer of that 
spinner would be less fervent to-day because I believe that 
the quality, and especially the cleanliness, of Indian cotton has 
been greatly improved. But it is a mistake to think that you 
can grow any kind of cotton and be sure of finding a market 
for it immediately. 
I look with some alarm—if I shall not shock Mr. Sands in 
saying so—at a tendency, which I think is evident, of an 
endeavour to grow only, or mainly, the finer grades of long 
staple which naturally command the highest price where a 
market can be found. I am not, of course, surprised at the 
temptation when I saw at the Rubber Exhibition the other day 
a sample of Sea Island cotton grown in the Island of St. 
Vincent which had been sold at forty pence per pound, but 
you cannot compel the whole world to dress or to sleep in 
fine muslins and lace, and for the present, and probably for 
many years to come, the staple of this great industry is likely 
to remain in the future as in the past of a quality known as 
Middling Upland. There is no doubt that the trade in many 
parts of Lancashire is tending more and more towards the 
finer counts, and is consuming the products of Egypt and the 
Sudan and many of our Colonies and Protectorates, but we 
are bound to bear in mind the economic results of a decrease 
