"A KIND OF NATIVE DEMOCRACY." IN LANCASHIRE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 16 June 1945, Page 6

"A KIND OF NATIVE DEMOCRACY." IN LANCASHIRE

A LIKEABLE PEOPLE PROBLEMS OF THE COTTON INDUSTRY (By James Lansdale Hodson.)

London, May 29. I am writing in Blackpool, this key that winds up Lancashire for its slogging hard work. The Labour Party, which has just been holding its momentous • conference here, chose well. Lancashre and Blackpool have a kind of native democracy. They hail you as “Luv” on small acquaintance; they take it for granted that you will be glad to sit with the driver on the front if the horsed landau is over full; they are almost as good as the Americans in using your Christian name; they have a shrewd notion that what is good enough for the master is good enough for the men. You could not omit Lancashire from a study of the English scene and character. The Englishman of these parts may have Celt in him or Irish in him, and if you go back far enough, he may have Dane and Icelander, too (to say nothing of the othei’s in the range that makes up the English), But I suspect it is the Irish and Celt in him that helps to lend him that humour, that love of the stage and dancing (Blackpool claims to turn out m,ore dancing and show girls than any town in the country), that warmth which persuades him so often to wear his heart on his sleeve. NEIGHBOURS AND RIVALS He is softer in grain than his neighbour the Yorkshireman—and a rival not only in cricket—more easygoing, more given to producing eccentrics both in finance and lavish business (witness James White, the bricklayer, who eventually ran Daly’s The_ atre and signed cheques in six-figure sums with a gold fountain pen—he committed suicide in the end). But the root of the matter is in the Lancashireman—and a vast amount of imagination. Perhaps it is no accident that the Rochdale pioneers were among the first of our co-opera-tors, that the National Union of Journalists was born in Manchester, that this same city, has been distinguished by its Halle Orchestra, its Horniman Repertory Theatre and its journal, the ‘‘Manchester Guardian.” As for work and business—why, before World War I. Lancashire’s cotton exports amounted, in sterling, to 60 per cent, of the National total exports. So you can not leave out Lancashire. And in leaving it out of the English scene you must not in honesty, leave out either that whereas Lancashire “Lets herself go,” both in working and holiday-making, her abandon can, on occasion, be reckless and void of wisdom as it was in the ‘‘boom” that followed the last war when th e cotton mills were described as being bought and sold “like bottles of beer.” Quite a number of men climbed a fairy-tale beanstalk to affluence, stayed poised aloft only till the stalk broke and flung them harshly back to earth. Of course, Lancashire was not the only place with its boom and slump; the world itself was engaged in traffic pf that sort, but I doubt if any other place staged them both with more drama and heartbreak. However, Lancashire, which can laugh so uproariously, can grin and abide also. She has done a lot of that in her time and grown expert in it; the ups and downs of the cotton trade have been a hard school from which to learn philosophy. Her practitioners in this trade, both employers and workpeople, to-day need all the remaining stores of philosophy, vision and enterprise that they can summon. For the cotton trade (if one may speak of it as an entity in this way) has received and is trying to adjust itself to the dynamic administered by its own group of employers and trade-unionists who, after visiting the United States, found much of Lancashire’s textile machinery and many of her methods antiquated. I had known myself that some of the Lancashire looms were fifty years old, that some of her employers had never been able to keep their own price agreements and that others were too given to both “making do” and telling customers to like it or lump it. But on the other hand I knew that her operatives wei'e probably the world’s best: that her fine goods spun from Eyptian cotton were not excelled—and rarely equalled—in any country; that some at all events of her firms were as enlightened in every way as a man could wish. GRANDMOTHERS AS WEAVERS So that it was not less than astonishing to learn that production per man hour in Lancashii'e is less than that of America by 18 to 49 per cent, in spinning and 56 to 67 per cent, in weaving and that whereas Lancashire has but 5 per cent, of her looms which are automatic the United States’ similar percentage is 95. Some folk have argued that nevertheless Lancashire’s production costs are lower than America’s and that in facing the export market this is an important point in Lancashire’s favour. But no impartial observer can pretend that Lancashire’s cotton trade does not need a thorough overhaul. For renewal of existing machinery alone it has been computed that £60.000,000 ought to be

spent. But a shortage of manpower and of materials make those renewals extremely difficult and as yet not much progress in that direction has been made. There is a small proportion of Lancashire weavers to-day, however, controlling six, eight or ten ordinary looms and from sixteen to thirty automatic looms. (The figure is 15,000 automatic looms out of 463.000 looms). The operatives, I am assured by a Trade Union leader, now realise that more automatic machinery is inevitable and are very willing to co-oper-ate provided it is the machinery that is exploited and not human beings. The difficult task is to deploy the existing labour over reouired amount of machinery and to expand out export trade. The size of this problem is discernible from a few figures; during the war, men and women wore encouraged, nay forced, to leave the cotton mills to work on other munitions of war. In 19*19 the cotton workers numbered °64 000. To-day. they are but 171 000. On the weaving and manufacturing side, out of 91.000 workers 80 per cent, are women and coven-tenths of those women (say 50 000), are married and of an average age of 53 or 54 years. What a remarkable fact that is! Seven-tenths of the weaving is done by women old enough to be grandmothers. Those women the industry will shortly lose. ■lf we are to get back to the 1939 production the industry will want a further 120.000 operatives; if exports are to go up by 50 per cent, (the target spoken of for our exports generally) we shall want 180 000 workers more than we have to-day. INCREASING ATTRACTION Can we get them? Can the cotton trade be made attractive enough? Although have risen by 8 per cent, dui'ing the war they are still not high. My Trade Union leader gives the following figures: The average sum earned in weaving on ordinary I looms is sixty to seventy shillings a ! week for men or women (with a I further seven shillings corfting in I June). Those driving automatic ! looms eai'n from £6 to £6 10s a week. Men doing mule spinning earn, on an average, £5 10s to £7 10s and men and women in the cardroom earn from sixty shillings to seventy-two shillings weekly. It is easy to understand \yhy men and women who left the industry for other sorts of woi'k in other towns are not anxious to return. To raise the attractiveness t of the mills four committees are now studying (a) spacing of machinery; (b) welfare, canteens and decollation: (c) reduction of noise—which is often so great that you cannot hear what is said to you; (d) overcoming the problem of oil that causes spinners’ cancer. In the past five years 500 men a year out of 12,000 have become victims to this disease. That is one range of the woi'k being done. Another branch concerns experiments with new methods. The Wye Mill at Shaw is to be devoted to testing the latest spinning methods either American or British, and whatever is achieved will be available to the whole industry. Several mills are to be turned into training schools giving three months’ courses—the first of them at Oldham —and it is hoped that other mills will develop their own schools of ti'aining. A number of firms, indeed, have already got excellent educational and welfare schemes for young people entering the industry. There is fashionable talk of four or five-year plans for various things and there is talk of such a plan for the cotton industry. A„good deal of heart searching h?.3 gone on in the past months an{i still goes on following a l'eport of the cotton mission to Amei'ica. You can find men who believe the world scarcity of cotton goods is so great that surely a living can be earned on existing machinery and methods without any di'astic overhaul; there are othei's who rightly see that the cotton industi'y is an integral part of the nation’s industrial set-up and that nothing short of its re-equipment and re-organisation will enable it to perform its job. j FOUNDATIONS OF FAITH ! I have enough faith in Lancashii’e ! to believe that these are the majority. | Once their minds are set in the right i direction and their imaginations ! working no body of people in this ! country is more able or more efficient. It is Manchester that, built the Lancaster the world’s finest bomber. It is Liverpool, which, in this war, re- ’ covered her position as a prince among our ports when London was shut. It is Manchester which has won a new reputation as the centre of engineering. It is Lancashire which hag given the Labour Party at this moment its chairman and vicechairman. It is this town of Blackpool which, for all its lack of beauty, i can take to its warm heart half a million visitors and entertain them with great efficiency in eitner fair weather or foul. At this moment, the Lancashire folk need all their traditional grit and boldness and capacity for hard work. I cannot think they will fail.