Lancashire Cotton Famine - Surat

Surat

Sea Island (also known as extra long staple), grown on the islands off the Carolina coast of America, was the best quality cotton; egyptian — the name given to Sea Island cotton that had been successfully introduced into Egypt — was the second best grade. The most common grades were the short staple American cottons which included Middling Orleans. It was these grades that were used by the majority of Lancashire's calico producers. The Surat cottons from India were the least suitable for machinery and were only ever used as a small percentage of a mixture as the fibres were short and broke easily. Surat came in smaller bales which contained stones and other impurities. Each town in Lancashire used different mixtures and when the supply of American and Sea Island Cotton dried up, the mill owners moved over to Surat. Some machines could be adjusted to take the Surat, but extra humidity was needed to reduce breakages. Running a loom on Surat could only produce about 40% of the previous throughput and, as workers were paid by the piece, their income was slashed.

Mill owners were also in difficulty as many of the smaller family-owned mills were heavily mortgaged. and if they stopped running the owners would fall behind with payments. Shopkeepers had no sales and could not afford the rents. Workers defaulted on their rents, and the landlord who stood the loss was often the millowner. The wealthier mill owners such as Henry Houldsworth, were confident that the famine was only temporary and were planning ahead for the new more efficient larger machinery that was becoming available, it was during the famine (1863–5) that he built Houldsworth Mill, Reddish, the first of the next generation of larger mills, and at the time the worlds largest mill with 138,000 spindles. But with most raw cotton unavailable, mill owners had to either close the mill and attempt to help the workers financially, use inferior cotton or bring new cotton into production. Surat was available but mainly used internally in British India. Some limited increase in production was achieved. Attempts were made to establish Sea Island in Queensland and New Zealand, and to grow short staple near Mumbai.