The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

STATISTICS OF THE UNITED EIXGDOM. 457
States have made even greater progress, and Great Britain has thus relatively lost
ground. The English cotton-mills contain as many spindles and power-looms as
those of all the rest of the world comhined ; but owing to the powerful competition
which English manufactures have been compelled to meet, it has repeatedly
become necessary to work short time, or to stop work altogether. Continental
manufacturers produce certain kinds of goods of a superior quality, and they have
succeeded iu depriving England of some of her most profitable markets, whilst the
cotton industry of the United States, fostered by high protective duties, has taken
a considerable development. Americans are not only no longer compelled to go
to England for their cotton stuffs, but they have the audacity to send manufactures
of their own into Lancashire. Even India has begun to compete with England in
supplying her native population with cotton clothing.*
Whilst the cotton industry has its principal centres in Lancashire and the
adjoining parts of Yorkshire and Cheshire, and in Lanarkshire, the manufacture of
woollens is far more scattered. The "West Riding of Yorkshire enjoys, however, a
pre-eminence in the production of woollen cloth, worsted, and shoddy. The famous
West-of-Englaud cloths are manufactured in Wiltshire, whilst Newtown, in
Montgomeryshire, is the head-quarter of the Welsh flannel trade. Hawick and
Galashiels, on the Tweed, produce principally woollen hosiery. Li many parts of
the country, and especially in Scotland, wool spinning and knitting are largely
carried on as a domestic industry. The carpet manufiicture forms an important
branch of the woollen trade. It is principally carried on at Wilton, near
Salisbury ; Kidderminster ; Glasgow and Kilmarnock, in Scotland ; and to some
extent at Dewsbury and Leeds, in Yorkshire. In quantity the production of
the English woollen-mills far surpasses that of those of France, but not always in
quality.
The flax and linen trade, though carried on to some extent iu Scotland and
Yorkshire, is essentially one belonging to the north of Ireland, and Belfast
surpasses all other towns of the world in the quantity and quality of its linen.
Much of the flax consumed in the Irish linen-mills is produced in the country,
and the farmers of Ulster would come off badly if they had not their flax crop
to fall back upon. Dundee and Arbroath are the principal seats of the hemp
and jute manufacture, but nearly all the raw material required has to be imported
from Eussia, India, New Zealand, and other countries.
The silk trade depends for all its raw material upon foreign countries, and
for a considerable time past it has been in a depressed condition. It is princi-
pally carried on at Macclesfield and Congleton, in Cheshire, Derby, Nottingham,
Manchester, London, and a few other places. Silk-weaving is an old industry
in the districts of Spitalfields and Bethnal Green, in London, where it was first
introduced by French Huguenots.
* Kaw cotton imported, exported, and retained for home consumption :
Imported (lbs.). Exported (lbs.). Ketained (lbs.)
1868 . . . 1,328,761,616 322,713,3-28 1,006,048,288
1871 . . . 1,778,139,716 362,075,616 1,416,064,160
187.5 . . . 1,492,3.51,168 262,853,808 1,229,497,360
1879 . . . 1,469,358,404 188,201,888 1,281,156,576
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