The Myth of the Corporate Economy: Great Britain's Cotton Textile Industry, 1900-1913

industry, for it has a unique place in the history of England's industhai revolution. Rostow gives it the ultimate accolade: "the original leading sector in the first take-off," and to Crafts and Harley, "the really big issue [in determining the rate of growth during the industrial revolution] is undoubtedly the weighting of cotton rather than the correct distribution of value added weights among the other sectors" [Rostow, 1990, p. 53; Crafts and Harley, 1992, p. 706]. Cotton overtook wool to become Britain's single most important source of income by 1810, and retained this position until the end of the nineteenth century. At its 1913 peak, the industry employed over half a million people and consumed over 2.1 billion pounds of raw cotton [Robson, 1957, pp. 331, 333; Deane and Cole, 1969, p. 163; Sandberg, 1981, p. 114; Mitchell and Deane, 1962, p. 186-8]. The industry's export performance was more remarkable still. It became the nation's biggest exporter during the Napoleonic Wars, a position it was to retain for 125 years; in 1830 it even exceeded all other exports combined [Deane and Cole, 1969, p. 31]. In 1880 over 80% of the world's cotton exports came from Britain, and mill owners boasted that they met the needs of the home market before breakfast and devoted the rest of the day to exports [Robson, 1957, p. 4; Aspin, 1981, p. 3]. At its peak in 1913, Britain exported over 7 billion yards of cloth, approximately equivalent to a shirt and pair of trousers for every man, woman, and child in the world [Sandberg, 1974, p. 4]. But 1918 saw the start of a decline that was to prove both long and unrelenting. By 1933 Japan had overtaken Britain to become the world's biggest exporter of cotton goods, although cotton was to remain Britain's biggest export until the outbreak of war [Aspin, 1981, p. 4]. In 1944 Keynes