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price with Japanese and Indian cloth, spun by cheaper labor
on machines that, more often than not, were built in Lancashire. Cheap
Indian cloth is even flooding into Britain itself: 16 million yards in
1953, 130 million in 1954. Lancashire men complain, with some justice,
that the countries which put up barriers against its textile industry
are allowed to flood the British market. Their critics reply, with
justice, that hidebound Lancashire has allowed its methods and machinery
to become obsolete.
"The solution, if there is one," wrote the London Economist, lies "in
vigorous innovation and specialization rather than in trying to cling
to the cheaper end of the trade." Another, more lasting solution is
being worked out by Lancastrians themselves. Convinced that their
textile mills are moribund, many weavers are quitting their looms and
looking for other jobs. The transition is apt to be painful, but tens
of thousands of ex-cotton workers are now making Canberra bombers,
cathode ray tubes, heavy tanks, soap and TV sets in scores of modern
new plants mushrooming in South Lancashire. Already, engineering (with
500,000 employed) has overtaken textiles (400,000) as Lancashire's No. 1
industry.
"I remember when there was nothing but cotton from one end of town to
the other," said Charlie Shackleton, one of Padiham's weavers. "Now
look at it."
Where it once finished muslins and poplins, Padiham now boasts a fine
big washing-machine plant, is building a huge radio factory that will
soon employ 3,000 men. "My 15-year-old son," says Charlie, "will be the
first Shackleton in four generations who won't be in weaving. He's
going into engineering. He'll have a good future too."
* Lancashire's stocks of raw cotton were lower last month than
they have been at any time since the U.S. Civil War (when Lancashire
cotton workers sent addresses of encouragement to President Lincoln and
sometimes starved rather than use the "slave cotton" which British
merchants were trying to import from the blockaded Southern states).
