The workers went on strike. Lancashire, which had imported three quarters of all cotton grown on southern plantations (1.3 billion lbs), found that 60% of it spindles and looms lay … Lancashire was gripped by the cotton famine. The strike was associated with the Chartist movement but eventually proved unsuccessful in its aims. 1, September 1971. The region’s mills were shuttered and thousands lost their jobs across the country. The New York Times Archives. In the first half of the 19th Century, wages fluctuated a great deal bringing unrest from the workforce. Wage Increase. In 1853 cotton workers in Lancashire began to demand that the 10-20% cut from their wages during the 1840s was restored. ; Lancashire Workers Get 48-Hour Week and 30 P.C. The majority of manufacturers agreed to restore half of the cuts, but some, including Horrocks, Miller and Company refused. Between September - November, over £58,000 were collected at union meetings, football matches and by … In some Lancashire cotton towns, unemployment due to the absence of raw cotton was extreme. COTTON STRIKE ENDS. In 1818, attempts to fix a minimum wage for textile workers failed and there was a strike of handloom weavers. See the … Strikes and Riots. In the early 1860s the Lancashire cotton famine badly affected Accrington, although less so than the wider area due to its more diverse economy, with as many as half of the town's mill employees out of work at one time. Times were so tough that the period came to be known as the 'cotton famine'. Popular violence in the North Lancashire Cotton Strike of 1878", Victorian Studies Vol. 28, No. The Lancashire cotton industry was already experiencing problems of overproduction, but the banning of exports by the Confederate states followed by the blockading of the southern ports by the northern states created a crisis that was a painful reminder of just how much its economy depended on American cotton. The Co-op, anti-slavery and the Lancashire cotton famine ... is a strong historical continuity between Chartism the development of trade unions and the roots of co-operation in the strike committees formed in the 1840s to help members of artisan traders during industrial disputes. Following an appeal made at the 1932 TUC Congress by the Amalgamated Weavers Association for support for the Lancashire Cotton Strike, the TUC established a Cotton Fund. 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