Cotton famine.

Must put this on before I forget - was flicking through a book I have (it has no index) "Cotton Mills of Preston, The Power behind the Thread by T.C. Dickinson 2002". page 47 It is a book all about the different steam engines used in the cotton mills.
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Further along Rigby Street at its junction with Cemetery Road was Albert Mill, a manufactory which had been established in the second half of the 1850s, and listed in the 1857 Directory for Wilcockson, Swarbrick & Jesper at Ribbleton Lane. Following several changes in ownership the mill was under the Barnacre Weaving Co. Ltd in 1898.
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In the 1861 census John Wilcockson was listed as cotton mill manufacturer, I wonder if it was this one ?
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One of the social history events I am interested in is the "Cotton famine". In other branches I have cotton workers, but the Wilcocksons must also have been effected. In 1861 William Dilworth (mother Ann Wilcockson) was a shopman and John Wilcockson was the cotton manufacturer by 1871 William was a farmer and John had moved to Lytham as a coal agent. Did they lose a lot of money due to the cotton crisis? Or another theory, that Preston as an industrial town was not a pleasant place to live? Or another theory the Quakers were against slavery perhaps John decided to get out of the cotton trade on principle.
I have not studied the issue in detail. Just picking up little bits and pieces.
The following taken from "The Lancashire Cotton Famine around Leigh by Fred Holcroft 2003" "Between 1861 and 1865 an economic and social catastrophe, not of its own making, struck Lancashire, where over four-fifths of the British cotton manufacturing industry was concentrated. Weekly, the Lancashire mills consumed 48,000 bales of cotton, each weighing 400 lbs, of which 41,000 bales were sent from the southern states of the U.S.A. where the cotton had been grown on plantations worked by Negro slaves.
For years the abolitionists in the northern states had campaigned for the removal of slavery, and with the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in November 1860, several southern states felt threatened, so they left (seceded) to form their own government, the Confederate States of America. The American Civil War was fought to bring the southern states back into the fold. As part of their strategy, the northern forces blockaded the southern ports, in order to stop the exports of raw cotton, which were being used to pay for imports of munitions and other war equipment. This created raw material shortages in the cotton manufacturing industry, which became known as the 'Cotton Famine'.
Throughout 1861 the Lancashire cotton mills ran down the stocks of raw cotton, which had been built up during the recent boom years, until they were gradually used up. The cotton mills were forced to begin short-time working and eventually stopped altogether, causing widespread unemployment, 'distress' as it was called in the newspapers, in a county where cotton manufacturing was the largest employer of labour, and 300,000 people were engaged making cotton goods.
The social consequences for Lancashire were massive : loss of earnings, savings and belongings, and an unprecedented strain on the social security system of that time. Its effects were felt in every Lancashire town."
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T.C. Dickinson in his book " Cotton Mills of Preston" writes on the issue.
"The decade of the 1860s are remembered for the appalling effects the American Civil War of 1861-65 had on the Lancashire cotton industry, in particular on the livelihoods of its operatives. When Abraham Lincoln became President of the United States in 1860, the southern states began to see their economic standing increasingly subordinated to that of the north, and although the enslavement of Africans on the southern cotton plantations gave the impeding war a moral issue, it was never at the root of it. As war commenced, a blockade of cotton shipments had an immediate effect on the Lancashire industry but contrary to popular belief the crisis in Lancashire was not entirely due to a shortage in cotton.
In 1860 over three quarters of Lancahire's cotton had arrived from the southern states, and in the previous year more cotton had been produced than was needed. Lancashire manufacturers took advantage of this cheap and plentiful supply as well as a large demand for cotton goods from the Far East by working their mills at high pressure to enjoy two years of almost unexampled prosperity.
By May 1860 the overseas demand had been met and a large supply of cotton goods accumulated, which would have led to loss of profits if the high rate of production had gone on. Many mill owners found themselves weakened by over-extension and in need of working capital, and in one respect the Cotton Famine was to benefit a good many Lancashire manufacturers in that by the autumn of 1862 and the spring of 1863, when cotton goods were in demand, they were able to sell off their stocks at much higher prices than normal. These gains help to explain why bankers showed confidence in the cotton industry about this time, and why during 1863 the construction of mills previously contracted for had been resumed."
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I am dismayed at my education. I knew more about the plight of the Slaves until finding out more about the Lancashire cotton industry - that at the same time cotton mill operatives over here were just as much put upon. Having visited a mill where the machines were in action I do not know how they stood the noise for a start off, then when you see the young children in the census as working in the mills you weep for their lost childhood, then when you read about the living conditions you get mad, no security ........then so much suffering during the cotton famine and then there is a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Manchester because of the support given him in his battle against slavery. How manipulated are we? (This family history can be very painful at times.)