The Rise & Fall of King Cotton

The Lancashire Cotton Famine, also known as the Cotton Famine or the Cotton Panic (1861-65), was a depression in the textile industry of North West England, brought about by overproduction in a time of contracting world markets. It co-incided with the interruption of baled cotton imports caused by the American Civil War, and speculators buying up new stock, for storage in the shipping warehouses at the ports of entry. [1] The boom years of 1859 and 1860 had produced more woven cotton than could be sold and a cutback in production was needed. The situation was exacerbated by an overabundance of raw cotton held in the warehouses and dockyards of the ports and the market was flooded with finished goods, causing the price to collapse, while at the same time the demand for raw cotton fell. The price for raw cotton increased by several hundred percent due to blockade and lack of imports. The inaccessibility of raw cotton and the difficult trading conditions caused a change in the social circumstances of the Lancashire regions's extensive cotton mill workforce. Factories owners no longer bought large quantities of raw cotton to process and large parts of the Lancashire and the surrounding areas' workers became unemployed, and went from being the most prosperous workers in Britain to the most impoverished.