Cotton workers turned imported raw cotton into thread (spinners) and that was woven (weavers) firstly on handlooms and then on powerlooms.
India was the original home of cotton - dating from 1100 BC. Its use spread to Europe in the 9th or 10th century AD. Cotton was first imported into England in the 16th century.
In the 1700s many farmworkers became handloom weavers in their homes.
In 1769 there was an attempt to establish a weaving wage list, and wages were about 5s 6d to 7s a week, and from 1788 to 1803 wages for the total family rose to between 40s up to 100s a week (between £2 and £5).
After 1806, when factory systems developed, handloom weavers’ wages declined to 15s a week, and by 1834 to just 5s 6d.
Handloom weaving was replaced by powerloom weaving, invented and patented by Cartwright in the 1780s.
Lancashire was then the ideal location for spinning and weaving in England, with high humidity, a good supply of soft water, and the development of steam power. The damp climate made the cotton fibres less likely to snap during spinning.
By 1860 there were 265 cotton mills in Lancashire employing 440,000 people - producing half of the world’s cotton.
Then came the Cotton Famine, from 1861 to 1865, during the American Civil War, when the Union (in the north of the US) blockaded southern ports so exports of raw cotton from the US dried up, causing price increases and mass unemployment in areas such as Lancashire. Despite their hardship, in December 1862 a meeting of cotton workers in Manchester’s Free Trade Hall supported the Union in its fight against slavery.
By the end of the 19th century over half a million people in Lancashire were employed in the production of cotton goods.
The industry in Britain declined from the 1920s, when India developed its own mills.
Click here to find out more about trades unions in the cotton industry, including the Library's holdings.