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 A Letter to the 'Manchester Guardian,' July 25th, 1903.

,—I ask your permission to make a few observations on the resolution passed yesterday at the Joint Conference of the Cotton Employers' Parliamentary Association and the United Textile Factory Operatives' Association. The Conference was 'convinced that the great cotton industry of the United Kingdom owes its pre-eminence to and can only be maintained by the policy of Free Trade,' and pledged itself 'to oppose any proposals which, by imposing taxes on food or raw materials, and so raising the cost of production and living, will cripple it in its severe struggle to uphold its position in foreign markets.'

The present depression in the cotton trade, and the fact that the mills have had to work short time, is mainly due to a shortage in the supply of raw cotton, to some extent perhaps to speculation. It has been foreseen for some time that the development of the cotton manufacturing industry in the immediate neighbourhood of the cotton plantations of the Southern States of the Union, where an unlimited supply of black labour is available, might produce the conditions 143