Short Time in Lancashire

On the carefully whitened doorstep of a tiny terrace home in the Lancashire cotton city of Bolton (pop. 200,000), a milkman set down three pint bottles. "They usually take four," he said, "but with one or two of them on short time, they're down to two or three." At the grocery store down the street, Bolton housewives were no longer buying their full egg ration (one per week). A big bakery, supplying Bolton's suburbs, cut its daily bake by 1,000 loaves.

Spinner Harry Jackson, waiting for work in a Bolton mill, explained how it happened to him. "My wife works in the mill. Now she's on short time. Last week we were earning together nearly -L-18 ($50.58); now, only four or five." In grim, workaday Bolton, where a third of the population depends on the mills, there were thousands of Harry Jacksons. In crowded Lancashire, there were 70,000 wholly or partly unemployed.

Next week there will be more.

Lancashire is a sensitive barometer to the world's economic storms. Textile retailers have not yet unloaded the huge stocks they built up when the Korean war began. And British Commonwealth countries, seeking solvency, have slashed all imports, including Lancashire cloth. To relieve unemployment, the British gov ernment did what little it could. Heavier orders for military uniforms and blankets would be placed in Lancashire mills. Imports of foreign grey (i.e., unfinished) cloth would be banned forthwith. Non-textile firms would be asked to settle in Lancashire so that whole families and cities would not slump together when the cotton mills close.

Yet, in the long run, Lancashire faces permanent decline. Its fine cloth, which once clothed half of Asia, can no longer compete in price with Japanese and Indian cloth spun by cheaper labor. The world's younger nations, e.g., Argentina and Pakistan, have built their own mills, and buy less and less from Britain. Short time in Bolton will never be far away.

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