Textile Industry PDF

Big emerging-market economies like Brazil and Thailand have learned that it is better, if you are going to take money from foreign lenders, to borrow from them only in your own currency. In a crisis, that may still leave the value of your currency in danger—as foreign investors sell out their stakes...

Big emerging-market economies like Brazil and Thailand have learned that it is better, if you are going to take money from foreign lenders, to borrow from them only in your own currency. In a crisis, that may still leave the value of your currency in danger—as foreign investors sell out their stakes, you will likely suffer a devaluation—but at least part of the risk is then borne by the lender, and you can at least ensure you have enough local funds to service the debts The United States, United Kingdom, and European Union agreed at last year's United Nations climate conference to provide financial support to South Africa in the financial restructuring of Eskom, its ailing power utility. This was both an energy transition strategy and a way of relieving the pressure on the South African government account arising from its implicit responsibility for Eskom's debts. What 2022 has revealed is that the dollar system has the resilience and strength that it does because it is deeply entrenched and buttressed by both commercial and geopolitical interests Wall Street Consensus (Daniela Gabor): Highlights the role of investment bankers, fund managers, and their client borrowers in maintaining the dollar-based global financial network. In major crises this system becomes an overt public-private partnership secured from the top down by the liquidity swap lines extended by the Fed to the major central banks of Europe, Latin America, and Asia. In general, a strong U.S. economy promotes growth and secures the prosperity of American capital and the centrality of U.S. equity markets to global capital accumulation. It also, however, requires a tighter stance from U.S. monetary policy. Right now, it is the latter point that is critical. How severe the tension in the global economy becomes over the coming months will depend above all on how far the Fed's tightening goes, and that depends on how rapidly American inflation cools down. LECTURE 9. THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY. “The cotton business chases cheap”. The T-shirt represents many aspects of cotton’s history. It is universal, almost all of us own one. They are usually inexpensive and the ethics of its manufacture can be controversial. Early Cotton: Archeology and early history show cotton has grown and been used by people in both South and Central America since perhaps as early as 5000 B.C.E. 3000 B.C.E. It is grown and spun in both the Indus river valleys. In early Egypt they knew of cotton, but clothing made of linen was the norm. The spread of cotton to Europe: Europe and early Greece used clothing made of wool. Like silk, cotton made its way west through trade and war. Herodotus, an early Greek historian described cotton as “a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that of sheep”. Alexander the Great invaded India to conquer, and his men found the cotton clothes of the conquered more comfortable than their own. They took things and a lot of what they took was cotton. They made their way back to Europe with all the benefits of the conquest and that fabric, then trade became a factor. By the middle ages cotton is in Europe: Muslim traders and later conquerors spread spinning and cotton use to Spain and Sicily. They brought the technology to spin cotton and create cotton fabric. It spread into Europe later. Columbus finds cotton in the Bahamas, which the natives are using for clothing and he is impressed by the colors. So he steals some and takes it back with him. By 1500, Cotton became more common in Europe. For the most part it was inexpensive. Begins to be grown in America: By the early 1610s cotton was being grown in Virginia. The Spanish had it grown in Florida even earlier. The slave economy in Virginia already existed with Tobacco expanded. To produce cotton and process it you require a large inexpensive workforce, so it means that the British in Virginia and eventually up and down the eastern seaboard introduced an extensive program of slavery. India is a major source of supply: For the most part India remained the major source of supply of cotton. It had a fully developed industry and the cotton grew well there. The secret of dying cotton: how to dye it, how to process it, etc. They supplied most of Europe in exchange for gold. In the 1600s and early 1700s India was the source of 95% of British cotton. Supply is limited by price and limited technology. Production is limited by cost, cost is always a limitation but it is also limited by technology, and technology changes the thing. BEIC and Cotton: The British East India Company began to import cotton in the 1690s. Calico, a brightly coloured version, became very popular. Wool and linen makers tried at all times successfully to keep it out. As the BEIC grew in power it was able to sell cotton back into India after processing it in England. The advent of colonial cotton in America and the Caribbean also led to an expansion of English cotton use and production. RESTRICTIONS: Cotton production was limited by a number of factors: Cotton had to be combed to remove the seeds or it went bad. Cotton needed to be spun into thread in order to be turned into cloth. Thread needed to be loomed to create the cotton fabric. All of these relied on manual labor or rudimentary technology. Industrialism changes everything: The Spinning Jenny: Spinning had been a “craft” taking a place on a wheel in workers' homes. Cotton was spun into thread. In 1764 James Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny, which could do 8 spindles at once. Thread was still a bit weak, but it was improving. Richard Akrwright: Richard Arkwright improved upon the concept of the spinning Jenny with his invention of the water frame in 1769. Arkwright added a water powered system which made a much stronger thread. This was required if industrial production was to be possible. One person could do the work of many. Suddenly all of the employment that was required to create cotton thread to fabric was gone and replaced by machines. In 1768, an angry mob destroyed Arkwright’s factory. The power loom: Reverend Edmund Cartwright patented the power loom in 1785, which was improved over the following years to allow faster weaving of more thread. By 1800, the introduction of steam power at each stage made massive productivity possible. The need for more cotton and the restriction created by the need to “comb” the cotton meant only slow increases in yield, even in the new American fields. The solution would be the cotton gin. Patented by Eli Whitney. Created a solution and was able to make people’s hours of work in only a few minutes. Results of the First Industrial Revolution in England: The first Industrial Revolution in England increased production levels. The cotton cloth output was 21 million yards in 1796. 347 million yards of cotton in 1830. This allowed Britain to dominate the world cotton industry for decades. In 1770, the cotton industry was worth around $600,000. By 1805, it had grown to $10,500,000 and by 1870, $38,800,000. By comparison, over the same hundred years, wool had increased in value from $7,000,000 to $25,400,000 and silk from $1,000,000 to $8,000,000. In Manchester alone, the number of cotton mills rose dramatically in a very short space of time: from 2 in 1790 to 66 in 1821. The work force: In England, children and women were prime sources of labor. It was inexpensive and compliant. The 1833 Factory Act banned children from working in textile factories under the age of nine. From nine to thirteen they were limited to nine hours a day and 48 hours a week. By the time you were fourteen, you were considered an adult. Regulations only work if you enforce them. Conclusion: Cotton facilitated the transition of England into the first industrial power. English technology allowed them to mass produce cotton fabric and gave them global control of this commodity. That strength allowed them to dominate the economies of countries like India. It created a powerful industrial economy and an expanded middle class, but at the expense of horrible working conditions for women and children. Also sustaining their economy by globalization of slavery and production of raw materials America gets into the cotton business: Throughout the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth, American industrial spies roamed the British Isles, seeking not just new machines, but skilled workers who could run and maintain those machines. Francis Cabot Lowell talked his way into a number of British mills and memorized the plans for the Cartwright power loom. When he returned home, he built his own version of the loom and became the most successful industrialist of his time. He was only ever known by his name. Lowell’s Mill Girls: Lowell, Massachusetts, named in honor of Francis Cabot Lowell, was founded in the early 1820s as a planned town for the manufacture of textiles. By 1840, the factories in Lowell employed some estimates of more than 8,000 textile workers, commonly known as mill girls or factory girls. These “operatives” so-called because they operated the looms and other machinery–were primarily women and children from farming backgrounds. The decline at Lowell: In the 1830s, cloth prices dropped and wages were cut and hours were extended. After Lowell sells this trend continues. On three occasions the girls went on strike until in 1845, Massachusetts passed laws to help them, which were largely ignored. A wave of poor Irish immigrants replaced the more independent girls in the late 1840s and 1850s. King Cotton: By the 1850s, Cotton accounted for more than 50% of the U.S. exports. By the late 1850s, cotton grown in the United states accounted for 77% of the 800 million pounds of cotton consumed in Britain. It also accounted for 90% of the 192 million pounds used in France, 60% of the 115 million pounds spun in the Zollverein and 92% of the 102 million pounds manufactured in Russia. U.S. Civil War: “Slavery stood at the center of the most dynamic and far-reaching production complex in human history”. Sven Beckert. It was thought essential in the south but many in the north and elsewhere were troubled by both the ethical problem and the instability of slave systems. Civil War: 1861 - 1865 Aside from the implications for north and south, it also created chaos in the world cotton market. Most of the world’s cotton came out of the U.S. and now because of the trade restrictions imposed by the North, they blocked the south to try and prevent cotton from being exported to give the south money. Lost access to American cotton caused England to look to India and the Middle East. Put a real shock to the global economy. Similarly, the same thing happened to feed the appetite for raw cotton. The consequences in India were devastating, famine based upon the loss of food production to replace cotton. Led to some sympathy for the south in England and friction between the North and England. After the Civil War, some friction remained and damaged the relations between the United States and Canada and the United States and England. End of the war: As the war comes to an end, the South loses and slavery ends, meaning that there has to be new ways to replace cotton. Sharecropping replaced slavery. New sources in other parts of the world became important. Emphasized and increased global reach of the industry, even when the American cotton returned to the market. The reason cotton clothing is so cheap is that you can hire people and pay them very little to manufacture clothes. Triangle to Rana Plaza: On March 25, 1911 a fire destroyed the factory of “Triangle Shirtwaist” in New York, U.S.  The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, 123 women and 23 men who died from the fire, smoke inhalation or falling or jumping to their deaths. The oldest victim was Providenza Panano at 43, the youngest were 14 years old, Kate Leone and “Sara” Rosario Maltese. The two guys who owned the factory were afraid of women taking unauthorized breaks or stealing fabric to take home, so when the women went into work they would padlock all of the doors including the fire escapes to keep them in, so they wouldn't sneak out. So when the fire hit, the people with the keys, the owners went out, they were all fine but the doors didn't work. Regulations started hitting in, so they moved to New Jersey and then further into the American South, Mexico and eventually Asia, seeking jurisdictions where they will be allowed to have low wage, highly exploitative working conditions. Rana Plaza and the cost of cotton: In May 2013, a clothing factory in the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, had a faulty construction, despite indications it was unsafe. In fact, extra floors were added and they were not in the design. Workers went back to work. The collapse killed 1134 people. Launched a huge debate about responsibility of western consumers and merchants. If you regulate too much, then the companies just move away. And that remains a significant problem. The evolution of the textile industry – Andrew Good (Global Edge) It is estimated by anthropologists that humans began wearing clothes somewhere between 500,000 and 100,000 years ago. Since this time the textile industry has been evolving. The earliest trade hubs of textiles can be found in ancient China, Turkey, and India. All of these regions can be found along the Silk Road. From the linen and animal skin wearing Pharaohs of Egypt to the luxurious purple silk worn in the Byzantine Empire the most fashionable trends have always had a major impact on the textile industry. The most in-demand products are the products every merchant wants to sell and every factory wants to produce. Consumer tastes and the cost of products are two primary demand drivers in the textile industry. The primary driving factors for a company’s success in the textile industry are the ability to operate efficiently and securing contracts with clothing marketers for their products. The textile industry has been shaping international business and cultural trends for thousands of years. In fact, ancient Chinese silk was one of the catalysts for the formation of the world’s first international commercial highway. The Industrial Revolution started in England in 1760. At this time, England was a colonial power, and used its colonies in the Americas and Asia to provide resources such as silk, tobacco, sugar, gold, and cotton, and provided its colonies with finished products such as textiles and metalware. At this time, Britain largely controlled international trade, and most global trade was conducted within Europe, but by the late 1790s, 57% of British exports went to North America and the West Indies, and 32% of British imports were provided by these regions. Before the Industrial Revolution, textiles were made by hand in the “cottage industry”, where materials would be brought to homes and picked up when the textiles were finished. This allowed for workers to decide their own schedules and was largely unproductive. Because Britain was the main supplier of textiles overseas, it needed a new way to meet the large demand for textiles. Many aspects of society and business today started during the Industrial Revolution. Before the Industrial Revolution, over 80 percent of people lived in rural areas and by 1850, more people in Britain and the United States lived in cities than in rural areas. Another aspect of the Industrial Revolution that we can still see today is the rise of the middle class. Additionally, women were introduced to the workforce during the Industrial Revolution. Many women were hired to work in the textile factories because they provided cheap labor and many women were seeking the independence that joining the workforce could give them. An example of this in the Industrial Revolution is the Lowell girls. Francis Cabot Lowell started textile factories in the United States and employed mainly young women, and was able to make large profits because of the cheap labor. Colonialism and the Indian textile industry – Times of India ( The historical context of the British colonial rule over India is marked by a complex interplay of economic interests, cultural dynamics, and imperial ambitions. One prominent aspect of this colonial relationship was the British imposition of restrictions and bans on Indian textiles. While not an outright ban on all Indian textiles, the British colonial authorities strategically employed policies that severely impacted the Indian textile industry. By imposing restrictions on Indian textiles, the British aimed to secure a steady supply of raw cotton from India. This allowed British manufacturers to capitalize on the raw materials, ultimately strengthening Britain's dominance in the global textile trade. The British ban on Indian textiles was also rooted in protectionist policies. The British colonial administration sought to protect its domestic industries from foreign competition, including Indian textiles. To achieve this, the British government implemented tariffs, taxes, and import duties on Indian textiles, making them less competitive in the British market. By stifling the Indian textile industry, the British effectively controlled trade dynamics to their advantage. By imposing restrictions on Indian textiles, the British aimed to diminish traditional Indian textile practices, which were deeply ingrained in the cultural and economic fabric of the nation. This not only eroded India's cultural identity but also weakened its economic resilience. Restricting or banning certain Indian textile products asserted British control over the economy and society. The policy aimed to curtail the economic autonomy of local communities, further subjugating them under British colonial rule. By limiting the economic potential of Indian textiles, the British ensured that India remained a supplier of raw materials and a consumer of British manufactured goods, reinforcing their colonial dominance. The economic interests of the British industrial sector, combined with protectionist measures, market control, and exploitation, converged to create an environment where Indian textiles were systematically suppressed. This suppression had far-reaching consequences for India's economic growth, cultural heritage, and socio-political autonomy. Fashion History Lesson: The Origins of Fast Fashion – Fashionista (Sara Idacavage). The concept of fast fashion is widely regarded as being a fairly new concept that originated from brands like Zara being able to sell trends at record speed for affordable prices, but "fast fashion" is really just a term given to a constantly evolving production system that has been gaining momentum since the 1800s. 1800s: The cycle of fashion finally picked up speed during the Industrial Revolution, which introduced new textile machines, factories and ready-made clothing, or clothing that is made in bulk in a range of sizes rather than being made to order. First patented in 1846, the sewing machine contributed to an extremely rapid fall in the price of clothing and an enormous increase in the scale of clothing manufacturing. Outside of couture houses, localized dressmaking businesses were responsible for making clothing for middle-class women, while women of lower incomes continued to make their own clothing. Local dressmaking businesses typically included a team of workroom employees, although some aspects of production were outsourced to "sweaters," or people who worked from home for very low wages. Although these types of operations were mostly localized, the practice of using "sweaters" in the 1800s provides a small glimpse of what would eventually become the basis of most modern clothing production. 1900s - 1950s: Despite the increasing number of garment factories and sewing innovations, a great deal of clothing production was still done in the home or in small workshops throughout the beginning of the 20th century. The fabric restrictions and more functional styles that were made necessary by World War II led to an increase in standardized production for all clothing. After becoming accustomed to such standardization, middle-class consumers became more receptive to the value of purchasing mass-produced clothing after the war. New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and the fire in Tazreen Fashion Factory in Bangladesh are some of the examples of how bad fast fashion can be. 1960s - 2000s: Fashion trends began moving at a dizzying speed, in the 1960s, as young people embraced cheaply made clothing to follow these new trends and reject the sartorial traditions of older generations. Soon, fashion brands had to find ways to keep up with this increasing demand for affordable clothing, leading to massive textile mills opening across the developing world, which allowed the U.S. and European companies to save millions of dollars by outsourcing their labor. The rapid growth that defines these brands today goes hand-in-hand with cost-cutting measures, and not many companies are eager to celebrate or detail the controversial switch to overseas sweatshop labor. Technically, H&M is the longest running of these retailers, having opened as Hennes in Sweden in 1947, expanding to London in 1976 and eventually reaching the states in 2000. According to the New York Times, founder Erling Persson drew inspiration for his store from visiting high-volume retail establishments in the U.S. after WWII. Zara’s founder Amancio Ortega opened the first store in 1975 in Northern Spain. When Zara came to New York at the beginning of 1990, the New York Times used the term "fast fashion" to describe Zara’s mission, declaring that it would only take 15 days for a garment to go from a designer's brain to being sold on the racks. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the origins of fast fashion as we know it today, it's easy to understand how the phenomenon caught on. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, it became increasingly more acceptable (and desirable) to flaunt one's love for low-cost fashion, and seen as especially savvy to be able to mix high and low fashion with aplomb. Consumers became more likely to hunt for bargains and dismiss department stores saying it was now “chic to pay less”. The embrace of "disposable fashion" by prominent women such as Kate Middleton or Michelle Obama would have been unheard of just a few decades ago, but speaks to the "democratization of fashion" enabled by mass production, allowing more people to communicate through clothing regardless of their social and economic backgrounds. Today: Considering the long path from spinning one's own yarn to globalized production, it seems amazing that we now live in an age when you can buy a garment on your phone just moments after it first walked down the runway. We must also acknowledge that there are major problems with our current fashion system, such as unjust labor practices and catastrophic amounts of waste. In an industry that has historically been focused on moving faster, it's time to consider slowing down, at least enough to be more mindful of the purchases that we make. Empires of Cotton – Sven Beckert (Factiva) By the time shots were fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, cotton was the core ingredient of the world's most important manufacturing industry. The manufacture of cotton yarn and cloth had grown into "the greatest industry that ever had or could by possibility have ever existed in any age or country,” according to the self-congratulatory but essentially accurate account of British cotton merchant John Benjamin Smith. By multiple measures—the sheer numbers employed, the value of output, profitability—the cotton empire had no parallel. One author boldly estimated that in 1862, fully 20 million people worldwide—one out of every 65 people alive—were involved in the cultivation of cotton or the production of cotton cloth. In England alone, which still counted two-thirds of the world's mechanical spindles in its factories, the livelihood of between one-fifth and one-fourth of the population was based on the industry; one-tenth of all British capital was invested in it, and close to one-half of all exports consisted of cotton yarn and cloth. ”Cotton exports alone put the United States on the world economic map. On the eve of the Civil War, raw cotton constituted 61 percent of the value of all U.S. products shipped abroad. Before the beginnings of the cotton boom in the 1780s, North America had been a promising but marginal player in the global economy. The reason for America's quick ascent to market dominance was simple. The United States more than any other country had elastic supplies of the three crucial ingredients that went into the production of raw cotton: labor, land, and credit. By midcentury, cotton had become central to the prosperity of the Atlantic world. Poet John Greenleaf Whittier called it the "Hashish of the West,” a drug that was creating powerful hallucinatory dreams of territorial expansion, of judges who decide that "right is wrong,” of heaven as "a snug plantation” with "angel negro overseers.” The Civil War in the United States was an acid test for the entire industrial order: Could it adapt to the even temporary loss of its providential partner—the expansive, slave-powered antebellum United States—before social chaos and economic collapse brought their empire to ruins? The outbreak of the Civil War severed in one stroke the global relationships that had underpinned the worldwide web of cotton production and global capitalism since the 1780s. In an effort to force British diplomatic recognition, the Confederate government banned all cotton exports. Consequently, exports to Europe fell from 3.8 million bales in 1860 to virtually nothing in 1862. The effects of the resulting "cotton famine,” as it came to be known, quickly rippled outward, reshaping industry—and the larger society—in places ranging from Manchester to Alexandria. With only slight hyperbole, the Chamber of Commerce in the Saxon cotton manufacturing city of Chemnitz reported in 1865 that "never in the history of trade have there been such grand and consequential movements as in the past four years.” Considering these fears, it was more remarkable that 4 million slaves in the United States—among them the world's most important cotton growers—gained their freedom during or immediately after the war. Never before and never thereafter did cotton growers revolt with similar success, their strength fortuitously amplified by a deep and irreconcilable split within the nation's elite. The emancipation of America's cotton-growing workers, however, raised the question of where the industrial world's most important raw material would come from. Landowners, manufacturers, merchants, and statesmen concluded from their reading of past experiences that emancipation was potentially threatening to the well-being of the world's mechanized cotton industry. Consequently, they worked zealously to find ways to reconstruct durably the worldwide web of cotton production, to transform the global countryside without resorting to slavery. Already during the war itself, in articles and books, speeches and letters, they belabored the questions of if and where cotton could be grown without slave labor. Boston cotton manufacturer Edward Atkinson, for example, contributed to this debate as early as 1861 with his Cheap Cotton by Free Labor, and one year later, William Holmes's Free Cotton: How and Where to Grow It extended the discussion. An anonymous French author added his voice the same year with Les blancs et les noirs en Amérique et le coton dans les deux mondes. Soon such treatises were informed by lessons drawn from the Civil War experiences. The sudden turn to non-slave cotton during the Civil War years in Egypt, Brazil, and India as well as in Union-controlled zones of the American South represented, after all, a global experiment: What would a world with cotton but without slaves look like? Cotton capitalists and government bureaucrats had learned broad lessons during the war. Most importantly, they understood that labor, not land, constrained the production of cotton. When the guns fell silent on the North American continent in April 1865, the greatest turmoil in the 85-year history of a European-dominated cotton industry came to an end. New systems for the mobilization of labor had been tested around the world— from coolie workers to sharecropping to wage labor—and while it was still uncertain if cotton production would return to antebellum levels, belief in the possibility of "free labor” cotton had become nearly universal. As former slaves throughout the United States celebrated their freedom, manufacturers and workers looked forward to factories running again at capacity, fueled by newly plentiful cotton supplies. If the Civil War was a moment of crisis for the empire of cotton, it was also a rehearsal for its reconstruction. Cotton capitalists were confident from their triumphs in recasting industrial production at home. As they surveyed the ashes of the South, they saw promising new levers that might move the mountain of free labor into cotton cultivation with new lands, new labor relations, and new connections between them. Thus the French observer was correct when he predicted in 1863, "The empire of cotton is ensured; King Cotton is not dethroned.” LECTURE 10. THE HISTORY OF OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY. Initially, gasoline was a byproduct of the refining of oil into kerosene. Prior to the internal combustion engine, it had limited use. In the U.S.A. in the 1800s it was routinely dumped, often into nearby rivers. Relatively recent invention, in the late 1800s it was still not an enormous component of Western Economies. In oil producing areas, for example Pennsylvania, Ohio and Western Ontario very young oil industries were pumping oil out. Until they introduced the refining process that allowed them to create kerosene, kerosene is a flammable liquid, frequently used in lamps and lightning, some general use with engines but not very much. There was a big demand for it in the days before electrical lightning, kerosene was very important. Internal combustion: In Germany, internal combustion cars and engines were developed in the 1870s in order to move carriages or cars and, by the mid 1880s Karl Benz had begun commercial production. The necessity to use gasoline created a new market for what had been discarded in the past. In order for Karl’s invention to gain the significance that it would, networks of places where people with internal combustion engines could add fuel to it were developed. So gasoline started to make its way. Bertha Benz journey