The original mistake was the construction of many new mills in the North, which cost 8 million Pounds, and required the employment of 87,000 additional workers, plus their families, to utilize the capacity. This orchestrated a glut in the market. Then, failures of American banks decreased the liquidity in the country, and made it impossible to import cotton in the same quantities as in the previous years. The American Government increased tariffs on manufactured goods for 20 % to 30 %, so as to protect their cotton industries in Maine, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. Several countries in Europe followed this policy, which hit the exports of woven goods by England. In another dimension, due to the bad harvests in 1839, 1840, 1842, 1843, the price of wheat reached 66s. 5d. the quarter. Wages decreased by from 20 % to 25 %. It was necessary to import wheat; this required the Bank of England to use part of their gold reserves. But this had the effect of reducing the money in circulation, and therefore a number of companies fell into bankruptcy.
The proportion of paupers rose from 380 per 10,000 population in 1840 to 700 per 10,000 in 1843 (industrial regions). The proportion of marriages in industrial areas decreased from 1,783 per 100,000 males in 1839, to 1,545 per 100,000 in 1842. Emigration, which was 90,000 in 1840, rose to 118,000 in 1841 and 128,000 in 1842. The real effect on the people is reported by a Mr. Ashton, as in the paragraph below.
“Mr. A. S. Ashton, of Belmont Park, Leeds, gives several interesting facts about the state of trade in Lancashire and elsewhere in 1841. He says: “There were 2,000 houses empty in Preston in 1841, and in spite of the Corn Laws the farmers were badly off; the labourers were poor — so poor that they were driven to desperation, so that there were in one and a half years 300 to 400 incendiary fires, destroying corn and hay ricks. In Leeds, in 1841, there were 20,000 persons whose average earnings were under 1/- a week. In Birmingham, one-fifth of the population were in receipt of parochial relief. In Birmingham many of the masters were near ruin. The state of Paisley was a source of alarm to Sir Robert Peel. In Manchester 12,000 families, after having pawned every article of furniture and of dress with which they could possibly dispense, were supported by voluntary contributions. In the winter of 1842 the state of things in Bolton was terrible. As many as 1,500 houses in the borough were unoccupied. The earnings of 1,000 families averaged only 1/- per head per week ; more than half the beds in their possession were filled with straw, and they had among them 466 blankets — not quite one to every ten persons — whilst only one-half could boast the humble luxury of a change of linen.”” 2.41
In Manchester, there was an extreme decrease in wages, and particularly in employment. This lead to a great deal of hunger. People died from starvation. We know that, because the physician to the Ardwick and Ancoats Dispensary, Dr. Richard Baron Howard wrote a study on these cases: 2.42
2.41 Mrs. Jane Cobden Unwin, The Hungry Forties, Life under the Bread Tax, 1904, pp. 201-202.
2.42 An Inquiry into the Morbid Effects of Deficiency of Food; chiefly with reference to their occurrence amongst the destitute poor, also practical observations on the treatment of such cases (1839).
There is a statistical report of the sufferings of the persons who had very little to eat: 2.43
And an analysis by years from Mr. Tougan-Baranowsky, which shows that the effects were at a maximum in the industrial counties in 1839/1840, measuring by the death rate, and in 1840/1841/1842, measuring by commitments to trial (we suppose, particularly for robbery). 2.44
Year Agricultural Counties Industrial Counties Total England
| Deaths | Committ to Trial | Poor Law Relief | Deaths | Committ to Trial | Poor Law Relief | Deaths | Committ to Trial | Poor Law Relief | |
| Per 10,000 | Per 100,000 | Pounds/ inhab. | Per 10,000 | Per 100,000 | Pounds/ inhab. | Per 10,000 | Per 100,000 | Pounds/ inhab. | |
| 1838 | 203 | 155 | 0.412 | 261 | 167 | 0.149 | 224 | 154 | 0.289 |
| 1839 | 188 | 158 | 0.439 | 288 | 186 | 0.159 | 219 | 158 | 0.295 |
| 1840 | 210 | 165 | 0.439 | 300 | 224 | 0.168 | 228 | 173 | 0.303 |
| 1841 | 207 | 159 | 0.438 | 258 | 239 | 0.181 | 216 | 174 | 0.309 |
| 1842 | 197 | 180 | 0.442 | 257 | 265 | 0.216 | 217 | 194 | 0.324 |
| 1843 | 205 | 174 | 0.431 | 254 | 218 | 0.193 | 212 | 181 | 0.305 |
| 1844 | 201 | 141 | 0.448 | 243 | 168 | 0.172 | 215 | 160 | 0.305 |
| 1845 | 208 | 151 | 0.443 | 246 | 159 | 0.171 | 209 | 145 | 0.296 |
(Agricultural counties are Cambridge, Essex, Norfolk, Oxford, Lincoln, Suffolk, Wiltshire;
Industrial counties are Lancashire and Cheshire)
The sufferings for lack of income, and lack of food, were one of the moving factors for the Chartists’ General Strike in August 1842.
2.43 Adshead, Joseph, “Distress in Manchester: Evidence (tabular and otherwise) of the State of the Labouring Classes in 1840-42”, 1842
https://archive.org/details/distressinmanche00ahsh
2.44 Extracted from Tougan-Baranowsky, “Les crises industrielles en Angleterre”, 1913, p. 295; his data taken from Registrar-General’s reports)
