1. In 1877 British wheat still fetched 56s 9d (£2.84) a quarter, much the same as in the last years of the Corn Laws. But during the next fifteen years shipping freight rates were cut by 40 per cent, and they were to fall further over the following decade. In 1894 the price of wheat dipped under 23s (£1.15), and 30 shillings (£1.50) remained a high price until the First World War.
2. Part of this went in profits to the capitalists of Lancashire, but most of it was paid out in weekly wages to the millworkers. In 1907 there were just over 200,000 full-time male workers and 350,000 full-time women workers in the cotton industry. If the men were paid an average of £2 a week – rather less than a mule-spinner could earn but more than most weavers got – and the women around a pound a week, this gives a round total of £750,000 a week or £40 million a year. At such rates of pay, it is easy to see how the cotton trade directly supported its workforce of more than half a million workers – probably a couple of million family members in all. This makes no allowance for the indirect impact on the regional economy of Lancashire, where the population was approaching 5 million on the eve of the First World War.