But although a Consumers’ League can never hope to counteract the results of unlimited competition, it may, as the National Consumers’ League of America shows, exert a valuable influence upon public opinion, and may succeed in remedying certain industrial scandals. The Report of that body for the year 1905–6 (up to March 6, 1906) is a most interesting pamphlet, full of details that show how useful may be the work, as industrial detectives and agitators, of a group of citizens, banded together for the purpose of exposing and abolishing oppressive and insanitary conditions of labour. In a country where public feeling is not yet nearly ready for the enactment of a minimum wage, the formation of a Consumers’ League may possibly be the best step forward. An effectual remedy it cannot be; but it undoubtedly affords means of education, both for its members and for the community at large. In our own country, however, where the evils are already more or less generally recognised, and where an increasing number of persons are already beginning to hope for a minimum wage, the Consumers’ League marks a stage that has been left behind. We see, then, that emigration, though it may help the individual, can but affect the trade of the country injuriously; that temperance, while eminently desirable on other grounds, is only of any economic value because it is still not universal; that effectual thrift is absolutely impossible for the underpaid, and that the exercise of even an illusory thrift can only be achieved by a sacrifice of things essential to good health. We see, furthermore, that a Consumers’ League may be a valuable social agency, but can never hope to be an economic remedy for underpayment. Having looked up all these turnings and found all of them blind alleys, we now proceed to examine a road along which younger sisters of ours have travelled already, and at the end of which a ray of hope seems to be shining. But before entering upon this examination we will pause to consider the lesson of facts as presented in the history of our own cotton trade. CHAPTER III THE LESSONS OF THE COTTON TRADE The pessimist view—False assumption on which it rests—Cotton trade not natural to Britain—Climate—Temperature—Fallacy of inherited skill—Cotton workers as they were—Advancing legal restrictions—Rise of wages—Amazing development and prosperity of the British trade—Change in the mills—Change in the workers—Change in the employers—The case of Bristol—The verdict of Mr Schoenhof.