Freedom for Cotton
The Liverpool Cotton Ekchange is to be revived in time to deal in next season's cotton crop. This is a political, as well as a commercial event. For when Sir Stafford Cripps killed the Exchange in 1948, he meant it to stay dead, and set up a statutory body with monopolistic powers, the Raw Cotton Commission, to take its place. This caused a great outcry at the time and the critics had some justification; the old Exchange had led the world in its own field, and Britain has not so many free institutions of that level of efficiency that 'she can afford to scrap them. But history plays tricks, and it is doubtful if those who were vocal in their opposition to Sir Stafford's doctrine are, in practice, glad to have their powers returned to them. Merchants are not eager to risk. their money on the uncertain assumption that America will go on supporting the price of cotton all the time, and the spinners may be right in their fears that private trade will not operate on as generous a basis as the Raw Cotton Commission has done—at a loss, in the year 1951-2, of £25,000,000. But the Government has been firm, despite doubts from the trade, in its intention to &tract itself from the cotton business. Sir Richard Hopkins's Commission was unanimous in condemning the present arrange- ments whereby Lancashire's private trade is financed at the risk of public funds.
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