Complacency and alarm

This comment, like many others made at the time, was probably exaggerated, because such all-wool goods as the West Riding continued to produce found their place in the market.

"The French produce ... only goods which, by their intrinsic beauty of texture and dye, leave every competitor hopelessly in the rear."

 

 

In fact, for twelve years from 1860 the Bradford trade saw almost uninterrupted growth, with exports in woollen and worsted goods doubling in value over that period, to £40 million in 1872. But from then onwards protectionism became the order of the day, not only on the European continent but in the USA, which was the largest export market for British worsteds.

Sir Titus Salt, reporting the findings of a Bradford Chamber of Commerce deputation to France in 1856, acknowledged that: