ProductionofBritish cotton goodsincreasedsixtyfold, and cotton cloth became Great Britain's mostimportantproduct, accounting for one-half of all exports.
All the evidence suggests that, despite more than decade-and-a-half of goods being labelled in both metric and imperial, the British remain defiantly out of step with their counterparts across the channel.
Lucky (if ironic) for them, nearly half of goods exports are in energy and mineral resources, where the sky's the limit these days, but that leaves plenty else to sell in tougher world markets.