Cotton Control Board

Scope and Content

Correspondence and papers relating to the Cotton Control Board. The Board was set up by the government in 1917 to control raw cotton consumption during wartime. As a result of unemployment among cotton operatives caused by restrictions in production, the Board paid unemployment benefit to those affected, though the actual payment of the benefit was undertaken by the relevant trade union by a rota system. The Board was renamed the Cotton Reconstruction Board after the war. Most of the correspondence in this file relates to the administration of unemployment benefit and the Board's involvement in the 1918 wage dispute.