Liverpool's port is the centre of an empire that spans the globe.
Its merchants sent ships around the world, initially mainly sailing ships, but by the 50s and 60s of the 19th century, steam-powered ships were increasing. These captains deal with dangerous seas, potentially rebellious crews, dangerous diseases, and economic fluctuations.
In the early 1940s, Liverpool cotton ship captain James Brown wasted weeks searching for enough cotton to load his ship every time he arrived at the Port of New Orleans.
Freight rates are constantly changing, as idle ships in ports mean fierce competition. Market news from Liverpool often led to sudden changes in cotton prices, delaying his departure.
Brown wrote: "Part of the crew has run away. "Hurricane" and "news about pirates" further jittered him.
While the Port of Liverpool has a grand spectacle of manual labour, the city's nervous system is the cotton exchange, whose administrators live and work close to each other.
Every morning, merchants from the city trade "under the flag" in a vacant lot in the city center.
Samuel Smith, a cotton broker, remembers: "No matter what the weather, cold or wet, winter or summer, we all stood outside, and sometimes rain and cold couldn't stand it, and we would hide under the arch." ”
After 1809, a beautiful exchange building was built in the center of the city, and cotton merchants moved into it.
The noisy trading hall where buyers and sellers meet looks very chaotic, but it is impressive.
Because "nowhere in the world is so elegant and lenient in terms of public trading", "sales are very impressive... It's done in minutes."
Thanks to its very comprehensive configuration, the city's merchants became the dominant players in a global network of cotton cultivation, manufacturing and sales.
On the Apollo pier in Mumbai, businessmen nervously await news "from Liverpool". In plantations throughout the American South, the "Liverpool Price" was the most meaningful piece of news, the most important concern for many slave owners.
The Southern agricultural magazine Dibo Review constantly reported on Liverpool prices and how cotton farmers in the United States could make the most profit from them. New York's business magazines and business reviews are similarly restless about Liverpool prices.
For Ellen Hooton and hundreds of thousands of cotton mill workers like her, Liverpool prices will determine whether she will be hired. The global focus on Liverpool reflects the enormous influence the city's businessmen wield over large swathes of the world.
At a time when prices rose in Liverpool, growers in Louisiana might decide to buy new cotton land, and slave traders might find it very profitable to sell thousands of young slaves to these new territories.
News from Liverpool could one day lead to the expulsion of Native Americans from their lands, one day encourage people to invest in railroads in India, and another day cause families in Switzerland, Gujarat or Michoacán to abandon spinning and weaving altogether.