Considered without reference to any particular country, its economic importance is far beyond numerical expression; for while the total crop of the world is approximately ascertainable, the effect of cotton upon the commercial and social relations of mankind is too far-reaching for estimation. Of the four great staples that provide man with clothing—cotton, silk, wool, and flax—cotton, by reason of its cheapness and its many excellencies, is rapidly superseding its several rivals. Sixty years ago only about two million five hundred thousand bales of cotton, or less than the present production of Texas, were annually converted into clothing; the spindles of the world now use over thirteen million bales per annum. Yet less than half the people of the world are supplied with cotton goods made by modern machinery, and it has been estimated that it would require annually a crop of forty-two million bales of five hundred pounds each to raise the world's standard of consumption to that of the principal nations.
Cotton stands preëminent among farm crops in the ease and cheapness of its production, as compared with the variety and value of its products. No crop makes so slight a drain upon the fertility of the soil, and for none has modern enterprise found so many uses for its several parts. The cotton plant yields, in fact, a double crop—a most beautiful fibre and a seed yielding both oil and feed, which, although neglected for a long time, is now esteemed worth one-sixth as much as the fibre. In addition to this, the stems can be made to yield a fibre which waits only for a machine to work it, and the roots yield a drug. It is entirely possible, therefore, that cotton may ultimately be grown as much for these parts as for the lint.
The history of cotton production in the United States differs from that of almost every other agricultural product in several important particulars. For nearly three-quarters of a century slave labor was almost exclusively employed in this branch of agricultural industry, and an immense majority of the colored people of to-day look to it for their chief support. Cotton was also the great pioneer crop in the new Southwestern States. Not only has the westward movement of the industry been more rapid than that of any other crop, but the centre of production has always been farther in advance of the centre of population. As long ago as 1839 Mississippi was producing almost one-fourth of the entire crop of the country. Recent years have witnessed an enormous development in the regions to the west, which would have carried the centre of production across the Mississippi River if the cultivation of cotton, unlike that of wheat and corn and other products, had not taken a new lease of life in the older States along the Atlantic seaboard, where the use of manures has both extended the area and increased the production.
Probably no equally great industry was ever more completely paralyzed or had its future placed in greater jeopardy than cotton growing in the United States during the war of 1861-1865. So great was the decrease in production which followed the effectual closing of the ports that only one bale of cotton was grown in 1864-1865 for every fifteen bales raised in 1861-1862. The chief menace to the future of cotton production lay in the efforts that were put forth by other cotton-growing countries at this time to produce those particular varieties which had for so long given the United States the monopoly of the European markets; and nothing could more completely demonstrate the remarkable adaptation of our Southern States to the growing of varieties which the experience of generations has proved to be the best for manufacturing purposes than the fact that it took them only thirteen years from the end of the war to regain the primacy of position which they held at its commencement.
ROBERT B. HANDY
When cotton manufacture was introduced into England is not definitely settled. There is no mention of the manufacture or use of cotton in the celebrated poor-law of Elizabeth (1601), though hemp, flax, and wool are expressly named. The first authentic record is in Roberts' Treasure of Traffic, published in 1641; but it is possible, and even probable, that the art was imported from Flanders by the artisans who fled from that country to England in the latter part of the sixteenth century, as it is probable that the manufacture had established itself more or less firmly before it attracted the attention of the author of the above-named pamphlet. We may presume, then, that it was well established in England by 1641, but after that date the spread was not rapid. The crudeness of the machinery for spinning was such that fine yarn could not be made. Both spinning and weaving were done by individuals and families in their own houses on clumsy and heavy machines. These implements were but little better than those in use two thousand years before. The distaff, the earliest of spinning-machines, was still in use, and the best to be had was the one-thread spinning-wheel. The loom used was scarcely an improvement on that which the East Indian had used centuries before, though it was constructed with greater firmness and compactness. Owing to imperfections in their machines, it was impossible for the Europeans to make cotton yarn combining strength and firmness. The yarn when spun was loose and flimsy; to make it strong it had to be heavy.
The finished web had often to be carried a long distance to market. It was only in 1760 that Manchester merchants began to furnish the weavers in the neighboring villages with linen yarn and raw cotton and to pay a fixed price for the perfected web, thus relieving the weavers of the necessity of providing themselves with material and seeking a market for their cloth, and enabling them to prosecute their employment with greater regularity.
It was also about that time that England began to export her cotton goods, for until then her weavers had not been able to do more than supply the home demand. This foreign trade at once increased the demand for cotton goods, and the increased demand presented a problem which the manufacturers at first found difficult of solution. The procuring of supplies of linen yarn needed for the warp of these textiles was not difficult, but where was the cotton yarn to come from? The spinners were producing already as much as their rude machines would permit, and additional spinners were not to be had. The demand for cotton thread exceeded the supply; the price of yarn rose with the demands of trade and the extension of the manufacture and operated as a check to the further increase of the exports. The trade had reached the point where hand carders, single-thread spinning-wheels, and the hand-loom, requiring a man to each machine, were clearly inadequate to the service, and the cotton trade of Great Britain in the middle of the eighteenth century seemed to have reached its limit. About this time Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, Cartwright, and Watt, men either directly or indirectly engaged in and familiar with the needs of the cotton manufacture, invented machines which raised the trade from an experimental or at least a struggling industry into the most important manufacture of the world. The carding-engine, the spinning-jenny, the spinning-frame, the stocking-frame, the power-loom, and the adaptation of the steam-engine to the propulsion of these machines, at once supplied the means of producing an immense amount of yarn and cloth. These inventions, it is true, were not in themselves perfect, but the principles on which they were built are those on which the most complicated textile machines of this day are based.
The supply of raw material to meet the demands of the trade was limited. The West Indies, the Levant, and India were the countries from which this supply was drawn, but they were unable to furnish enough raw cotton to keep the new machines in operation, and it was necessary to look elsewhere.
America was the only hope of the cotton manufacturer; but as at that time the United States produced little or no cotton, for a few years all the increased supply came from Brazil.