Although the term 'American Cotton' is applied to all the cotton produced in the United States of America, it really applies to a number of different varieties—such as Texas, Mobile, Upland, Orleans, &c.—each one known by its distinctive name. The differences are too technical for explanation here; but, generally speaking, the members of the 'hirsutum' species of the 'Gossypium' tribe now rule the world of cotton.
They are the product of what is called the 'Cotton-belt' of the United States, an area stretching for about two thousand miles between its extreme points in the Southern States, which are North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. Over this area, soil and climate vary considerably. The 'Cotton-belt' lies, roughly speaking, between the thirtieth and fortieth parallels of north latitude. As an American expert says: 'Cotton can be produced with various degrees of profit throughout the region bounded on the north by a line passing through Philadelphia; on the south by a line passing a little south of New Orleans; and on the west by a line passing through San Antonio. This is the limit of the possibilities.'
The cotton plant likes a light sandy soil, or a black alluvial soil like that of the Mississippi margins. It requires both heat and moisture in due proportions, and is sensitive to cold, to drought, and to excessive moisture. The American cotton-fields are still worked by negroes, but no longer slaves, as before the war; and, in fact, the negroes are now not only free, but some of them are considerable cotton-growers on their own account. On the other hand, one finds nowadays little of the old system of spacious plantations under one ownership. Instead, the cultivation is carried on on small farms and allotments, not owned but rented by the cultivators. Large numbers of these cotton farmers are 'financed' by dealers, by landowners, or even by local storekeepers.
The cotton factor is the go-between of the grower and the exporting agent in Galveston or New Orleans, or other centre of business. After the crop is picked by the negroes—men, women, and children—and the harvest is a long process—the seeds are separated from the fibre by means of a 'gin;' and then the cotton-wool is packed into loose bales for the factor, while the seeds are sent to a mill to be crushed for cotton-seed oil and oil-cake for cattle-feeding. The loose cotton bales are collected by the factors into some such central town as Memphis, where they are sorted, sampled, graded, and then compressed by machinery into bales of about four hundred and forty pounds each, for export. In calculating crops, &c., a bale is taken as four hundred pounds net.
The cotton then passes into the hands of the shipping agent, who brands it, and forwards it by river-steamer to one of the Southern ports, or by rail to New York or Boston, where it is put on board an ocean steamer for Europe. The beautiful American clippers with which some of us were familiar in the days of our youth are no longer to be seen; they have been run off the face of the waters by the 'ocean liner' and the 'tramp.' Arrived in Liverpool, cotton enters upon a new course of adventures altogether, and engages the thoughts and energies of a wholly new set of people.
Cotton Plant.
