Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/Cotton and the cotton-supply - Part 1
COTTON AND THE COTTON-SUPPLY.
PART I.
I fear we must all confess that the present—and chiefly so as regards Great Britain—is a mixed age of cotton and of iron. And this pair, apparently so uncongenial, work together on terms of vast mutual advantage. They are excellent co-partners. Of the two, perhaps, cotton may be said, in some sense, to have the ascendancy, inasmuch as iron, with all its rigidity of temper and hardness of heart, is made to bend to the needs and demands of its associate, whom it educates and conducts through the multiform stages of its career, and finally transmits to its local destination. In fact, much of its employment is in subserviency to the destiny of cotton. It is instrumental to its eminent success, and most complacent in discharging numerous offices of assistance; and in so far as the principal for whom the agent acts is always in this world the bigger of the two, cotton must be deemed a gentleman of superior consideration to iron. Then its direct influence on the creation of wealth is greater and more expansive.
Nevertheless, the affairs of this life are so linked together by a law of reciprocity, that it is impossible to determine the measure of those results which cotton would have attained, deprived of the auxiliary appliances into which iron has been converted. To say nothing of the immense facility which mechanical apparatuses have imparted to the production of cotton-yarn and cotton goods in their many diverse forms, the means of distribution afforded by the wonderful inventions of the age have accelerated incalculably the progress of the manufacture through the marts of the world. Till the time of George III., goods sent forth from Manchester to their several markets throughout England were carried on pack-horses at a speed averaging about four miles an hour. This, compared with their present journey over the whole world, by steamships and railway-conveyance, at the speed of twelve and twenty miles respectively in the same space of time, shows us at once that the uses to which iron has been put in promoting the cause of cotton are of a character it is hardly possible to over-estimate. The reflex action of these two great interests is, in truth, such as to enhance the importance of both. How natural then the alarm lest those vastly extended lands from which cotton is so copiously gathered, convulsed with the dire conflict of human passions, should be made sterile by the bloody footsteps of discord; or a mistaken view of self-aggrandisement should counteract the beneficial opportunities of nature’s prolific womb, and reduce this mighty little thing by the fetters of legislation to a slavery which would prove injurious to its world-wide utility. How suddenly but thoroughly have instincts been aroused, resources calculated, regrets for past apathy and carelessness converted into practical suggestions for an improved and more independent future. Europe, Asia, and Africa, that combination of the old world, which did very well once upon a time by itself, again holds up its grey head, and in the pride of primogeniture, and encouraged with reminiscences of a glorious retrospect, comes forward to pick up the falling laurels so long enjoyed in security by the far west. The prize is open to all who have the energy to strive. So great its worth that the decrepid members of the Sultan’s dominions even are almost stimulated to action, as Egypt was, not many years since, in the same cause, with results so satisfactory.[1] Where possibility exists hope should animate with perseverance the endeavours to convert that possibility into a triumph. Let us look for a little into this cotton question; see a little what cotton is; what cotton has become; where and how it is produced; of what stupendous value and importance are its manufacturing and commercial developments, and how wide the area over which it exercises a jealous and undivided sway.
Cotton (the Gossypium herbaceum of botany) is a shrub. Its nature is tropical. In Asia, Africa, and America it grows wild. Although our chief supply of it comes from a country which numbers so few ages among the records of the world, the use of cotton is of very remote antiquity. Time was when we old-fashioned fellows of three-quarters of the world had cotton in abundance, and no South American planters were born or thought of. In Hindostan it existed in the days of Herodotus, and was even then employed as the raw material for an extensively useful manufacture made up by the natives.
Strabo, too, mentions both the shrub and the manufacture. If we feel any inclination to reckon cotton among its kindred products as their aristocracy of ancient lineage, by availing ourselves of the ingenious theories of the antiquaries, we are quite able to do so without concocting evidence for the nonce.
That respectable family, so long shut up in the ark, are said to have been, beyond all doubt, not only acquainted with the cotton-plant and the fleecy filaments contained in its pod, but likewise to have understood the valuable uses to which this wool may be applied, and enough of the mechanical arts to transform it into articles of raiment. Modern investigation seems to have proved that the old Egyptians, though well skilled in the manufacture of linen, were altogether ignorant of that of cotton. This was confined for long to the Hindoo, to whom it had been known since possibly the eighth century of the Christian era, when, according to this account, articles of dress were made of it, and starch used—as we use it now-a-days—for the uncomfortable purposes of stiffness and foppery. After this it were childish to refer to the book of Esther, where at chap. i. v. 6, the substance alluded to has been thought, or at least maintained, to be cotton. This date would be only about 519 years, B. C. Three hundred years later the Greeks are supposed, with greater plausibility, to have made use of cotton cloths which they obtained from India; so that, it appears, the favourite pursuit of Lancashire is a very old one, and the celebrity of the Indian for the beauty of her “webs of woven wind” is not by any means recent.
Pliny often speaks of cotton, and a certain Egyptian Greek—Arrian by name—renowned during the second century as a merchant and navigator, has written very descriptively about it. In those days Syrastrene or Cutch was a famous cotton manufacturing country, and in these the principality of that name cultivates the plant extensively, though the whole of its produce is exported in exchange for grain. But without indulging in the many tempting speculations suggested by diving into the ancient world for the origin of those marvels of manipulation which are ripening only in the modern, I may just observe it has been remarked that, in the earliest ages, nature and circumstances—that is, Providence—apportioned to the different countries of this earth as staples for the fabrication of garments, a specific class of material to each; to Palestine, Greece, Italy and their neighbourhood, sheeps’ wool; to all the northern nations of Europe, hemp; to Egypt, flax; to China, silk; and to India, our protegé, cotton; where the textile arts, to which, in consequence, the natives devoted themselves, so likely to rise to perfection in connection with this ductile and seducing element, rapidly achieved the admiration of all the rest. The Hindoo finger to which belongs a sensibility, moisture and softness which marvellously adapt it to the office, guided by the peculiar patient temperament of the Hindoo mind, and working in conjunction with the simple distaff of India, forms a very perfect machine for spinning fine thread, which, though of late years far excelled by the almost invisible gossamers of Paisley and Manchester, being a production from short-stapled wool such as mechanical inventions fail to reduce to the same tenuity, is a wonder unequalled of its kind.
The muslins of Dacca, and the chintzes from the coast of Coromandel—pardon me if I excite uneasy emotions in the bosoms of the fair—bear glorious testimony to the dexterity and power of this delicate instrument. Sleight of hand is so indispensable an attribute of a perfect spinner, even with the aids of the truest machinery, that but few operative workmen out of the complement engaged in a mill rise to any great excellence in the production of the high-numbered yarns,—a singular instance of which is shown in the fact that, from some cause not easily explained, the Glasgow weavers, in respect of the above quality, are unable to cope with those of Manchester. It must be admitted, therefore, that without doubt the men of Lancashire have as much gone a-head of their swarthy and all other predecessors in the manufacture of cotton as the American planters have excelled past generations in the cultivation of the raw material.
As we descend down the stream of time, looking out all the way for striking exhibitions of skill in handling cotton, we arrive at the peninsula of Spain, which during the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries was renowned all the world over for abundance and excellence in the manufacture in question. This arose doubtless from the conquests by the Moors, who in subjecting the Spaniards to the evils of a foreign and unchristian yoke, to some extent redeemed these evils by the importation of much useful knowledge. At about this time the ladies of South Italy very commonly occupied their leisure in the fashionable employment of spinning into thread and knitting into stockings the cotton which was grown in their lords’ gardens. It is a remarkable fact that the Mexicans, when under circumstances to them so unpleasant, they first made the acquaintance of Europeans, were found to possess a thorough knowledge of the applications of cotton, which was reared by this extraordinary people in profusion, and its manufacturing capabilities turned by them to good account. The Peruvians, too, at the epoch of the Spanish invasion carried on the same industry with similar advantage. It was not, however, until the end of the 16th century that the interests of cotton made much progress in Europe. The Dutch were the originators of this movement, and in what they did you may be sure they contemplated the advancement of trade, rather than providing for the trifling occupation of the idle and the fair. In the middle of the following century Manchester commenced her career of quick and unprecedented progress. The cotton with which she originally tried her timid hand, on work strange it is true at first, but destined at no far-off period to fructify in such immense results, came from Cyprus and Smyrna. Her chief rival, when she grew bold and daring enough to compete for a place among the experienced and famed, appeared to be Bengal. The Indian looms, rude as they were, and rude as they would have revealed themselves in any other but Indian hands, accomplished incredible feats. Zephyrs, the breath of the mountains, the wings of light, were reproduced in vegetable tissues so exquisitely fine and transparent that the Indian princess could never cover her naked charms by any possible multiplication of folded repetitions. Diapers were coveted by all the world, and purchased by a large part of it. Whilst they exported the finer goods, the coarser ones were fabricated on their own account. There were cotton shrubs, the fruit of nature, and cotton wool, that of art, in plenty for themselves and for us, nay, for all the spinners and weavers in existence. Lancashire might engage in an innumerable succession of trials without fear of exhausting the resources. Porto Rico, the West Indies generally, Peru,
Egypt, Arabia, Syria, the Cape of Good Hope, the Isle of France, the Celebes, the East Indies, China, Persia, Ispahan, Aleppo, the Grecian Archipelago, Macedonia, Natolia, the coasts of the Caspian Sea, the Province of Bari, Calabria, and more places in the Levant besides than it were easy to enumerate, have each and all, in different degrees of perfection, reared this widely-diffused and much-requested plant. And nothing has yet been said of the vast plantations[2] in later times so profitably conducted in the Southern States of what I will still call the American Union. This grand step constituted a revolution in cotton husbandry, and of course affected with proportionate force every branch of its corresponding trade. The quality the most highly esteemed at this period of dearness and scarcity was that brought from the Island of Bourbon, and Smyrna used to send us annually no less than seven million pounds. There was not much to find fault with in the cotton of Bourbon, excepting its price, and this in 1786 rose in England to ten shillings the pound. In a minute we shall know more about prices, and then the above quotation will stand out in its proper exorbitancy.
Manchester is the first town on record that won a reputation for the fabrics she produced from cotton, as she had long previously done for those woollen articles which were destined in time to be so generally superseded by her subsequent innovations. The germs of mighty results were gradually developed by capital, industry, and science. The growth of the cotton interest was steady and irrepressible; moreover, it was rapid and on a scale of magnificence. The old factories devoted to the fabrication of woollen goods, which since the reign of Edward III. had been established at Bolton and Manchester, served as a preparatory school for acquiring the arts of the new manufacture. This traces back our obligations to the Flemings, who had been invited by that monarch on the occasion of his marriage with the daughter of the Earl of Hainault, to settle in this country, and import their skill in weaving to the good folks of these towns. Speaking of this latter city, as it impressed one in the time of Henry VIII., Leland says of it even then, “It is the fairest, quickest, and most populous town in Lancashire;” and in reward for the distinction it had earned, its royal master conferred upon it, in 1540, the privilege of sanctuary, a species of favour it is well for us we have long ceased to receive or appreciate. This celebrity was recognised in an act passed in the reign of Edward VI., in which its cloths are alluded to in complimentary terms. In the middle of the 17th century Levant cottons were worked into fustians, vermillians, dimities, and velvets, and linen from Irish thread was woven into cloth by the Lancashire artisans. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, drove multitudes of weavers out of France in search of a safe asylum, and as England has always promised this accommodation, the refugees made choice of the vicinage of Bolton, where they soon fraternised with their brother craftsmen, and in requital for their hospitality, taught them much which conduced to the further prosperity of the neighbourhood. The natural advantages of the manufacturing parts of Lancashire are just what constitute the conditions of eminent success. The Mersey and the Irwell water the district abundantly, the coal found there supplies with facility the important article of fuel, and the proximity of Liverpool to the city of Manchester, which is the acknowledged central mart of the vast circle of towns and villages wholly dedicated to the spindle and the loom, affords the best means of importation and exportation which for every commercial purpose cotton in the raw state, and cotton in its transformed state could possibly have required.
The ancestors of our cotton aristocracy were in George the First’s time a very homely, sturdy, hard-working set of people. Dr. Aikin has told us how they rose at five, breakfasted off oatmeal porridge at seven, took along with them to the warehouse, the counting-house, or the mill, a long string of children and apprentices, many of whom were the younger sons of country squires, and thus fortified with the health of morning and the strength of an unluxurious diet, passed the whole day in unremitting toil at the duties of their vocation. In this age, too, the public roads, when coaches were slow, canals few, and railways not conceived even in the tales of fairy-land, were covered with their riders, carrying bags stuffed with patterns of the goods furnished by the houses they served. In due time, machinery giving to the manufacture an impetus which elevated the mill-owners several grades above their former merely successful condition, they were compelled to call in to their aid a complete apparatus of mercantile enterprise, and then commenced that era of progressive prosperity which is the leading phenomenon of commercial history. But as yet it was not so. Every votaress of the wheel and distaff sat at her cottage door, in the manner of her Hindoo sister, but less blessed with the talents which lead to eminence, and spun the slender thread for the weaver to convert by the process which was peculiarly his, into the cloths and stuffs required by trade. No marvel we did so well without the shipments from New Orleans, all of which came forth in obedience to the iron wand of mechanical invention. And let us now look a little more exactly into the supervention of these wonderful days.
Cotton of modern culture has attained incomparable pre-eminence in America, especially the Sea Island, which is the best produced. In 1840 this description obtained in Liverpool the enormous price of three shillings the pound, whereas (for there is nothing like a contrast) Surat cotton, which is the worst growth of India, has been as low as two-pence. These may be regarded, perhaps, as the two greatest extremes between which the commercial value of cotton has as a rule oscillated. Then to show more completely how considerable this variation has been, I may as well give the lowest price within late years of Sea Island cotton, namely, ninepence the pound, and the highest of Surat, which in 1850, fetched 6¾d. The old commodity “tree-wool,” which arrested the observation of Herodotus, Strabo, Arrian, and Mela, has never, you see, in modern days equalled when at its best and in the dearest market, the worth of the worst quality in the cheapest market of that improved edition of the article which the skill of Americans and the superiority of propitious local conditions have since those benighted ages contributed to create. Enlightened by these simple statistics, we now perceive how momentously the welfare of the cotton dealer is likely to be modified by any extraordinary and exceptional causes liable to augment the already excessive fluctuation upon which he must calculate in the price of his purchases. From 9d. to 3s. for the best sort is a wide range of fluctuation, and from 2d. to 6¾d. for the worst, is almost as bad. What a world of room to cramp the operations of a market, and finally to shut it up altogether. With the deficiency, the uncertainty, the inferiority consequent upon a combination of political influences added to this normal state of variation, how tremendous would be the increase of the difficulties to be met. If not for the sake of anything else, at least for the sake of Manchester and her vegetable nobility, let us do something towards the stability and extension of a market, we most of us can do so ill without. It is computed that directly and indirectly, 4,000,000 of our people are concerned in cotton industry, while the mere manufacture as carried on in Great Britain alone, employs directly according to Mr. McCulloch’s estimate, no fewer than 1,400,000 persons.
Although it is undeniable that it was in consequence of the call for cotton-wool being stimulated by the increased consumption resulting from the various inventions of mechanical genius, that the energetic and systematic cultivation of the plant in the Southern provinces of the Union began and flourished, samples of the new material were sent over to Mr. Rathbone, an American merchant residing in Liverpool, so early as 1764, when he received from his correspondent in the United States eight bags of Transatlantic growth, as a specimen of what that country could produce. This to a great extent might have been objectless and indefinite, for it was not until 1785 that the cotton husbandry of the American States commenced in right earnest, after Hargreaves and others had imparted a momentum to the trade which has been augmenting ever since. Georgia and Carolina were the two States which at this date turned their thoughts in this profitable direction. They were sufficiently acute to guess and calculate the highly remunerative character of the speculation. The seed came from the Bahamas, which in the first instance owed to the Isle of Aguilla, in the Carribean Sea, the origination of the most esteemed species. This in the language of botany is the Gossypium Barbadense, which includes every variety propagated in the United States. In commercial phraseology all the raw cottons coming from New Orleans, and called indiscriminately by the Liverpool brokers, American cottons, are classed under two comprehensive descriptions, the long stapled and the short stapled. The great valley of the Mississippi and large tracts of country extending of late years far and wide into the Texas, form the grand area of plantations which in their luxuriant fertility yield an annual crop of more than 30,000,000 lbs., in weight. The Sea Island variety above referred to as the most valuable, is of the long-stapled class. Its wool is slightly yellow, very silky, and of unusual length. Its seed black. The islands upon which it is grown—hence its name—are situated along the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. One cause of its superiority is to be found in the nature of sea air, which varied experience has taught the planter is indispensable to the perfection of the cotton shrub. Indeed so great an affinity exists between this plant and the saline principle, that sea mud is actually applied as manure to the ground preparing for its reception. Dr. Ure in his work on the “Cotton Manufacture,” records the following somewhat important fact:
“Dr. Wallich brought home several samples of cotton from the coast of Martaban to the India House, which were grown near the sea. They were not exceeded by the cotton of any other country in the quality of the staple * * * There is a village in the Mangrole in Kattywar, which produces a small quantity of very fine cotton. It is cultivated by natives, and grows only on one particular spot of small extent near the sea coast.”
In corroboration of this partiality for a marine situation, I may further quote the result of an experiment tried in India; namely, though cotton grown from seed sown in localities near the sea (the experiment was made with Bourbon seed), may be found to thrive to an extent in every way satisfactory, transplanted to an inland spot (for the cotton tested was removed to Benares), it will probably prove—as in the case in question it did prove—a total failure.
The multifarious kinds of the plant from which the cotton wools are gathered present much dissimilarity of size and appearance. Sometimes it assumes the character of a shrub six or seven feet high, and at others it raises itself above the earth only three, or even two feet. The foliage, too, of these varieties takes very distinctive forms,—the vine-leaved, palmate, and many more. The flowers, the seeds, and the filamentous down investing them, which is the wool of commerce, are of different tints. As regards this last, the fact may be seen in the material called Nankeen, the peculiar colour of which proceeds from that of the natural filaments of which its texture consists. Neither is there any very rigid resemblance of constitution among them, for all undergo so many modifications when acted upon by the influences of soil, climate, and mode of husbandry, that both in the field and in the market their characteristics are widely separate. In some places the plant is an annual, but is sown on the same land only every third year; whilst we have in others shrubs which flourish and yield wool during the whole of that period. At Pernambuco, Brazil, and in the Leeward Islands, the shrub is triennial: a small quantity of wool is borne the first year, more during the second, and after the third it is abandoned. But all the plants of the Southern States of the American Union are annuals. It seems to be an ascertained fact, however, pervading every region in which cotton has been cultivated, that it exhausts to a very alarming degree the generative and nutritious virtues of the soil upon which it is grown; so much so, that the produce of the same fields which when first brought under cultivation was immense, has in many instances dwindled away in the course of a few years to comparative insignificance. In such parts of colonies as abound in cheap and plentiful land, it has often been the habit, as the soil gets drained of its fertilising properties, to remove the culture from spot to spot, in preference to adopting any of the less salutary and more precarious expedients of manuring, dressing, and shifting crops. The old lands in Guinea are, for the purpose of renovation, frequently inundated with sea-water.
The low, sandy islands scattered along the coast common to South Carolina and Georgia, appear, when viewed from a distance, or by superficial inspection, to be territories as diminutive in value as they are in dimension. But here it is that the universally celebrated cotton which has contributed so essentially to the marvellous achievements of Lancashire, is reared in all the honour and glory of what is seemingly an indestructible monopoly. Most of these yellow little islets, merging, as it were, thus shyly from the shallow waters of the shore, were formerly covered with extensive pine barrens. Where we now hear the imperious voice of man, and behold the fruits of his transforming labour, a hundred years ago the silence of nature was unbroken except by the cry of the lone sea-bird, whose wild music chimed harmoniously with the surge, or melted away in unaccompanied melody over the broad sea, sleeping calmly round about. To the poet, the painter, the goddess Nature’s devotee, their beauty, their worth, their moral, was then infinitely more precious than now; but the planter, the spinner, the political economist,—with slavery on their shores, I cannot add the philanthropist,—view the verdure of the cotton leaves and the hoary crop of its blossoms in relation to another class of beauty, another code of sentiments, another school of teaching. This sort of agricultural industry was not unknown in South Carolina so early as the very commencement of the last century, when Governor Smith introduced it for the first time. The idea was a happy one, and circumstances proving auspicious, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and other contiguous states gradually took it up, and together they eventually became the gigantic cotton garden of the world. Of comparatively recent date, however, is the distinction gained by Texas. There are warm advocates for enlarging the sphere of operations which this country affords. Its natural advantages are said to be almost unlimited in regard both to the quantity and variety of the cotton it is capable of producing. Besides these recommendations, the salubrity of the climate, and general productiveness of the soil, have had their effect in inducing enterprise to urge forward a work which is likely to prove successful.
As all the world knows and laments, the cultivation of this wealth-creating, work-providing shrub is, in America, carried on entirely by slave-labour; and it has been maintained that the substitution of free labour would so run up the cost of picking—picking especially, for picking is a dilatory and tedious operation,—as to act fatally on the question of remuneration which the planter is of all men most anxious to adjust on a satisfactory basis. It need hardly be added, that this short-sighted policy takes the form of an apology, put forward by those whose silly apprehensions for their own selfish advantage preponderate over the sagacity, liberality, and charity in which the cotton-planters, as a class, are not deficient. The slaves thus supplying the field-labour of the states, number, in the low country, three-fourths of the entire population.
Before the enhanced demand for cotton promised such flattering results to its cultivators, rice, indigo, maize, and tobacco were the principal vegetable products of South Carolina. Now, whilst this last has taken the place of indigo (indigo having fallen almost entirely out of cultivation), cotton has become the great staple of exportation, 20,000 bags being yearly sent away from South Carolina and Georgia alone. The further extension of this kind of agriculture, however, does not appear possible in the United States, for physical reasons lead us to conclude that it has already nearly, if not quite, reached its climax. In 1859-60, the supply from this quarter amounted to 4,675,770 bags, whereas the present year produced but 3,700,000, a disparity not to be accounted for by any of those fortuitous circumstances which regularly affect all production. And as regards the famous long-stapled cotton of the islands of South Carolina and Georgia, the above inference is still more forcibly and emphatically correct. The produce of inland districts is, in respect of quality, coarser and shorter in the staple than that nurtured by the sea-side. What is technically termed the Georgia Upland is of this description, and is accordingly adapted for spinning into stout yarns only. In proportion to their distance from the briny deep, the cotton-fields suffer abatement in reference to the quality of their yield. Twenty-five miles is the maximum limit, beyond which the character of the wool undergoes a marked deterioration. The finest seeds are therefore sown within this range, and perhaps the finest of all fructify on the small islands of Edisto, Wadmalan, and St. Helena, which fringe a portion of the Carolinian sea-board. The process of cultivation in lands and latitudes suited to the plant is neither costly nor difficult, but in the states of North America it is attended with considerable risk, and requires frequent and vigilant interference. In the two states to which I have so often alluded, the caterpillar is computed to devour the leaves once in every seven years, when, of course, the destruction of the crop is inevitable. There are worms, too, equally prejudical to the health of the plant, and in their depredations almost equally disastrous. Then rains and winds, which in these latitudes are excessively violent, inflict their share of mischief upon the ill-fated victim; so that, casting out of the account all floricultural sentimentalism for the plant itself, the grower must contrive for his own peace as best he may, and, in order to do so effectually, keep a sharp look-out, a book calculated upon these probabilities of evil, a temper proof against deferred profits, and a willingness to be written down by creditors among the bad and doubtful debts.
Albeit my intention is far from writing a practical treatise on the rearing of cotton, a few facts connected with the subject, conveyed in a few words, may be of some general interest. The quantity of seed sown to an acre is, on an average, about half a bushel. The first material care falling on the cultivator, after the plant has attained a certain amount of strength and elevation, is the joint operation of hoeing and cleaning. This latter consists in freeing it from grass and weeds, the spontaneous growth of which is generally rapid, and its effects so noxious that it must be dealt with by a summary process of ejectment or extirpation. This takes place between April and June. Then comes thinning, which involves toil and judgment, and is likewise performed chiefly during the act of hoeing. When the boles crack, which they do with a loud explosive noise, very appreciable by the ear, it is a signal that the season for plucking the fleecy treasure has arrived. This gathering the crop, which is also a work of time, delicacy and patience, peculiarly well adapted to the minute instrumentality of a child’s hand, commences about the middle of August, and is brought to completion with the month of November. As the value of the wool depends very mainly upon the cleaning or ginning, great attention should be given to this important operation, which is so differently accomplished on different estates, that it is often a principal cause of the variation in price of the same description of produce. It is thought that if the Egyptian cotton were thoroughly well ginned, and thus freed from the gross impurities with which it is commonly mixed, it would approach nearer in value to the genuine Sea Island than any other sort imported; but with the present imperfections in cleaning prevalent in Egypt, the innate quality of the material, which is excellent, undergoes a false and unnecessary deterioration. Of wool in this clean condition five hundred weight is the average yield of four acres of plantation.
As there have been great benefactors to the spinning and weaving departments of the economy of cotton, so now and then men of ingenuity and enterprise have sprung up meriting in the estimation of the planters the highest praise and the deepest gratitude, men whose head-work has served to mitigate bodily toil and appease mental anxieties, and whose cunning inventions, though less brilliant than those begotten of the special necessities of the manufacturer, have greatly facilitated production and multiplied its pecuniary returns. The difficulty which has occupied so much attention has been that of freeing the silky fibres within the pod from the husks, seeds, and other foreign substances with which they get encumbered. The names of Harvie, Eli Whitney, and Joseph Eubank, distinguished in connection with this and kindred objects, sound as sweetly in the ears of the growers of cotton wool as do those of Hargreaves, Cartwright, Crompton and Arkwright, in the ears of its manipulators. Though the ginner’s is usually a distinct calling from the planter’s, the intimacy of their relationship is such as to give the same melody and the same fragrance to the eulogiums conferred by either. But while the Arkwrights and their spinning-frames are elements in the affairs of the manufacturers, the producers and cleaners stick to the Whitneys and their ginning devices. In preparation for transmission to England the cotton after ginning is tightly packed in bags. In this state it arrives at the port of Liverpool, and is immediately warehoused by the brokers, a class of middlemen, whose business it is to negotiate sales to the manufacturers of Manchester. Once deposited at the factory, the reception it meets with begins with a sound thrashing. After beating it out, it is more carefully cleaned by an instrument known as the Scutcher. Then—to pursue its treatment under the hands of the manufacturer—it is carded, the effect of which, without staying to examine the details of the operation, is to abstract the shorter fibres and arrange those of uniform length which remain, in united parallels, upon which much of the success of subsequent manipulations depends. In this state the cotton now called “sliver,” undergoes a drawing process, and is afterwards still further attenuated, and at the same time slightly twisted by the “roving” or “slubbing” machine, when at last it is ready for spinning into yarn, through the agency of the mule for weft, and that of the throstle for twist. Weaving which so wonderfully conjoins in close and compact intimacy these filamentous creations of the spinning-frame, consists of twist for the warp, or lengthway, of the cloth, and weft for the thread with which this is traversed—a strange and better sort of playing at cross purposes, the issue of which is the strength of union. This weaving into piece goods as the diversities of cloth are styled, can be performed either by the hand or the power-loom, though it is needless to say in these days of Archimedean genius the latter is practically by far the more common alternative. After the web has been thus constructed, bleaching succeeds; after bleaching, dyeing; and upon dyeing follows printing; a description of which to be at all intelligible, or to do justice to so curious and elaborate a subject, would involve more time and space than either the reader or myself would deem allowable.
And now for a brief inspection into some of the chief marvels which from time to time have sprung up in aid of the cotton manufacture. I am not going to enumerate any large proportion of them, for their number is indeed legion.
Since 1800, no fewer than 1,440 patents, or thereabout, have been taken out, to say nothing of the standard inventions of our venerable fathers of spinning and weaving some years previously. Upon the principle, therefore, that every little helps, we may infer that by this time the several arts included in this complex branch of industry have attained to a considerable amount of perfection. It will be all that is required for the present purpose to touch lightly upon the most conspicuous and notable of these discoveries, and to exhibit their agglomerated results, as seen in the present condition of this great national pursuit.
- ↑ In 1821 Mehemet Ali introduced into Egypt the systematic cultivation of cotton. It is now largely consumed in the United Kingdom, and is so excellent in quality that the Sea Island cotton alone is held to surpass it.
- ↑ The area of the States appropriated mainly to the cultivation of cotton, exceeds four times that of Great Britain; or, to give another idea of its extensiveness, fancy twice that portion of the Russian Empire comprised in Europe, covered with cotton-fields; not forgetting, all this while, that, enormous as is the produce of such a domain, many large tracts of country in other regions contribute to meet the unappeasable consumption.