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tion amounted to 31,443,821 souls. Assuming the same ratio of increase our population in 1885 will be over 66,000,000, and in the year 1900 will be over 103,000,000. Assuming the estimate heretofore made of consumption of cotton in machine goods for the United States at 12 pounds per head, it will be apparent that within the short period of fifteen years two millions of bales of 400 pounds each will be required, and in 30 years 3,100,000 bales will be required of the same average to clothe our own people. I have no means of correctly ascertaining the probable increase in the populations of other nations of the earth, but their present probable cotton-consuming capacity is reckoned as follows:
| SAY FOR | POPULATION. | POUNDS. | ||
| Great Britain and Ireland, 9 lb. per head | 30,000,000 | 270,000,000 | ||
| France, 4 lb. per head | 38,000,000 | 152,000,000 | ||
| Asia (including Islands), 1 lb. per head | 785,000,000 | 785,000,000 | ||
| Australia (including Islands), 1 lb. per head | ||||
| Polynesia and Egypt, 1 lb. per head | ||||
| Rest of Europe, 1 lb. per head | 226,000,000 | 226,000,000 | ||
| South America, &c., 1 lb. per head | 40,000,000 | 40,000,000 | ||
| 119,000,000 | 1,473,000,000 | |||
| Out of this population it is estimated that only six hundred millions wear cotton. If we add stocks held over in various places of the world, and that manufactured by hand at 600,000,000 | ||||
| It would show that2,073,000,000 of pounds—or 5,856,000 bales of 354 pounds, exclusive of the United States—are now required to meet the annual wants of the cotton wearing world. | ||||
Hence, I ask, if it is probable that other countries, though aided and encouraged by your association, will furnish sufficient cheap cotton without still drawing largely on that of American production? I think not. No little of the wealth and commercial prosperity of Great Britain has been built up by the Cotton States of America. The cotton mills of Lancashire were built principally to spin our cotton, and regular and cheap supplies of raw cotton can still be furnished by us for all the world, if we can only procure sufficient labour. In 1860 the Cotton States furnished two-thirds the quantity of cotton, and three-fourths of that which entered the arena of commerce. In 1849 the quantity grown in these States was only 2,445,793 bales of ginned cotton, of 400 lbs. each; but in 1859 it had increased to 5,196,793 bales, or more than 100 per cent, in ten years—and that, too, without any additional stimulus of high prices. With requisite labour and capital it can now be speedily increased above this figure. Considering the rapid increase of consumption in Germany and the North of Europe during the past year, would it not be wise in your association to look into the practicability of establishing cotton-growing companies in the Southern States of America, to examine into the feasibility of such corporations as safe investments—and to report to Manchester spinners and to Continental capitalists the result of such investigations, and the chances of thereby largely increasing ' Cotton Supply?' I can make known to you planters in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, owning cotton plantations now prepared for cultivation, who are ready and willing to grow cotton on shares with capitalists, and who are willing to receive their rents pro rata from what cotton may be grown on lands thus leased. Arrangements can furthermore be made with the owners of improved cotton lands, to work them on shares for a term of years—the one party furnishing the land and plantation implements—while the other finds the labour and animals requisite to its proper cultivation," &c.
