The American Historical Review/Volume 23/Reviews of Books/Cotton as a World Power

by Matthew Brown Hammond

Cotton as a World Power: a Study in the Economic Interpretation of History. By James A. B. Scherer, Ph.D., LL.D., President of Throop College of Technology. (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. 1917. Pp. 452. $2.00.)

President Scherer's idea in writing his history of cotton is found in the title which he has given his book—Cotton as a World Power. He seems to believe that there is a peculiar and intimate relation existing between the uses of cotton and the progress of civilization and growth of international relations. Cotton is, he says, "the world's Golden Fleece; the nations are bound together in its globe-engirdling web; so that when a modern economist concerns himself with the interdependence of nations, he naturally looks to cotton for his most effective illustration".

Whether cotton among fibres possesses any peculiar significance in the world's history, or is entitled to any higher rank as a civilizing force than, say, wool or flax, is perhaps a debatable subject, but in view of the numerous histories of cotton culture and cotton manufacture which have been written. President Scherer's reasons for calling this field of investigation "an unworked quarry of wealth" are not apparent. Nor can it be said that he has discovered any new and paying veins of ore. In spite of his references to researches in the Bodleian Library and the British Museum, his book contains no material drawn from new or unusual sources. All the references are to secondary authorities and most of them are to those well known to historians. It cannot even be said that the point of view from which he has approached his subject is original, or that he has given any new interpretation to his material. What he has done is to relate in a pleasing and popular style a wide array of events connected in one way or another with the history of the cotton plant.

The record begins with the discovery of cotton culture and cotton cultivation in India and the introduction of cotton fabrics into Europe by the armies of Alexander the Great, and continues down to the time when the Great War in Europe interrupted the orderly exports of cotton from the Southern States to European markets. The subjects which are dealt with at considerable' length are the Industrial Revolution in England; the introduction of cotton cultivation in the United States and its effect in delaying the disappearance of slavery; the invention of the cotton gin; the influence of cotton culture in national politics; the effect of the Civil War upon the cotton trade; the cotton famine in Europe; the revival of cotton culture in the South by free labor; the development of the cotton manufacture in the South and the social problems which have arisen as a consequence, and the prospects of successful cotton growing elsewhere than in southern United States.

Some of the important conclusions reached by the author and which, while not beyond dispute, are supported by plausible arguments, are that Eli Whitney, while the inventor of the cotton gin, was not the inventor of the "saw gin"; that the South did not make the best use of its cotton resources as a means of obtaining revenue during the Civil War; that child labor in Southern cotton mills is less detrimental than it was in New England mills or than it is in department stores; that the Great War has taught the Southern farmer the value of diversification of crops, and that cotton growing in California, in Egypt, and in other lands will probably become of sufficient importance in the near future to break the monopoly held by the South in the production of this staple.

Among the important subjects which it is surprising to find are not considered at sufficient length are the growth of the cotton-seed oil industry, the damage wrought by the boll-weevil and the efforts made to overcome this danger, and the increasing tendency to supplant negro labor by white labor in the cultivation of cotton.

If President Scherer's book be regarded not as an original piece of investigation in the field of economic history but as a useful summary of the researches of other writers who have dealt with the influence of cotton in the world's history, it can be warmly commended as a work interesting to read and fairly reliable in its facts and generalizations. There are some useful statistical appendixes, a handy bibliography, and a good index.

M. B. Hammond.