COTTON.
Dixie-land is the land of cotton. Draw a line on the map from the mouth of the James River, at Norfolk, Virginia, west to Cairo, Illinois, and on through Memphis, and Little Rock to Dallas, Texas. Below it lies the region of profitable cot ton culture of the United States. "The Cotton Belt" occupies the southeastern quarter of our country, touching the Atlantic and the Gulf, and reaching nearly to the western boundary of Texas. Only the lower half of Florida and the delta of the Mississippi are left out, and they are offset by a cotton region in the new \Vest that centres at the point where Utah, Nevada, and Arizona meet.
"Of the 17,782,440 bales making up the 1904-5 cotton crop of the world, the United States grew 13,420,440 bales." If Mr. C. W. Burkett, author of the great book, "Cotton," is sure of his figures, we see that the United States grew in that year three times as much cotton as all other countries put together. Cotton is the principal crop in ten states of the South. Yet the industry is capable of wonderful expansion, and the next half century will see the cotton yield doubled without extend ing the territory. Only one acre in seventeen in the Cotton Belt now grows cotton. The average yield is less than two hundred pounds of "lint," or fibre, per acre. Many large cotton plantations, under careful cultivation, average soo to 800 pounds of lint per acre. The primitive methods of growing cotton must be reformed; then the yield will keep pace with the growing demand for more that comes from the mills and factories. More land can be planted to cotton, when the world needs more than good farming can produce on the present acreage. The supremacy of our country as the producer of cotton will never be taken away. This is the opinion of the best authorities in this and other parts of the world.
The reason we are confident that more cotton will soon be needed is that civilization is opening doors and entering regions that have until now had no contact with the world outside. Savage peoples are receiving strange visitors from over seas, whether they wish to or not. Africa, the dark continent, and China, with its millions of inhabitants, have been thrown open recently.
"It is estimated that of the world's population of i,soo,000,000, about soo,000,000 regularly wear clothes, about 750,000,00o are partially clothed, and zso,000,000 habitually go almost naked. To clothe the entire population of the world would require to-day 42,000,00o bales of cotton, of soo pounds each. It therefore seems likely that the cotton industry will go on expand ing until the whole of the inhabited earth is clothed with the products of its looms." The cotton experts of the Department of Agriculture at Washington thus reason and predict the need and the means of its fulfilment.
The fibre that clothes the multitudes must not only be strong and soft and flexible; it must be cheap. Cotton is all of these. Cotton imitates the silkiness of silk, the wooliness of wool, the strength and sheen of fine linen. It is all things to all men. We know it in a half a hundred forms in our homes — this useful, beautiful fibre. We wake in the morning, and see the sunrise through parted curtains of muslin. These and the roller shade at the window are both cotton. The sheets, pillow cases, mattress, and coverlid are cotton. Turkish towels and bath rug are cotton. After our bath we dress in clothes of cotton, if the season permits. In the coldest winters we wear some garments of cotton. Our buttons are sewed on with cotton thread. Through the day we see and use cotton fabrics. Towels, tablecloths, and napkins are of linen, but rarely is it in common use in other ways in our day. It costs too much.
Cotton cloth is prosaic and coarse in the calicoes and muslins of the ordinary kinds. But some of the muslins of India were of cobweb fineness "webs of woven wind," the poet has called them. The Hindoos two thousand years ago were produc ing, on their simple looms, fabrics whose fineness cannot be exceeded by the best modern looms. Exquisite cotton fabrics, dyed in many harmon ious colors, were sent from Mexico to the Spanish monarch by Cortez, who rifled the treasures of the Aztecs.