COTTON. (Gossypiumherbaceuni.) This, one of the most important of agricultural plants, and cultivated in every civilized and semi-civilized country of the globe where it will mature, belongs tothe mallow family.
Botanists Botanists are uncer tain as to the number of distinct species of this plant. De Can done describes thir teen species, in his Prodromus, and men tions six others, but considers them all un certain. Swartz thinks they may be all from one original species; of which many varie ties have been pro duced by cultivation, and by the effects of different climates. The plants inhabit dif ferent parts of trop ical Asia, Africa and America, and many of them are cultivated for their cotton in cli mates adapted to their growth. It' is believed to be indigenous to Asia. as well as to America, but is cul tivated largely in most of the sub-tropical countries, of both conti nents. It requires a certain duration of warm weather, as well as an amount of moisture, to perfect its seeds and, in the United States, can not be profitably cultivated north of the latitude of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. Cotton is divided, commercially, into Sea Island—fur nishing fibre of the most superior quality—and Upland. The varieties are numerous, many localities having one or more considered as peculiarly adapted to the soil and situation. Cot ton cultivation has grown up in the United States almost entirely within the last hundred years, for, until the invention of Arkwright, in 1769, for the spinning of cotton, in England, and the spinning-jenny of Hargreaves, in 1770, the fibre could not be made available in a great in dustrial way. Comparatively little cotton had been raised in our Southern states previous to 1798, when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. Up to that time the difficulty of 'freeing the cot ton from the seed had been such that one hand could clean but a pound a day, and even at the high price of twenty-five or thirty cents a pound it could not be made profitable. By Whitney's invention a hand, instead of one pound, could clean 360 pounds a day. At about the same time steam was introduced as a motive power in England, and that, with the great improvements in carding and spinning, enabled one man to do the work which it had previously required 2,200 men to do, in the same time, by the old methods. Machinery had introduced an entirely new con dition of things. The effect of it was to produce a vital change in the state of affairs at the South, and cotton growing very rapidly grew up to immense importance, constituting about a third part of the whole exports of the country. Each decade showed an increase of about 100 per cent in production, till, in 1840, it had reached 744,000,000 pounds, six times the product of 1820. The quantity of cotton exported in 1792 was only 138,328 pounds. The quantity exported in 1860 was 1,765,115,735 pounds, or 4,412,789 bales of 400 pounds each, but the quantity pro duced in 1860 was 2,079,230,800 pounds, or 5,198,077 bales. This production had fallen off somewhat in 1870, when the quantity produced was reported as 3,011,996 bales, or 1,204,798,400 pounds. The statistician of the United States Department of Agriculture, in 1876, compiled exhaustively on cotton, from which we quote: In 1858 and 1860 the receipts from America con stituted four-fifths of the British imports. In 1863 they amounted to a fraction of one per cent. ; in 1864, one and a half per cent., and in 1862 but two and a half per cent. Starting at thirty-seven per cent. in 1866, in 1876 the pro portion reached sixty-two per cent., and the pro portion of India cotton had fallen to eighteen and a half per cent. The price, as an index of quality, tells the story of India's inability to compete with the United States far more elo quently than all special pleadings, since climate and climatic conditions "speak by the card." The average value per pound, in pence, of British imports, is thus given: American seed and American planters have in vain been introduced into India; the fibre inevit ably deteriorates, becomes short, dry, harsh, and brittle, with a low rate of fibre product. The details of production, during the two periods named, are thus given, the pounds per bale being the average net weight of Liverpool receipts, which include a large portion of each crop : in the future when the cotton area shall be an essential part of a rotation, and fertilizers shall be not the least important product of the plantation, and two bales are made to grow where one grew before, as can easily be accomplished on many acres of present slovenly cultivation. In relation to the cotton crops of 1877, 1878, 1879 and 1880, we find that in the first named year was estimated at 4,500,000 bales; in 1878 it was 5,200,000 bales; in 1879, it was 5.073,530 bales; and in 1880, 5,761,252 bales. As to cost of pro duction and price, in 1876, we find the State averages as follows, in cents and fractions, per pound, of Upland cotton: Few are aware of the rapidity in cotton produc tion since the prostration of the war period. It is not generally known that the aggregate pro duct since 1865 exceeds that of a similiar period prior to 1861. If we include the crop of 1876,
the excess of its production in the period of twelve years, from 1865 to 1876 inclusive, is about 2,000,000 bales more than from 1849 to 1860, inclusive. Leaving out the large crop of 1876, similar periods of eleven years make a com parison also favoring the production of the later. The aggregate of the crop movement of the former is 36,169,117 bales, or 15,869,176,615 pounds, averaging 3, 288,101 bales per annum, or 1,442,652, 419 pounds. A similar statement for 1865 to 1875, inclusive, reads, 36,331,582 bales, or 15,939, 344,833 pounds, averaging 3,302,871 bales per annum, or 1,449,031,348 pounds. An average increase of nearly 15,000 per annum. The great crop of 1859 was but two per cent. larger than that of 1875. Three crops since the war are each larger than any prior to it, with the above single exception ; these are in order of size, 1875, 1870, 1873. The crop of 1872 was larger than that of 1858, and every crop preceding the latter is sur passed by every crop of the seven past years, with one exception, 1871. This is a remarkable result, which is a surprise to planters themselves, and an indication of what can be accomplished This gives to Texas the largest proportion of profit, or eleven mills per pound ; Arkansas, nine; Tennessee, eight; the others two to five; the average slightly exceeding half a cent, being $2.60 per average bale; making the net profit to the cultivators $11,500,000 in round numbers, in an aggregate of about 205,000,000. This is within a fraction of six per cent. of the gross receipts and, if assumed to be substantially correct, is too small a margin for a good season. It illustrates the necessity of increased returns. How shall they be obtained? By increasing the yield and diminishing the cost of supplies. Both ends are reached by a single operation: the adoption of a restorative rotation, which involves animal production and green manuring•, a cheap ening of fertilizers and supplies for man and beast, a partial protection of the soil from wash ing and waste, a large yield at a minimum cost, and increase of fertility instead of exhaustion. The seed of cotton yields a valuable oil and is now largely expressed for this purpose. The cake or residue, after pressing, is valuable as a manure. For a long time, in the South, the seed was used whole as manure Of late years, however, cotton seed oil has come to be a mer chantable article, and large quantities are now yearly exported to the North for the oil it con tains. Large quantities of oil are also beginning to be made in the South. With improved sys tems of cultivation and careful rotation there is no reason why this crop should be an exhausting one, and the experience of the last few years shows it not to be so, where an intelligent sys tem of cropping is practiced. The greatest drawback to the profitable cultivation of cotton is really the insects injurious to the plant. Of these the boll worm is one of the most destruc tive. Another is the necessity of diversified farming, and manure. Upon this question one of the reports of the Commissioner of Agriculture says. Every farmer should rely mainly upon his stock for manures; hogs should be fattened upon field-pease; and horses should be penned at night in deeply-littered yards. Accretions to the man ure pile may be made from a great variety of sources, including all decaying vegetable and animal matter, waste and wash from the kitchen, muck from the swamps, and pine straw or leaves from the forest. There are many special fertil izers in the South ample for a perpetual supply of all possible drain upon the resources of the soil. The coast-line from Virginia to Texas, including all the sounds, inlets, bays, and estuaries, has an aggregate extent of thousands of miles, and every mile can furnish abundant stores of fish and sea weed for manuring adjacent fields. Oyster-shell lime is also plenty and cheap in the tidewater regions. No mineral manure is more abundant than marl, which is found in the whole tide water section of the Atlantic coast, in the Mississippi Valley and in Texas. It underlies wide belts at various depths, often very near the surface; it is, in many localities, easily obtained in large quantities; and its value, though vari able, is undoubted for application for soils needing lime. Gypsum can be obtained from native beds at no great distance from any locality in the South. Lime is abundant in the mountain valleys from Virginia to northern Alabama; and the rotten-limestone formations of Alabama and Mississippi are unsurpassed for fertility. All these home resources should be used in bringing up the average cotton yield from one hundred and ninety to five hundred pounds per acre, and obtaining from half of the present acreage all of the fibre needed, leaving free a sufficient area to produce the bread, the fruits, the vegetables, the beef and mutton, necessary for the home popula tion, and a surplus of the lighter products for exportation.