INFLL ENCES CONTROLLING DEVELOPMENT. The influences controlling the establishment of the textile industry in a given country are prima rily the supply of the raw material and the adaptability of the people to a manufacturing life. Among the earliest forms of machinery are the hand-loom and spinning-wheel: and as sheep may be, and usually are, raised in any country where clothing must be warm, it is not surprising to find in the world's earliest his tory records of the production of fabrics of wool; these came to be known as homespun, be cause made from yarn spun at home and woven by hand by some member of the household. That the woolen industry should spring up in primitive communities, and among people too poor to purchase material for clothing, is only natural; and as the comforts of life became more accessible and labor became diversified and specialized, owing to the increase in popu lation, the tendency was to produce fabrics for sale and in such quantities as required the use of more improved machinery; and in order to further reduce the cost large numbers of ma chines were collected and there resulted the mill or factory. That the woolen industry has secured a foothold in all countries in which wool fabrics are needed for clothing, with the exception of the polar regions, then, not surprising.
Cotton being a sub-tropical plant and the lint being separable with ease from the seed by hand, and as the fibre can be spun and woven in as simple a way as wool was manufactured in primitive communities, it would seem that the cotton industry should have developed near the source of the raw material ; but the sections of the different countries suited to raising cot ton were largely inhabited by people with agri cultural instincts, consequently the industry has developed in more thickly settled communities and in sections remote from the cotton field. One important feature in the early development of the cotton industry in factories was the fact that fabrics of cotton must necessarily be light in weight and of comparatively fine yarns. conse quently the proportion of labor cost to the cost of production was much greater than in the production of fabrics of wool, and the tendency was to concentrate in their production; this condition also stimulated the invention of labor saving machinery. The result is that virtually
the whole manufacture is in the hands of in vested capital, and the tendency is for it to ex pand in communities where it is al•eady estab lished, and, unless favored by special advantages, to languish or to be neglected in sections where it is newly introduced.
In the thickly settled centres of India the in dustry had its greatest growth in a semi-tropi cal country and in a country fully adapted to the production of the fibre, yet, strange as it may seem. the inhabitants make better laborers in the factories than they do cultivators of the crop. Those who do follow agricultural pursuits are content to do so in a small way, simply raising the product for individual use rather than farming in a commercial way. This condition was recently referred to by Sir George Watt, reporter to the Government of India on Economic Products. as follows: "Like many other coun tries in the East and Far East, India cannot he treated geographically, for in every instance the people on the soil must be taken into consider ation. In places like, say Africa, districts may be found where the planter can settle on virgin well and find natives who are only too willing to work for wages; but in India a more civilized, we might say more dignified, set of people are to be found, and these natives prefer to manage the soil without European intervention. This feeling is illustrated in a higher stage of the in dustry, where the best and largest cotton mills are owned by natives or are operated by native companies." In China, Japan, the East Indies, and Mexico there has been of recent years a considerable introduction or development of the industry, due almost entirely to the adaptability of the people to a manufacturing life. Yet it is doubt ful if the movement would have been as success ful in some of these cases if there had not been encouragement in the way of Government meas ures.