COTTON. (Gossypeumherbaceum.) 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 to the mallow family.
Botanists are uncer tain as to the number of distinct species of this plant. De Can dolle 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 bad 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 vito,1 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.