FIBER INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 15 



tery making and devices thereon, musical instruments, and above 

 all house structure and modes of burial. More remote perhaps would 

 be survivals of language, and if the invaders had a written one, the 

 characters, whether phonetic or ideographic, would have been left 

 in the enduring rock inscriptions. If now a study of the aborigines 

 of the western hemisphere from Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego 

 fails to reveal even a remote suggestion of resemblance to any of 

 these various matters above enumerated, their absence must in some 

 way be accounted for by Asiaticists. 



+«» 



THE POSSIBLE FIBEK INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED 



STATES. 



By CHAELES EICHAEDS DODGE. 



THE wealth of any community is dependent on the variety and 

 extent of its industries, the utilization of local natural resources, 

 and the employment of the labor of all classes of its population. In 

 locations of successful industrial operations the farmer derives in- 

 creased incomes, the value of his products is greater, his lands of 

 higher value, and the wages of agricultural labor larger. The rural 

 population contiguous to large towns, therefore, is more prosperous 

 than the larger farming contingent more remote from manufacturing 

 or industrial centers. The farmers of the first class are prosperous 

 because they have a home market for their dairy products, fruits, 

 vegetables, and other " truck," which they are able to produce, for 

 the most part, on small areas by high culture, while those of the sec- 

 ond class are forced to expend their energies on commercial com- 

 modities such as cotton, wool, meat, grain, etc., with long hauls in 

 transportation," and with heavy competition, international as well as 

 domestic. 



In times of depression, or when competition has grown too heavy, 

 the cultivation of certain staples may cease to be remunerative, and 

 the unfortunate producer is compelled to diversify his agriculture, or 

 adopt some other means of livelihood. 



Just such a misfortune has overtaken many farmers in the United 

 States within the past few years. Within two years, in fact, wheat 

 has been a drug in the market, while corn has been cheaper in some 

 sections than coal, and cotton is now so low that it hardly pays to 

 grow it, without considering the necessity, for the Southern farmer, 

 of competing against the seventy-five thousand bales of Egyptian cot- 

 ton which enter our ports in a year. Confronted with these condi- 

 tions, there never has been a time when farmers were more anxious to 



