296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



if crude iron and crude steel could be had at lower prices in this 

 country than in Europe ; yet that is what is more likely to oc- 

 cur than anything else, and that time would be greatly hastened 

 by the instant removal of duties on ore and coal, and perhaps by 

 the immediate removal of every duty on pig-iron, although pru- 

 dence might require a period of five years or so to carry out the 

 latter policy by successive reduction. 



I think we have been protecting the machinists, engine-builders, 

 and ship-owners of Great Britain, and retarding the progress of 

 our own, by keeping up a disparity in the price of the materials 

 which form the chief element of cost from fifty to a hundred per 

 cent higher in this country than they have been there. How can 

 we expect to keep the control of the home market on machinery 

 when the duty on the materials is fifty to a hundred per cent 

 higher than on the machine itself ? I think it is time this ques- 

 tion was taken out of politics and settled by sensible men in a 

 sensible way ; but that may be a visionary theory, which I may 

 not live to see reduced to practice. 



I speak of this subject because it has a most important bearing 

 upon the question which has been put to me. We can readily 

 overstock our own market, which is small compared with the de- 

 mand of the world. Glance at the accompanying pictures which 

 represent the present conditions of the cotton manufacture of the 

 great empire of China. In No. 1 is seen the cotton growing ; in 

 No. 2, the clearing from the seed by snapping a bow-string with 

 the hand, which gave the name of " bowed Georgia " to Southern 

 cotton before Whitney invented the saw gin; No. 3 shows the 

 press ; No. 4 the spinning-wheel, No. 5 the warper, and No. 6 the 

 hand loom, as they have been in use since prehistoric times. In 

 one of these pictures there is a bit of evidence of manual dexterity 

 which is hardly credible : one woman appears to be spinning 

 three strands from three separate rovings on one wheel. 



The latest and most authentic computation of the population 

 of the globe is fourteen hundred millions. The manufacturing or 

 machine-using nations of the world that is to say, the nations 

 which have to any considerable extent adopted the factory system 

 of making textile fabrics consist mainly of the inhabitants of 

 this country, of Canada, of Great Britain, France, Germany, Bel- 

 gium, Holland, and Switzerland, numbering in all about two 

 hundred millions. 



The only nation, and, in fact, perhaps the only country, which 

 makes cotton fabrics to any extent in excess of its own consump- 

 tion is England. We import more cotton fabrics than we export, 

 but they are chiefly of the finer kinds, or else they are laces, em- 

 broideries, and "the like. I am not quite sure, but I think that 

 even France and Germany import more cotton fabrics than they 



