298 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



export, if the fine yarns are included in their import, which can 

 only be made for them in Lancashire. There are, as you are 

 aware, a few cotton-factories in Russia and a few in India, but 

 their product in ratio to the consumption of the continent of Asia 

 is utterly insignificant. 



The number of people who are at this time clothed in hand- 

 spun and hand-woven fabrics is more than double the number of 

 those who yet purchase the fabrics which are made in our facto- 

 ries or in those of any other nation. I made a computation a few 

 years since, and I think the conditions have not greatly changed, 

 to this effect : that all the cotton fabrics exported from Europe 

 and from the United States to China would only suffice to clothe 

 sixty to seventy millions out of a computed population of four 

 hundred millions even at the ratio of only two and a half pounds 

 of cotton to the head. I consider that ratio incorrect, although it 

 is commonly used. 



A large part of China in which there is a very dense popula- 

 tion, and to which most of our drills and sheetings are sent, is in 

 the same latitude as the northern United States. It is not as 

 cold, but yet it is a cold country, and the common people are clad 

 wholly in cotton fabrics. Here are one of their coats and some 

 of their other garments. You can judge for yourself whether or 

 not they consume more than two and a half pounds per head. 

 This coat alone weighs nearly four pounds. 



At five pounds per head, which is a much more reasonable 

 estimate, the factory-made fabrics of this country and of Europe 

 would not suffice to clothe more than ten per cent of the popula- 

 tion of China. There has been an ill-defined dread lest China 

 should build cotton-factories and then should undertake to clothe 

 us with the products of the cheap labor of the " heathen 

 Chinee." 



Now, entirely aside from the fact that low-priced labor is not 

 cheap labor, and that high-priced labor is cheap because more 

 effective in making goods at low cost, I venture to ask if any of 

 my readers ever bought or spun any Chinese cotton ? I think 

 very few of the present generation have had any experience even 

 with Surats or India cotton. I think those who know even what 

 India cotton is will not dread any serious competition from that, 

 and the very few perhaps I am the only one who ever bought 

 any Chinese cotton will after that experience lay aside all fear of 

 Chinese competition in the contest for supremacy in the cotton 

 manufacture. It is the whitest, cleanest, and most honestly 

 packed, but also the shortest, meanest, and most worthless cotton 

 of which I ever attempted to draw the staple or to put through a 

 factory. 



The Appalachian chain, gathering the moisture from the Gulf 



