Cotton was no stranger to these parts of the world, although it 

 was a stranger perhaps to the present generation. During the 

 American war there was a movement started here to resuscitate 

 cotton growing, but it was given up. He did not think that that 

 movement was so well organised as the present movement, and 

 the circumstances were entirely different. At that time they had 

 to deal with a state of affairs which was unusual and temporary. 

 The present time was altogether different in this respect that the 

 demand had been gradually overtaking the supply for some time 

 and, therefore, there was much more hope of the present movement 

 not proving merely a temporary one as the movement of 1862 

 1863, and 1864. 



He believed that the firm which he represented in England was 

 the first firm to use Sea Island cotton grown in the West Indies — 

 at any rate during the present movement. That cotton possessed 

 very good qualities and very bad ones, and he intended to be per- 

 fectly frank with them and to tell them how they found it from 

 the consumer's point of view. Sir Daniel Morris met him in Man- 

 chester on the 4th of July and he and Sir Gerald Strickland asked 

 him (Mr. Oliver) to come out to the West Indies and speak to the 

 planters, telling them how the English people found their cotton, 

 and what they wanted and what they did not want. After a great 

 deal of consideration he consented to come to the West Indies, 

 and he was exceedingly glad that he had come. If he was only 

 able to teach as much as he had learnt, then he thought he would 

 have done a little good by coming out. 



The chief difficulty they had with the West Indian cotton was 

 its mixed character — long and short, coarse and fine, strong and 

 weak cotton, all in the same bag and, if it had not been for the 

 interest taken in the West Indian cotton by Mr. Charles Wolsten- 

 holme in assorting them, it was doubtful whether they would have 

 been used at all. Mixed cotton was very unpopular, and if it had 

 not been that the last year was a time of phenomenal scarcity of 

 cotton it was probable that this kind of cotton would not have 

 been tried — at any rate by the general market. 



He had been greatly interested in cotton experiments, and he 

 had used Sea Island cotton grown in Fiji, Tahiti, Solomon Islands 

 and other places, and he had also used Sea Island cotton, grown 

 in Egypt ; and he and others had found that there was a consider- 

 ably larger amount of waste in the West Indian cotton than in 

 cotton grown in the American Sea Islands and the other places 

 mentioned. The percentage of waste in the West Indian cotton 

 was II per cent, greater in some instances. Instead of getting 60 

 lbs. of cotton yarn out of 1 00 lbs, of cotton they got less than 50 

 per cent. This was caused almost entirely by the presence of 

 unripe fibre, and they should be careful not to pick the cotton until 

 it was properly ripe. 



In Barbados, St. Vincent, St. Kitts, and Nevis, they had been 

 examining cotton which had been ratooned and they had come to 



