18J: 



for example, which will not bear transportation to any considerable dis- 

 tance, and to procure, even an inferior quality of which, may justify the 

 extra effort necessary to force them out of their native latitude ; and here 

 the economy of the experiment ends. 



I may be mistaken, but I will hazard the opinion that the experiments 

 in flax cotton, will prove scarcely more successful than those already 

 alluded to. If I understand the subject, the objection to flax, as ordi- 

 narily prepared, is, the difficulty of manufacturing it by machinery, and 

 that that difficulty is owing to the firmness and strength of the fibre ; 

 and, that the object in cottonizing it is, to rid it of those qualities — the 

 every qualities which constitute its chief excellence as a natural product. 

 I confess I am slow to believe that, when nature has taken the pains to 

 bestow upon a particular product, excellent qualities peculiar to itself, 

 we can possibly gain any thing by destroying those qualities. It is true 

 that natural adaptation to the powers of machinery, is a desirable quality 

 in the raw material ; but when nature has furnished two similar pro- 

 ducts the one possessing this very adaptation and the other destitute of it, 

 but superior to it in other respects, it may well be questioned whether 

 she ever intended the two should be confounded. When we consider in 

 what lavish profusion appropriate climes produce real cotton, it may be 

 difficult to imagine what advantage can be anticipated from taking a 

 naturally superior product and reducing it to the quality of cotton, 

 except it be to show that "some things can be done as well as others." 



As a general rule, nature does not bestow upon any product superior 

 qualities, as compared with others of a similar nature, without a corres- 

 ponding draw-back as to quantity. A bushel of wheat contains more 

 farinaceous matter than a bushel of potatoes, and it requires more land 

 and labor to produce it ; the heaviest fleece is never the finest wool ; and 

 so on in a multitude of examples that might be named. The first ques- 

 tion then, in regard to the economy of flax-cotton, is, whether the same 

 amount of land, capital and industry devoted to the culture of northern 

 flax and manufacturing it into cotton, will produce as great a quantity 

 of fibrous matter as it would if devoted to the culture of natural cotton ? 

 If not, the next question is, whether the flax, when reduced nominally 

 to the quality of cotton, still retains enough of its superior qualities to 

 balance the deficiency in quality ? If not, then it is clearly a bad spec- 

 ulation and must inevitably prove a failure. The first question seems to 

 receive a negative answer, not only from the general fact that vegetable 



