LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 1G5 



European govevuments are putting in the way of a part of tliis trade. 

 Tliey say that our swine products are dangerous to health, and have deter- 

 mined to shut them out, whereas we are quite sure that their assertions are 

 groundless, that they put them forward simply because they dare not avow 

 their real object in prohibiting the importation and thus making food dearer 

 than it otherwise would be. What is the true explanation of such action on 

 the part of foreign governments will appear later on. That action is regarded, 

 and rightly regarded, as a serious blow at our foreign commerce. It not only 

 checks the natural overflow of a considerable portion of our surplus products, 

 leading to a healthy regulation of prices; but it also threatens to deprive 

 us of a means of meeting a large part of our indebtedness abroad. That is 

 to say, if we buy we must sell, just as the reverse is true, that if we would 

 sell we must buy. In the long run, our exports pay for our imports. 

 Now, in an average of recent years the value of our swine products exported 

 amounts to over 80 millions of dollars per annum. It is this vast item against 

 which foreign attacks are being made. It is not strange, then, that congress 

 is talking of various schemes by which to bring about the removal of the 

 restrictions or prohibitions of this trade. It will be convenient to postpone 

 this topic for the present and at once take up the growth and present dimen- 

 sions of the trade under review. 



HISTORICAL REVIEW. 



Raw cotton has for eighty years been an important item in our list of exports. 

 Sixty years ago the value of the average annual exportation was more than 

 twenty-five million dollars. From 1835 to 1850 in only three years did the 

 exports of cotton fall below fifty millions; while at the latter year it had risen 

 to seventy-two millions, and in the next year, 1851, it rose with a bound to 

 one hundred and twelve millions. The civil war greatly checked this trade, 

 but with marvelous rapidity it recovered after the restoration of peace. The 

 greatest crop before 1859 amounted to 3,500,000 bales, but under the better 

 conditions of freedom of labor brought by the war and emancipation, the cul- 

 ture of cotton thrived so amazingly that in 18S3 there was harvested a crop of 

 over 7,000,000 bales* — just about twice as great as any crop before the war. 



Of the enormous crop of 1882 the value of the exports amounted to $247,- 

 000,000. This one item alone constituted over 30 per cent, of our total 

 domestic exports. 



We sell every year to foreign buyers about 70 per cent of our whole cotton 

 crop. Indeed, ever since the great stimulous to this branch of agriculture 

 given by the invention of Whitney's cotton gin, with scarcely any exception, 

 we have disposed of two-thirds of our production. In the year 1840 the expor- 

 tation rose to nearly 85 per cent. 



Next to America in supplying the world witli this important staple come 

 India, Egypt, and Brazil, but a long way behind ; for two-thirds of the raw 

 cotton worked up in European factories is the product of our southern plan- 

 tations. England is by far the heaviest buyer of this, as of all our raw 

 materials. The statistics of the Treasury Department for 1882 show that 

 English merchants took fully 70 per cent, of all raw cotton exported. A 

 small part of this passes through English dealers as raw material to other 

 nations of Europe, though by far the greater part is first subjected to one or 



*This was an advance of 2!) per cent over the previous year, when 5,500,000 bales were harvested. 

 Of this latter crop, which was a short one, over 3,500,000 bales were sent abroad, the exports being 

 valued at 5200,000,000. 



