THE COTTON INDUSTRY IN BRAZIL. 673 



direct domestic consumption is about 1,102,000 pounds annually, 

 which, with the amount made up by the factories and used in the 

 country, makes the whole consumption of raw material in Brazil 

 18,481,600 pounds annually since the factories began operation. 



Production. — The total export from the whole empire from 

 1851 to 1876, inclusive, was 1,095,304,075 pounds. Add 27,900,000 

 pounds for the direct domestic consumption for the same period, 

 and 69,270,400 pounds for the amount used by the factories during 

 the four years from 1872 to 1876, and we have as the production 

 of cotton by the whole empire, during the twenty-four years from 

 1851 to 1876, an average of 74,680,700 pounds per annum, or about 

 twice as much as that of the State of Arkansas. 



During the civil war in the United States, the exportation of 

 cotton from Brazil assumed proportions hitherto unknown to that 

 country. From the year 1850 to 1861 the average annual amount 

 of cotton exported was 28,300,000 pounds. The exports rapidly 

 increased from 21,400,000 in 1801 to 102,600,000 in 1868. As the 

 United States recovered from the effects of the war, the amount 

 of cotton exported from Brazil, although still large and fluctuat- 

 ing from year to year, was gradually decreasing, until in 1876 the 

 exportation had fallen to 63,609,000 pounds. An impetus, how- 

 ever, was given to cotton culture in Brazil by the civil war in the 

 United States which has been of great permanent benefit to the 

 industry in that country. 



Cotton in Brazil grows on its native soil, and, it is to be pre- 

 sumed, under climatic and other conditions best adapted to its 

 highest development. But, though Brazil began to export cotton 

 more than a hundred years before the United States, her annual 

 product to-day is only about one eighteenth as much as our own. 

 To be sure, the population is only one fifth as large as ours, but 

 there almost the whole population lives in a cotton-growing 

 region, while only a small part of our people live in the cotton 

 belt. 



Under normal conditions Brazil can scarcely become a com- 

 petitor of the United States in cotton production ; but the disap- 

 pearance of slavery and the consequent adoption of some system 

 of small farming will, in the near future, materially increase the 

 present production. Slavery has fostered a remarkable conserva- 

 tism in agriculture, which must, with the aid of educated planters, 

 soon disappear. Cotton-factories are already rapidly springing 

 up and prospering, and the day is not far distant when they will 

 supply the Brazilian market. 



The same agricultural tools and methods now employed by the 

 average planters were in use more than two hundred years ago — ■ 

 methods learned from their Portuguese ancestors and from their 

 African slaves. It is far from my intention, however, to criticise 



TOL. XL. — 46 



