200 WILD AND CULTIVATED COTTONS 



the indigenous cottons. Unskilled and impecunious cultivators were 

 in India left to compete against the enlightened agriculture of 

 America unskilled because ignorant of the principles by which they 

 might have developed the produce to meet the best market, instead 

 of being content to allow it to drift into an inferior position. As 

 matters stand, they may now be said to glory in that they are able to 

 dispose of a worthless staple at remunerative rates. 



Improve- That improvement towards a higher and better paid standard is 



men * possible may be accepted as fully demonstrated by past experience, 

 and by the fact of superior races of cotton being found where atten- 

 tion is given to the crop, and still more so by the further fact that 

 within the regions of superior production the cultivators are fully 

 aware that degeneration occurs with neglect and with the prolonged 

 continuance of production of any particular form on the same soil. 

 Selection of seed and the cultivation of specially selected plants for 

 the supply of seed might easily improve the Indian crop of any 

 district by 50 per cent. 



Uni. For many years past the Indian cotton trade has been drifting 



formity fafo & res tricted groove. The produce goes to mills that do not wish 

 for a superior or long staple, but only a pure one (that is, not a mix- 

 ture of several lengths of staple), so that it may fairly be said many 

 of the largest buyers discourage improvement. The dangers of a 

 one-sided trade of this nature need scarcely be mentioned. India is 

 thus destroyed as a possible country of supply for the English mills. 

 The Indian mills are at the same time compelled to look to foreign 

 countries for their present or future supplies of superior staples, and 

 are thus more or less confined in their operations to one class of 

 goods. It might almost be said that progression is deliberately 

 stultified, the labours of centuries ruthlessly thrown away, and a 

 large and important industry practically cornered or restricted in its 

 possible development by interested parties, who advance the plausible 

 axiom that demand is the controlling power of production. Hence 

 improvement of the staple may be emphatically affirmed as the 

 rational direction in which an extension of the production of cotton 

 Betro- should be looked for, since the existing traffic is aimed at the 

 destruction of all the good features of the indigenous fibre, if not of 

 the morality of both grower and trader. It is essentially a retrograde 

 traffic, as at present constituted, and one in which the aims and 

 . objects of most of those concerned are directed towards the attain- 

 ment of a high yield of a worthless staple. 



