GOSSYPIUM 



History 



THE COTTON PLANT 



United States 

 Cultivation. 



Levant Seed. 



Repressive 



Legislation. 



Original 

 Green Seed. 



Brazilian Cotton 

 in English 

 Markets before 

 States Cotton. 



Sea Island 

 Cotton sent to 

 the States. 



Efforts made to 

 improve Indian j 

 Cotton. 



English Supply 

 and Market. 



Cotton Crop'of 

 U.S.A. 



First Indian 

 Cotton Mill. 



States Cottons 

 crossed with 

 Mexican. 



Egypt. 



Efforts of the 

 E.I.O. 



the species of American cottons until approximately two centuries after their 

 original discovery. 



The first attempt to grow cotton in the United States was in Virginia. It 

 was not, however, until the second decade of the 17th century that systematic 

 cultivation was organised, and then from seed obtained both from the Levant and 

 from the West Indies. It took nearly a hundred years from that date before the 

 plantations became of national importance, but the seat of the industry gradually 

 shifted south and west. England began to manufacture cotton about 1635, and 

 continued to draw on the Levant for her supplies of the raw fibre. An outcry 

 against the imports of Indian cotton goods began to be raised in England. Marc- 

 graf (who died in 1644) speaks of the cotton seen by him in Brazil as having the 

 seeds united together the condition we now call kidney-cotton. According to 

 Samuel Wilson, Smyrna and Cyprus seed, by the close of the 17th century, had 

 been successfully acclimatised in Carolina. 



The 18th century opened with repressive legislation passed by the British 

 Parliament against Indian calicoes, but witnessed the imports by England and 

 Scotland of raw cotton amounting to 1,000,000 Ib. Cotton was raised in Georgia 

 from seed supplied from Chelsea by Philip Miller (the original stock of the green- 

 seeded plant now known as a. iiii-nntnm). In 1782 muslins were first made in 

 England, and in that year South American or Brazilian cotton began to be 

 regularly received. Two years later a ship which brought eight bags of cotton 

 from America to Liverpool was seized on the ground that so much cotton could 

 not have been produced in the United States. In 1786 the green-seeded cotton 

 was in the States the most largely grown of all kinds, but in that year the black- 

 seeded or Sea Island cotton was introduced from the Bahamas. 



Through Patrick Walsh, Pernambuco cotton was successfully introduced 

 into the United States in 1789. Dr. Hove was sent to India to study the Indian 

 cotton trade and Indian cotton plants, but his mission was resented by the East 

 India Company, and his report was not published for sixty years after his return 

 to England. Shortly after the date of Hove's visit the East India Company 

 commenced, however, a series of experiments with a view to improve the quality 

 and increase the quantity of cotton produced in India. Up to this point England 

 obtained her supplies of raw cotton from the Levant, India, the West Indies and 

 South America, the finest qualities being spoken of as coming from Surinam and 

 Cayenne. The century closed with the exports from the United States to England 

 at 9,532,263 Ib. and from India at 729,643 Ib. 



The 19th century opened with the cotton crop of the United States being 

 returned as 48,000,000 Ib., contributed as follows : South Carolina, 20 million ; 

 Georgia, 10 million ; Virginia, 5 million ; North Carolina, 4 million ; and Ten- 

 nessee, 7 million pounds. The exports from that crop to Great Britain were 

 20,000,000 Ib. Total consumption of raw cotton in Great Britain came to 

 54 million pounds, the supply from India being 6 million pounds, or just one- 

 third of the quantity drawn from the new area the United States of America. 

 The first Indian cotton mill was built near Calcutta in 1818, and the first of the 

 Bombay series in 1851. Improvements in bleaching, dyeing and cylinder print- 

 ing soon placed British calicoes in a position to hold their own against similar 

 goods from any other part of the world. Resist printing was introduced by Sir 

 Robert Peel. The Sea Island cotton raised at Hilton Head, South Carolina, 

 fetched the highest price then known. Mexican cotton-seed was introduced 

 into Mississippi by Walter Burling, and by crossing with the existing plant was 

 supposed to have improved the quality of the cotton very greatly. Mention, so 

 far as I can discover, has never been made of any of the indigenous cottons of the 

 States (if such existed) having been grown by the colonists. They grew first 

 Levant cotton, then Miller's green-seeded cotton, and finally Sea Island cotton. 

 Which of these was crossed with Mexican has not been stated, but presumably 

 the green-seed, and this hint should be of value. 



Cotton cultivation was systematically prosecuted in Egypt about 1821, and 

 rapidly obtained a position in quality of staple second only to that of the States, 

 but there is very little information as to the original stock or of the subsequent 

 stages in the production of the better races now met with in that country. The 

 year 1825 witnessed ruinous speculation in cotton. From 1829 to 1841 the East 

 India Company made strenuous efforts to improve the Indian staple. Largo 

 sums were spent in the form of awards, and ten experienced cotton-growers 

 were procured from the Southern States of America with a view to establish 

 the cultivation of New Orleans cotton. Excepting in Dharwar, failure was the 



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