6 COTTON 



hides, skins, etc., etc., the entire contribution, ex- 

 cept cotton, furnished the outside world by every 

 American farm, ranch, dairy, fruit farm and gar- 

 den, from Maine to California, from Michigan to 

 Texas, from Alaska to Hawaii, including the 

 South's own not unimportant share take all this, 

 and with the proceeds of one year's cotton and cot- 

 tonseed exports, the Southern cotton-grower can 

 buy the whole colossal aggregation, still have a 

 surplus of several hundred thousand left as pin 

 money, and be ready to start business again with 

 the more than $200,000,000 he gets annually for 

 supplying the 25,000,000 spindles of our own 

 country. 



"If Europe during the past five years," says 

 Mr. R. H. Edmonds, "had gathered together every 

 dollar's worth of gold produced in all the mines of 

 the earth and shipped it to the South, it would still 

 have fallen $206,000,000 short of paying for that 

 part of the cotton crop the South has sent beyond 

 the seas." 



COTTON BOTH CLOTHES AND FEEDS MANKIND 



In many ways cotton stands out unique among 

 all the plants that men grow. Not only is it the 

 only crop which has greatly changed the destinies 

 of nations and continents (but for cotton, slav- 

 ery would not have so flourished in the South as to 

 plunge America into a great civil war), but it is 

 unique in that it contributes to a greater variety of 

 human needs than any other plant that Providence 

 has placed upon the earth. From pole to pole, in 

 every zone and clime; from the cradle to the grave, 

 in every stage of life; from prince to pauper, 



