8 COTTON 



THE HANDMAIDEN OF CIVILIZATION 



Cotton, furthermore, is also unique in that more 

 largely than any other plant it contributes to the 

 higher wants of man and more justly than any other 

 plant may be termed the Handmaiden of Civiliza- 

 tion. For while the lowest classes of men (and ani- 

 mals) demand food, the demand for clothing and 

 ornament is a mark of civilization. Even as far 

 back as Eden itself, the desire for clothing was the 

 first evidence of knowledge and conscience given by 

 the first man and woman placed on earth. And with 

 all races of mankind since, the progress of enlighten- 

 ment has been largely registered by the advances in 

 clothing. "Society is founded upon Cloth," was the 

 doctrine of Carlyle's Teuf elsdrockh ; and he was 

 not far wrong in declaring that "Man's earthly in- 

 terests are all hooked and buttoned together, and 

 held up, by Clothes. . . . Society sails through 

 the Infinitude on Cloth, as on a Faust's Mantle, or 

 rather like the Sheet of clean and unclean beasts in 

 the Apostle's Dream; and without such Sheet or 

 Mantle, would sink to endless depths or mount to 

 inane limboes, and in either case be no more." 



Of so much importance, then, is the crop we are 

 to consider in this volume; the only one of the 

 great staples for which no satisfactory substitute 

 can be found; the only plant in the world that in a 

 large measure both feeds and clothes mankind; the 

 one plant most worthy of being reckoned the aid 

 and ally of Civilization. 



Small wonder that more than two generations of 

 men have called it King Cotton, and that its realm 

 is as wide as the earth! Or as certain of our own 

 bards has said: 



