28 COTTON 



covered in this musty volume some extracts from 

 the London Economist of 1859 which except for 

 their direct references to slavery, might well have 

 appeared yesterday. The Economist Editor com- 

 ments on the fact that Brazil, Egypt and the West 

 Indies all grow cotton and might grow more, "but 

 as an immediate and practical question of supply, 

 it is confined to America and British India." 



To India, however, he looks very hopefully. 

 The situation, he says, "invests the subject of 

 Indian cotton growing with enormous interest. 



In some important respects the 



conditions of supply from India differ very much 

 from those which attach to and determine the sup- 

 ply from America. In India there is no limit 

 to the quantity of labor. There may be said to be 

 little or none to the quantity of land. The obstacle 

 is of another kind ; it lies almost exclusively in lack 

 of cheap transit." Therefore he finds new hopes 

 in the "railways which are being constructed . . 

 . . . to bring in the abundant labor of millions 

 of our fellow subjects in India to cheapen and in- 

 crease the supply of cotton." No English consul 

 or cotton manufacturer in our own time has had 

 a severer attack of Mulberry Sellers optimism than 

 did this Economist writer of fifty years ago. 



"HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL " 



Writing later in 1859, the Editor of the Econo- 

 mist lauded in the highest terms the continued 

 efforts to make England independent of Southern 

 cotton. "We cannot well conceive of stronger con- 

 siderations than those which are moving English- 

 men to action in this particular," he says; ,and this 

 time he also lays stress on the opportunities in 



