26 SEVENTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 



island cotton was about twenty per cent, better 

 than any other cotton produced ; owing to circum- 

 stances, it is now estimated at from thirty to forty 

 per cent, in favor of the former.' 



Encouraged by the actual product of their fields, 

 our fathers continued to cultivate the grounds 

 which their judgments first selected for the new 

 crop. After several years of exhausting tillage, it 

 became obvious that a radical change in their oper- 

 ations must take place. Unaccustomed to receive 

 information from books concerning their pursuits, 

 the plain alternative of resorting to virgin soils 

 was adopted, and soon as one field was worn out 

 another was cleared. 



In most beo^inninors, awkwardness and want of 

 skill retarded our full success. In no case have I 

 known a more striking exemplification than in that 

 which I am about to relate. To as late a period as 

 1 80 1, to pack a bag of cotton was deemed a reason- 

 able day's work, without the packer's having him- 

 self to make the bag. This was considered a 

 seamstress's work, who found five an ample day's 



' The value of cotton yarn is estimated by its length. The extreme of 

 fineness, says Mr. Baines in his work on the " Cotton Manufactories of 

 Great Britain," published in 1835, to which yarns for muslins are even spun 

 in England, is two hundred and fifty hanks to the pound, which would yield 

 a thread measuring one hundred and nineteen and a half miles. A pound 

 of fine cotton manufactured Snto the finest lace yields from four hundred 

 and eighty to five hundred hanks per pound, and makes a thread from one 

 hundred and ninety-seven to two hundred and thirty-eight miles long, and 

 is worth from sixty dollars to four hundred and fifty dollars per pound. 



