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The World's Commercial Products 



years almost entirely supplanted linen. Cotton, too, has successfully competed with 

 wool, and such materials as flannelette are entirely made of cotton, whilst fabrics of mixed 

 cotton and wool are much more common nowadays than in former times. Scientific 

 discoveries have enabled cotton to be so treated that it appears almost exactly like silk, 

 with the result that cotton velveteen and sateen are made on a large scale and form cheap 

 substitutes for velvet and satin, which are made of silk. Mercerised cotton can be made to 

 resemble silk so closely that many " silks " are so only in name. Cotton is so useful to civilised 

 man that this one plant can supply him not only with cotton clothing, but also to a certain 

 extent with substitutes for wool and silk. To the uncivilised races of the world, whose 

 needs are simpler, cotton is again most important, and all kinds of native garments, ranging 

 from the simple loin cloth of primitive people to the elaborately decorated robes of other races, 

 are made entirely of cotton. 



Photo by E. Minoprio, Esq. 



A SOUTHERN COTTON PLANTATION, U.S.A. 



Cotton was well known and in common use in India long before the Christian era, for in an 

 old book written about 800 B.C. the plant is referred to frequently, and in such a way as to show 

 that it was quite familiar. Nearchus, the admiral of Alexander the Great, who took part of 

 his army along the shores of the Arabian and Persian Gulf about 327 B.C., says : " There are 

 in India trees bearing as it were bunches of wool. The natives made linen garments of it, 

 wearing a shirt which reached to the middle of the leg, a sheet folded about the shoulders, and 

 a turban rolled round the head, and the linen made by them from this substance was fine 

 and whiter than any other." India was the centre of cotton cultivation and manufacture 

 in the early days and for long afterwards. -Indian cotton goods were sent to many parts of 

 the world, and our word " calico " was originally given to this familiar material because it 

 came from the Indian port of Calicut. From India cotton plants were probably sent to China 

 and other neighbouring countries. 



Later explorers found cotton in other regions. For example, in 1492, Columbus noted 

 that it grew abundantlyin the West Indies and on the neighbouring coasts of America, and 

 that the natives had considerable skill in making it up into cloth. In Mexico, Peru, and Brazil, 

 cotton was well known and in Mexico was the chief article of clothing. In parts of tropical 



