482 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



SHOULD THE LOOM COME TO THE COTTON, 



OR 



THE COTTON GO TO THE LOOM? 



To the cotton-grower this is a question of the highest importance. His future 

 prosperity depends on the correctness of the answer he shall make to it, and 

 we desire, therefore, to offer for his consideration some views that may tend to 

 enable him to answer it understandingly. The enlightened Editor of the New- 

 Orleans Commercial Bulletin — in the center of light and interest on the subject 

 — remarks : 



" We buy, in New-Orleans, negro cotton goods manufactured from one bale of cotton, for 

 about the same sum that we receive for five bales of raw cotton ; the other four bales being 

 for the labor and profits, which are divided between the ship-owner. Northern or English 

 operatives, mill proprietors, agents, and commission merchants ; all of which would be re- 

 tained ai home, for the benefit of our own citizens, had we cotton-miUs established here." 



Having bestowed some reflection on the above statement, we respectfully in- 

 vite our readers to accompany us in an examination of the nature of the ex- 

 changes to which it refers. 



The number of working hands engaged in the production of Cotton may, with 

 some approximation to exactness, and near enough for our purposes, be set down 

 at 800,000, and the average product per hand at 1,000 pounds, giving as the total 

 product 800,000,000. Each hand, however, is supposed to cultivate about as 

 much land in grain as in cotton.* The labor employed in the production of cot- 

 ton is therefore equivalent to that of 400,000 persons, and the product is the 

 equivalent of 2,000 pounds, or five bales, to the hand. 



A cotton factory containing 250 operatives, one-fourth only of whom are males, 

 will convert 2,000 bales of cotton into cloth. This gives 8 bales per hand. Five 

 persons in a mill will therefore convert into cloth as much cotton as eight will pro- 

 duce ; and of these five, three-fourths are females quite too young and feeble for 

 efficient field labor. A fair estimate of the quantity of power needed for manu- 

 facturing and producing, would give to the work of production more than twice 

 as much as is required for that of conversion or manufacture ; but we will as- 

 sume that five persons are required for the manufacture of that which is pro- 

 duced by eight. 



The labor of production is as valuable as that of conversion, and a just distribu- 

 tion of the proceeds, would give to the planter eight parts out of thirteen, leav- 

 ing the remaining five for the persons employed in converting the cotton into 

 cloth. We see, however, that the planter gives five bales for one, or a hundred 

 for twenty ; whereas if the distribution were in the just ratio of the labor em- 

 ployed, the planter should have sixty and the manufacturer forty. 



This is, we believe, less than the true and just distribution would give to the 

 planter ; but to avoid the possibility of error, we will assume that the product 

 should be equally divided between the producer of the cotton and the parties by 

 whom it is converted into cloth. Two bales of raw cotton should then pay for 

 one bale when manufactured ; yet here we see, on the authority of the Editor 



See Southern Quarterly Review for January, 1848, page 120. 



