THE COTTON HARVEST 211 



mill to be cleansed of the seeds, and then closely packed in bales 

 weighing on an average 443 lbs., which in the seaports are 

 further reduced by hydraulic presses to half of their previous 

 volume, thus causing a great saving in the freight. Large 

 clippers frequently carry eight or ten thousand of these bales 

 to Liverpool, whence, perhaps, on the day of their arrival they 

 are conveyed by rail to the next manufacturing town, and return 

 in a few days to the port, ready to clothe the Australian gold- 

 digger or the labourer on the banks of the Ganges. 



India, which still in the last century provided Europe with 

 the finest cambrics and muslins, now yearly receives from 

 England cotton goods to a large amount. Thus the stream 

 of trade may be said to have rolled backwards to its source, 

 for though the wants of the Hindoo are easily satisfied, 

 and cotton grows at his very door, yet his hand-loom is 

 unable to compete with the machinery and the capital of 

 England. Even in the exportation of the raw material he 

 labours under great disadvantage, when compared with the rival 

 American. Instead of steam-mills for the cleansing of his cotton, 

 he makes use of his hands, which scarcely enable him to pick a 

 pound a day. Wretched beasts of burden then carry it on 

 wretched roads, and often over high mountain-passes, to the 

 coast, where it arrives, sometimes only after fifty or sixty days, 

 in a soiled and deteriorated condition. What a contrast with 

 the States, where the cotton is so much better cleansed at a far 

 inferior cost, where it finds its way so easily to the nearest river, 

 and is then so rapidly conveyed by steam to Savannah, Mobile, 

 or New Orleans ! 



If to all these disadvantages we add the poor quality, short 

 staple, and consequent low price of the cotton, the tenure of the 

 soil under which half or two-thirds of the crop is required for 

 rent or taxes, the frequent want of irrigation, and the imperfect 

 state of cultivation in general, it is less to be wondered at that 

 the exportation of India amounts only to five or six hundred 

 thousand bales a year, than that the country is able to export it 

 at all. 



Much, however, has lately been done, both by government 

 and private exertions, to remedy these defects, and it is to be 

 hoped that the time is not far distant when India, the parent 

 land of cotton industry, will take at least the lead in the 



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