TEXTILE FABRICS. 47 



still. The aggregcate yield of the country in 1840 was re- 

 ported by the census of that year as 219,163,319 pounds, 

 while in 1850 it was reduced to 199,752,655 pounds; but in 

 1860 it went up to 434,209,461 pounds, to fall again in 1870 

 to 262,735,021 pounds, a fluctuation to be explained in part 

 by the many casualties to which it is liable, as damage by 

 insects, hail, drought, frosts, &c. 



THE COTTON SUPPLY. 



The cotton crop of the country has grown up entirely 

 within the last hundred years. The first improvements in 

 the process of- spinning it in England were not made till the 

 invention of Arkwright, in 1769, and the spinning-jenny of 

 Hargreaves in 1770, and comparatively little cotton had been 

 raised in our Southern States previous to 1793, when Eli 

 Whitney invented the cotton-gin. Up to that time the diffi- 

 culty of freeing the cotton from the seed had been such that 

 one hand could clean but a pound a day, and even at the high 

 price of 25 or 30 cents a pound it could not be made profit- 

 able. By Whitney'^ invention a hand,, instead of one pound, 

 could clean 360 pounds a day. At about the same time steam 

 was introduced as a motive-power in England, and that, 

 with the great improvements in carding and spinning, enabled 

 one man to do the work which it had previously required 

 2,200 men to do, in the same time, by the old methods. 



Machinery had introduced an entirely new condition of 

 things. The efifect of it was to produce a vital change in the 

 state of afiairs at the South, and the cotton crop very rapidly 

 grew up to immense importance, constituting about a third 

 part of the whole exports of the country. Each decade 

 showed an increase of about 100 per cent, in production, till, 

 in 1840, it had reached 744,000,000 pounds, six times the 

 product of 1820. The quantity of cotton exported in 1792 

 was only 138,328 pounds. The quantity exported in 1860 

 was 1,765,115,735 pounds, or 4,412,789 bales of 400 pounds 

 each, but the quantity produced in 1860 was 2,079,230,800 

 pounds, or 5,198,077 bales. This production had fallen off 

 somewhat in 1870, when the quantity produced was reported 

 as 3,011,996 bales, or 1,204,798,400 pounds. 



