160 COTTON CULTURE. 



which brought the planter but little more than six cents a 

 pound. From 1849 on until 1864 the increase was steady, 

 until the outbreak of the war, and then enormously rapid. 

 The average price realized for the crop sold immediately 

 before the outbreak of the war was about thirteen cents. 

 The value of that part of the crop which was exported, 

 generally three-fourths of the whole amount raised, was 

 something less than one hundred and forty millions annu- 

 ally, for two or three years previous to the war. The 

 lowest amount received by the planter was for the crop 

 of 1831, which sold for only twenty-five millions of dol- 

 lars, its average price per pound being only nine cents. 

 The quantity absorbed by the home market in 1856, a lit- 

 tle more than three-quarters of a million of bales, and 

 worth about thirty millions of dollars, was, by a moderate 

 estimate, made to produce nearly five times this sum by 

 the industry applied to its manufacture in the States north 

 of Virginia, . In 1856 and 1857, Mr. J. B. Gribble, of New 

 Orleans, prepared a table presenting the distribution to 

 various countries of the entire cotton crop raised in all 

 parts of the world. According to his estimates, the whole 

 amount produced was a little over four millions of bales. 

 He assumed the average weight of packages of raw cot- 

 ton to be : From the West Indies, a hundred and seventy- 

 three pounds ; Brazil, one hundred and eighty-one ; Egypt, 

 three hundred and six ; East Indies, three hundred and 

 eighty-five ; and the United States, four hundred and for- 

 ty. Reducing all these bales to four hundred pounds 

 each, he arrives at the following conclusions with regard 

 to the crop of 1856 and 1857, which may be taken with 

 very slight modifications as the true exponent of the cot- 

 ton interest, and the best summary of cotton statistics at 

 the time when this great staple was at its maximum de- 

 velopment, just previous to the war : The product of the 

 West Indies, a little over four thousand bales ; of Brazil, 

 five thousand five hundred ; of Egypt, eighty-six thous- 



