162 COTTON CULTUBE. 



advanced pari passu with the development of cotton 

 growing in the United States ; her looms, spindles, and 

 her markets, are all adjusted to the staple of American 

 Upland, and this is the style of cotton of which she re- 

 quires th greatest quantities. American cotton cannot be 

 replaced in her mills to advantage by that grown either in 

 India or Africa, and no other manufacturing nation is pre- 

 pared to underbid England in the production of the finer 

 qualities of cotton fabrics, especially muslins. Up to 1860 

 the cotton supply from other sources than the United 

 States had increased in some cases very slowly, and in oth- 

 ers decreased ; the principle increase being from East In- 

 dia and Africa, which furnish the poorest staple. 



Y. England can feel no reliance for her cotton supply 

 upon any other country than the United States, and 

 the American supply is, in general, very reliable whenever 

 the system of labor is settled and permanent. Whatever 

 cotton can be produced upon American soil will find a 

 prompt market in England, and until the supply from 

 America passes two million bales, which are necessary to 

 keep all the spindles of England in motion, there is no 

 probability that cotton will fall below fifteen cents, and, 

 probably, it will not go so low as that for quite a number 

 of years. 



About ten years before our late war, a writer in the 

 London Economist, an English paper devoted to the ex- 

 amination of questions like this, traced the progress of 

 the cotton trade from 1838 to 1850, and the facts, as then 

 known, brought him to the following conclusions : 



That the supply of cotton from other sources than the 

 United States has been irregularly decreasing; that, in- 

 cluding the United States, the supply from all quarters 

 available for English consumption had, of late years, that 

 is from 1840 to 1850, been falling off at the rate of a 

 thousand bales a week, while the consumption had been 

 increasing at the same time at the rate of thirty-six hun- 



