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and not on practice. Perhaps a much less sum would serve the pur- 

 pose. One thing more may be considered in this connection. While 

 it is doubtless true that sheep thrive on the whole cotton seed with 

 all the oil in it, yet it appears that there is too much oil. It affects 

 the milk of the breeding ewes, and also deposits a great excess of 

 grease in the fleece. 



It would be truer economy to extract all the oil that can be removed 

 by pressure, and then the ground cake and hulls would be in true con- 

 dition to feed to sheep, cattle, or hogs. 



Machines for hulling the seed can now be purchased at moderate 

 cost ; and we may be very sure that, as soon as a demand for small 

 presses for farm use is made, the supply will come. The Dederick 

 hay-press is now being used for packing cotton fibre to a compression 

 equal to the density of elm-wood, or forty pounds to a cubic foot, 

 and the inventor of that press seems equal to an}* emergency. 



The removal of the oil, like the removal of the fibre, takes almost 

 nothing from the land devoted to cotton, the mineral element being 

 about three-fourths in the kernel and one-fourth hull. 



It should be remembered in this connection that the work of two 

 laborers in the cotton field, producing each ten bales of cotton, and 

 with the aid of their children picking it clear ; one man's work, or its 

 equivalent in money, to gin, pack, and move the cotton to the factory 

 in New England ; and the work there of one, or at the utmost two 

 operatives, four or five in all, suffices for the production of eight 

 thousand pounds of heavy cotton cloth, sufficient to meet the need of 

 1,GOO Chinese or 3,200 East Indians. The same number, or perhaps 

 one more, say, six in all, will produce and convert the quantity 

 of raw cotton into the fine fabrics needed by 1,000 inhabitants of the 

 United States for their annual supply. 



It should also be further considered that we as yet produce in the 

 United States only about one-half of the cotton that is consumed in 

 the world, possibly a little more, and that a larger number of the in- 

 habitants of the globe are to-day clothed in cotton fabrics, spun and 

 woven by hand, than there are clothed in the product of the machinery 

 of Europe and America combined. 



When all the relations and possibilities of the cotton plant are con- 

 sidered, even the apparently visionary treatment of the hard facts 

 presented in this paper may be held to be worth}' of consideration. 



I submitted the first draft of this address to Hon. G. V. Fox, late 

 Assistant Secretary of the Navy, who, in addition to his experience as 

 a naval officer, has had great opportunities for forming a judgment 

 upon the topics under consideration, having been for many years in 

 charge of one of the largest woollen factories of New England. In 

 response to my request he says, 



" This question of rotating wool and cotton has been a study with 

 you ; and since you presented it to me last winter at Aiken I have, in 

 the region you spoke of, made such inquiries as to satisfy me that the 

 physical conditions are such as to render the success of a trial more 

 than probable. In fact, I find one man shifting about forty sheep 



