358 



THE COTTON TEADE. 



It is not our purpose to trace the history of cotton-spinning hack to the 

 heroic ages, nor to cite Herodotus as witness to the quality of the cotton 

 fabrics of India. Those of our readers who explore classic authors, or who 

 are given to historical research, may read how the cotemporaries of Straho 

 practiced the art of printing calicoes ; and Pliny will describe to them the 

 Gossypium* plant, from whose " woolly down was made the beautiful robes 

 which the priests of Egypt delighted to wear." Marco Polo will tell in 

 quaint phrases what progress the manufacture of cotton goods had made in 

 his day, in the far off Empire of Cathay; and in the "precepts of Eben el 

 Awan " may be read all that was known to the Arabs of the culture and 

 use of the plant whose products now figure so largely in our commercial 

 statistics. 



Our business shall be with the cotton trade of the present generation ; 

 to relate in brief terms the steps by which it has grown to its present 

 gigantic proportions — to nearly a third of the commercial enterprise of that 

 great empire whose commerce envelopes the globe. 



Among the many wonderful developments of industrial enterprise, the 

 growth of the cotton manufacture in Britain is, beyond comparison, the most 

 remarkable. In the first year of the present century, the cotton goods 

 exported from the United Kingdom were valued at 355,000Z. In 1860, their 

 value was declared to be 52,01 3,482Z. ; and those taken for home consump- 

 tion were estimated to be worth 40,000,OOOZ. 



But great as is the contrast between the cotton exports of the first year 

 of the present century, and the value of the cotton fabrics exported and 

 taken for home consumption in 1860, the figures fail to convey anything like 

 an adequate idea of the wonderful'strides that have been made in the produc- 

 tive powers of British industry, skill, and enterprise. Valued at the prices 

 obtained prior to 1815, the cotton goods now annually produced in Britain 

 would be worth upwards of four hundred and fifty million pounds sterling. 

 At the former period, the average value of a yard of manufactured cotton 

 was 17jd., now it is only 3|d. — nor is this all, — the article produced at the 

 latter price is greatly superior in texture, appearance, and in durability, to 

 the more costly fabrics manufactured prior to the inventions of Hargreaves, 

 Crompton, Arkwright, and others, to whose ingenuity England is indebted 

 for one of the most important of her commercial interests, and the world 

 for putting within reach of the poorest labourer, luxuries that a century 

 earlier could hardly be obtained by the wealthiest noble. 



If such figures inadequately represent the annual productive value of 

 the factories of Great Britain, at what capital sum shall we rate the brain 

 labour of those men who have perfected the machinery wherewith such 



* Gossypium — Cotton, a genus of plants, of the class Monodelphia, order Poly- 

 andria, Linn. The American species is termed G. hirsutum, the short staple, or 

 upland cotton. 



