COTTON 
43 
clothed, and 250,000,000 habitually go . almost 
naked, and that to clothe the entire population of 
the world would require 42,000,000 bales of 500 
pounds each. It therefore seems more than likely 
that the cotton industry will go on expanding until 
the whole of the inhabited earth is clothed with the 
products of its looms." 
And it is the opinion of the authors that the South 
will increase her production just as fast as the world 
increases her demands. We have yet a shamefully 
low average yield; we are depending yet on fear- 
fully mistreated soils ; we are yet planting miserably 
selected seed ; and we have very inefficient tools and 
machinery. Necessity, that mother of invention, 
will help us reform these abuses — just as necessity 
brought about the new inventions in cotton spin- 
ning, and just as necessity brought about Whitney's 
cotton gin. When it becomes necessary for her to 
furnish the world 25,000,000 bales of cotton, the 
South will furnish it. 
OF SOUTHERN LANDS ONLY ONE ACRE IN SEVEN- 
TEEN NOW IN COTTON 
Even if we were not going to double the yield 
(and unless the boll weevil interferes, men now liv- 
ing may see that result), we have enough available 
idle land to make 30,000,000 bales with the present 
low average yield per acre. Of the twelve Cotton 
States only one acre in seventeen is now planted 
to the fleecy staple, and only one acre in eleven of 
the cotton-producing counties. Only two-fifths 
of the farm lands of the South are yet improved for 
any sort of crop. 
The great trouble is that we have so long allowed 
the bulk of our cotton lands to be butchered by 
