CHAPTER III. 
DOES FOREIGN COMPETITION THREATEN THE SOUTH's 
SUPREMACY? 
The figures we have already quoted and the ta- 
bles of statistics we have given leave so little to be 
said about the subject of acreage and production 
in the South that we now proceed directly to the 
inquiry which is doubtless uppermost in the minds 
of most of our readers : 
Is the South likely to maintain its present su- 
premacy as the world's chief source of raw cotton? 
For it is really the South against the field, and 
all the countries that now make cotton on a small 
scale are interesting in this respect only as we re- 
gard them as a combination which might eventually 
rob America of its prestige. 
England's efforts to become independent of 
slave-made cotton 
It is not a new subject. Before us now is a bulky, 
time-worn volume, bearing on its title page the 
legend, "Cotton is King: and Pro-Slavery Argu- 
ments," and one of the weighty problems which 
engrossed the attention of its compilers was the 
effort England was making to free herself from 
dependence on slave-made cotton. I have also dis- 
