8 
COTTON 
THE HANDMAIDEN OF CIVILIZATION 
Cotton, furthermore, is also unique in that more 
largely than any other plant it contributes to the 
higher wants of man and more justly than any other 
plant may be termed the Handmaiden of Civiliza- 
tion. For while the lowest classes of men ( and ani- 
mals) demand food, the demand for clothing and 
ornament is a mark of civilization. Even as far 
back as Eden itself, the desire for clothing was the 
first evidence of knowledge and conscience given by 
the first man and woman placed on earth. And with 
all races of mankind since, the progress of enlighten- 
ment has been largely registered by the advances in 
clothing. "Society is founded upon Cloth," was the 
doctrine of Carlyle's Teufelsdrockh; and he was 
not far wrong in declaring that "Man's earthly in- 
terests are all hooked and buttoned together, and 
held up, by Clothes. . . . Society sails through 
the Infinitude on Cloth, as on a Faust's Mantle, or 
rather like the Sheet of clean and unclean beasts in 
the Apostle's Dream; and without such Sheet or 
Mantle, would sink to endless depths or mount to 
inane limboes, and in either case be no more." 
Of so much importance, then, is the crop we are 
to consider in this volume; the only one of the 
great staples for which no satisfactory substitute 
can be found ; the only plant in the world that in a 
large measure both feeds and clothes mankind; the 
one plant most worthy of being reckoned the aid 
and ally of Civilization. 
Small wonder that more than two generations of 
men have called it King Cotton, and that its realm 
is as wide as the earth! Or as certain of our own 
bards has said : 
