Enormous Growth of Cotton in America

This series has nine easy 5 minute installments. This first installment: Importance of the Cotton Trade.

Introduction
Lord Macaulay declared that “what Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton-gin has more than equaled in its relation to the power and progress of the United States.” When Macaulay delivered this opinion, “King Cotton” was more absolute in the United States than to-day, for the cultivation of cotton has since been supplemented in this country by other industries of equal importance. Yet, what cotton had done for the United States in Macaulay’s day has been far surpassed by its record since, as one of the great industrial and commercial interests of the land; and judged by export values, as estimated by the specialist Dabney, at one time Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, cotton is still king of the American market.

The growth of the cotton industry in the United States, traced so minutely by Handy, witnesses from one decade to another to the supreme achievement of the American inventor so highly estimated by Macaulay. Eli Whitney was born at Westboro, Massachusetts, in 1765, and died in 1825. In 1792 he was graduated at Yale College, and that year became a teacher in Georgia, where he invented the cotton-gin. Before he could secure a patent his machine was stolen from his workshop, and others reaped the profits of his ingenuity. It is pleasing to know that he afterward made a fortune by other uses of his inventive skill. His service to the cotton industry in all its departments has not only been vastly influential in the development of his own country, but has also greatly affected the relations of the United States with other industrial nations, especially with Great Britain, the leading cotton-manufacturing country of the world.

The selections are from:

• The Cotton Plant (a Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, Volume 33) by Charles W. Dabney published in 1896.
• The Cotton Plant (a Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin, Volume 33) by Robert B. Handy published in 1896.
• Memoir of Eli Whitney, esq. by Denison Olmsted published in 1846.

For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Summary of daily installments:

We begin with Charles W. Dabney (1855-1945). He was a Professor of Agriculture who also served in the sub-cabinet in the USA Department of Agriculture.

Cotton is the principal product of eight great States of the American Union, and the most valuable “money crop” of the entire country. Climatic conditions practically restrict its cultivation to a group of States constituting less than one-fourth of the total area of the country, and yet the value of the annual crop is exceeded among cultivated products only by corn, which is grown in every State of the Union, and occasionally by wheat. Cotton furnishes the raw material for one of our most important manufacturing industries and from one-fourth to one-third of our total exports.

Considered without reference to any particular country, its economic importance is far beyond numerical expression; for while the total crop of the world is approximately ascertainable, the effect of cotton upon the commercial and social relations of mankind is too far-reaching for estimation. Of the four great staples that provide man with clothing — cotton, silk, wool, and flax — cotton, by reason of its cheapness and its many excellencies, is rapidly superseding its several rivals. Sixty years ago only about two million five hundred thousand bales of cotton, or less than the present production of Texas, were annually converted into clothing; the spindles of the world now use over thirteen million bales per annum. Yet less than half the people of the world are supplied with cotton goods made by modern machinery, and it has been estimated that it would require annually a crop of forty-two million bales of five hundred pounds each to raise the world’s standard of consumption to that of the principal nations.

Cotton stands preeminent among farm crops in the ease and cheapness of its production, as compared with the variety and value of its products. No crop makes so slight a drain upon the fertility of the soil, and for none has modern enterprise found so many uses for its several parts. The cotton plant yields, in fact, a double crop — a most beautiful fiber and a seed yielding both oil and feed, which, although neglected for a long time, is now esteemed worth one-sixth as much as the fiber. In addition to this, the stems can be made to yield a fiber which waits only for a machine to work it, and the roots yield a drug. It is entirely possible, therefore, that cotton may ultimately be grown as much for these parts as for the lint.

The history of cotton production in the United States differs from that of almost every other agricultural product in several important particulars. For nearly three-quarters of a century slave labor was almost exclusively employed in this branch of agricultural industry, and an immense majority of the colored people of to-day look to it for their chief support. Cotton was also the great pioneer crop in the new Southwestern States. Not only has the westward movement of the industry been more rapid than that of any other crop, but the center of production has always been farther in advance of the center of population. As long ago as 1839 Mississippi was producing almost one-fourth of the entire crop of the country. Recent years have witnessed an enormous development in the regions to the west, which would have carried the center of production across the Mississippi River if the cultivation of cotton, unlike that of wheat and corn and other products, had not taken a new lease of life in the older States along the Atlantic seaboard, where the use of manures has both extended the area and increased the production.

Probably no equally great industry was ever more completely paralyzed or had its future placed in greater jeopardy than cotton growing in the United States during the war of 1861-1865. So great was the decrease in production which followed the effectual closing of the ports that only one bale of cotton was grown in 1864-1865 for every fifteen bales raised in 1861-1862. The chief menace to the future of cotton production lay in the efforts that were put forth by other cotton-growing countries at this time to produce those particular varieties which had for so long given the United States the monopoly of the European markets; and nothing could more completely demonstrate the remarkable adaptation of our Southern States to the growing of varieties which the experience of generations has proved to be the best for manufacturing purposes than the fact that it took them only thirteen years from the end of the war to regain the primacy of position which they held at its commencement.

Robert B. Handy begins here. Denison Olmsted begins here.

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