Sea Island cotton

“ Attention has been paid in the West Indies to seed selection, by the officers of the imperial Department of Agriculture, with the object of retaining for West Indian Sea Island cotton its place as the most valuable cotton on the British market.
In India, where conditions are much more diversified and it is more difficult to induce the native cultivator to adopt new methods, attention has also been directed during recent years to the improvement of the existing races. Efforts have been made in the same direction in Egypt, West Africa, &c. ”

“ For instance, the most delicate or fine quality of thread is produced from the Sea Island cotton, and usually this type is quite expensive; it has so many seeds and they take up so much room in the pod that after they have been removed only a small quantity of cotton remains and that makes it costly. Almost every other kind gives more lint (or picked cotton) than does this variety. The Egyptian cotton is somewhat on this same order. ”

“ The only exportable crop of this region is the long staple Sea Island cotton, raised with more difficulty than the coarser kind, and bringing a higher price. The agents of the Treasury Department expect to gather some 2,500,000 pounds of ginned cotton the present year, nearly all of which had been picked and stored before the arrival of our forces. Considerable quantities have not been picked at all, but the crop for this season was unusually good. Potatoes and corn are raised only for consumption on the plantations,—corn being raised at the rate of only twenty-five bushels per acre. ”

“ Smith also planted a few seeds of Sea-Island cotton, the product of which has been sent to New York and pronounced worth 14c. per pound. Now, there are numbers of colored men recently from the Southern States skilled in, and some who have made small fortunes by, the cultivation of cotton, at perhaps not more than eight or nine cents per pound, when, too, it had to be replanted every year. ”

“ Catherine's sounds, and is eight miles long and six miles wide. The side towards the sea is firm upland, diversified with glades, while the western portion is principally marshes cut up by numerous creeks. All the sea islands produce the long staple cotton known as sea-island cotton, and before the war a very valuable variety. A few negroes occupy the places abandoned by the proprietor, and eke out a scanty livelihood. ”

“ With regard to the West Indies, a number of circumstances conduce to promote its abundant and profitable production, although on the other hand it must be confessed there are difficulties to be met, of which we have not yet received any satisfactory solution. Porto Rico has afforded cotton scarcely inferior to the Sea Island. When American cotton was first imported into England, it was so ill cleaned that but small value was set upon it ”

“ It yields the "sea-island cotton," a variety of long fibre, formerly much valued for certain purposes of textile manufacture. There is no sod or turf, like that of the Northern states, but the fields not under cultivation produce a tall thin grass, which is soon trampled out of existence by passing wagons or by soldiers on the march. ”

“ The Sea Island soil produces the best cotton in the world, and the negroes already have it in a state of more thorough cultivation than was ever before known. The increased wants of the freedmen will stimulate trade, and small farmers will not be able, as the planters were in old times, to go to Savannah or Charleston and buy supplies at wholesale. Whatever the fortune of South Carolina, the Sea Islands must henceforth be flourishing. Whether negroes will not, by and by, prefer to trade with persons of their own color, remains to be seen. ”

“ Cotton of modern culture has attained incomparable pre-eminence in America, especially the Sea Island, which is the best produced. In 1840 this description obtained in Liverpool the enormous price of three shillings the pound, whereas (for there is nothing like a contrast) Surat cotton, which is the worst growth of India, has been as low as two-pence. These may be regarded, perhaps, as the two greatest extremes between which the commercial value of cotton has as a rule oscillated. ”

“ The greatest part of the American crop consists of the Upland variety, although, as we have noted, there is a small but important crop of Sea Island in the Southern Atlantic states. Another long staple species, known as Pimas, has recently been introduced in Arizona, and the alluvial soil of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana has produced still other desirable species, locally known as “Rivers,” “Peelers,” and “Benders.” Before we consider the relative manufacturing merits of the various kinds of cotton, it would perhaps be well to consider briefly how the crop is grown. ”

“ Nothing save the cost of labour in picking prevents cotton being classed among the staple products of our State, and it is hoped by experts that as families upon the 90 farms increase this difficulty will be removed. The Cairns exhibit was of Caravonica cotton, a variety of the valuable Sea Island species, concerning the extensive cultivation of which the most sanguine anticipations are expressed. In agricultural products emulation was greatly stimulated by the district exhibits, of which there were five, and on the whole they were superior to any that had ever before been shown in Queensland. ”

“ In the new interest created by the British Cotton Growing Association in the cultivation of Empire-grown cotton there are undoubtedly rare possibilities, and, if followed up, not only in Jamaica, but in the other islands under British dominion in the Caribbean Sea, as it ought to be, the future can be looked forward to with every confidence. The suitability of the soil and climate have been clearly demonstrated, and it only requires enterprise and determination to make the issue certain. ”

“ Next to the land policy, cotton plays an important part in the national development, and due to it slavery was prolonged as an American institution. Short staple cotton had been known from the earliest settlement, for it was cultivated by the Southern Indians, but the great labor attending its preparation for the spinning wheel had made it unprofitable to grow even with slave labor. But in 1786 the long staple cotton was introduced into the South from the Sea Islands, and in 1793 Eli Whitney invented the saw gin which enabled a single man to clean 1,000 pounds of the fiber in a day. ”

“ It only remains for us to refer summarily to the factors of supply. It is practically certain that the South will continue to produce the bulk of the world’s cotton. During the Civil War, when cotton was over $1.00 a pound, persistent efforts were made all over the world to develop cotton growing, but in vain. The Gulf Stream on one side, and a vast continent on the other, produce climatic conditions for cotton culture not duplicated anywhere else in the world. ”

“ But this witness is certain that, if they would consent to do so, they could plant cotton, as it is a crop that requires less labor than rice; and if cotton were cultivated at least by the Tagalos Indians, who are the laziest of all, large quantities of cotton might be gathered. With this they could make cloth of very good quality for their own garments, and even some besides for the use of the Spaniards, who wore these garments when they first came to the islands ”

“ But they soon began to import the fiber from the West Indies, whence came also the plant itself into the congenial soil and climate of the Southern colonies. During the colonial period, however, cotton never became the leading crop, hardly an important crop. Cotton could be grown profitably only where there was an abundant supply of exceedingly cheap labor, and labor in America, white or black, was never and could never be as cheap as in India. American slaves could be much more profitably employed in the cultivation of rice and indigo. ”

“ He sold it for from one shilling twopence to one shilling sixpence per pound. It is certain that at this period many planters on the Sea Islands and contiguous [Pg 283] mainland experimented with long-staple cotton, and probably it was produced by them for market. ”

“ But, practically speaking, we possess but two sources of supply, and both present such powerful obstacles to extended cultivation, that we are not surprised at the habitual uneasiness of those whose interests demand a continually increasing quantity. Those two sources are the United States and British India. It is true that Brazil, Egypt, the West Indies, and some other countries, furnish small quantities of cotton ”

“ Cotton is raised abundantly throughout the islands. It is spun and sold in the skein to the Chinese and other nations, who come to get it. Cloth of different patterns is also woven from it, and the natives also trade that. ”

“ More and more the West-European nations, as also the United States and Japan, are realising these immense potentialities. Into many tropical countries, new crops are introduced, experiment stations established, railroads built, agricultural machines imported and efforts made not only to bring new lands into cultivation but also to increase the output of older lands. The experimental spread of cotton culture is a case in point. In 1902 the British Cotton Growing Association was created to promote the growth of cotton in British dependencies. ”

“ There seems to be a vague idea floating in the public mind of the South that, somehow or other, cotton is to enable us to do, if not entirely, at least to a great degree, what other nations require armies and navies to accomplish for them. Because cotton-wool is essential to the industry of certain people, and because we are the chief growers of cotton-wool, therefore, say these political dreamers, we can so treat cotton, in a diplomatic way, as both to enforce obedience to our revenue laws at home and secure respect to our citizens abroad. ”

“ The colonies and dependencies of Great Britain, including India, seemed well able to grow all the cotton that could be required, whilst numerous other countries were ready to afford their co-operation. A powerful stimulus was thus given to the growth of cotton in all directions; a degree of activity and enterprise never witnessed before was seen in India, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Africa, the West Indies, Queensland, New South Wales, Peru, Brazil, and in short wherever cotton could be produced ”

“ Cotton is not indigenous in the British Islands, though their accomplished cotton manufactures have made it the leading article of commerce, leading their national policy. Hemp and silk, also, are the products of other lands. Having no timber or lumber good enough for ships, it is all brought, like their royal timber, from any place in the world but home. The steel used at Sheffield for cutlery is made from iron imported from Sweden and Norway ”

“ The whole of the Yoruba and other countries south of the Niger, with the Houssa and the Nuffe countries on the north side of that river, have been, from all time, cotton-growing countries; and notwithstanding the civil wars, ravages, disorders and disruptions caused by the slave trade, more than sufficient cotton to clothe their populations has always been cultivated, and their fabrics have found markets and a ready sale in those countries where the cotton plant is not cultivated, and into which the fabrics of Manchester and Glasgow have not yet penetrated. ”

“ This machine facilitated the separation of the seed from the fiber of the short-staple variety of cotton, which alone could be profitably cultivated in the uplands, and thus made possible a vast extension of the area of cotton culture.
The cotton gin came at an opportune moment for the Southern planters, since rice and indigo were declining in importance as exports, and their gangs of African slaves were likely to become a burden. They could now cultivate cotton under an extensive system of agriculture with large immediate profits. ”

“ The American, short stapled cottons can be cultivated as easily and with equal certainty of success in these districts, but are actually discouraged, though they succeed well, as being more troublesome and expensive to clean, and much less valuable, both as an article of export commerce, and for domestic consumption among themselves, than the Bourbon cotton. ”

“ In each economic area a surplus formed, demanding an outlet and demanding returns in manufactures. The spread of cotton into the lower Mississippi Valley and the Gulf Plains had a double significance. This transfer of the center of cotton production away from the Atlantic South not only brought increasing hardship and increasing unrest to the East as the competition of the virgin soils depressed Atlantic land values and made Eastern labor increasingly dear, but the price of cotton fell also in due proportion to the increase in production by the Mississippi Valley. ”

“ There is a far higher remuneration than has ever been given by cotton yet in store for the laborer, the manufacturer, the South and the entire country. In the midst of the cotton plantations themselves there is a career for manufacturing development such as the world has not yet seen. With coal, iron and timber in perfection and inexhaustible, and water power everywhere, by what rule of political economy should the Southern people send their cotton, at an expense always deducted from its price, to distant sections and foreign countries to be spun and woven? ”

“ If the English persevere and the natives turn their attention to cotton, there is no calculating what the production might in time amount to; but there is this satisfaction for the American planter, the consumption is rapidly increasing, and there is not much fear of a surplus for years to come. The culture of the plant, as I have seen it in Algeria and the East Indies, cannot come in competition with the negro labor at the South; but we may rest assured that the British are using every means possible to have it produced, and make themselves less subject to our Southern King Cotton. ”