The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1860-03-02
Cotton and American Slavery.

oO AAAAPOA UousVu Va SOetOu INV Vulo VOuur
try has, since the import duty was abolished,
increased sixteen fold. Having been 60 ,O0O,-
600 lbs, it is now 1000, 100000 lbs. This
is one of those giant facts which stand head
and shoulders higher than the crowd-so
high and so broad that we can neither over
look it nor affect not to see it. It proves
the existence of q thousand smaller facts
that must stand under its shadow. 1t tells
of sixteen times as many mills, sixteen times
as many English families living by working
those mills, sixteen times as much profit de.
rived from sixteen times as much capital en-
gagged in this manufacture. 1t carries after
it sequences of increased quantities of
freights and assurances, and necessities for
sixteen times the amount of customers to
consume, to our profit, the immense amount
of produce we are turning out. There are
not many such facts as these, arising in the
quiet routine of industrial history. 1t is so
large and so steady that we steer our ma
tional policy by it; it is SO important to us
that we should be reduced to embarrassment
if it were suddenly to disappear. 1t teaches
us to persevere in policy which has pro-
duced so wonderful result its benefcent
operation makes it essential to US to deal
carefully with it now we have got it. Some
years ago an Island arose in the Mediterra-
mean and we were all discussing it and quar-
relling about it, and keeping up a brisk fire
of diplOmotic notes over it, when one fine
morning the disguised island suddenly went
down again, and ships sent out to survey it
sailed over the site it had occupied. We
must not do any thing to disgust this huge
lump of profitable work which has suddenly
arisen among US. We are inclined to look
at it with respectful and superstitious
tenderness, rather as a gambler does upon
run of luck at cards, hoping it may last for
ever.
Lord Brougham and the veterans of the
old antislavery society do not, we fear, share
our delight at this great increase in the en-
ployment of our home population. Their
minds are still scared by those horrible
stories which were burnt in upon their
youth, when England was not only a slave
owning, but slave-trading State. Their
remorse is so great that the ghost of black
man is always before them. They are
benevolent and excellent people, but if
black man happened to have broken his shin,
and white man were in danger of drown
ing, we much fear that real anti-savery
zealot would bind up the black mans leg
before he would draw the white man out of
the water.
1t is an inconsistency therefore, that while
we see only cause of congratulation in this
wonderful increase of trade, Lord Brougham
sees in it the exaggeration of an evil he
never ceases to deplore. We, and such as
we, who are content to look upon society as
Providence allows it to exist-to mend it
when we can, but not to distress ourselves
immoderately for evils which are not our
creation-we see only the free and intelli.
gent English families who thrive upon the
wages which these cotton bales produce.
Lord Brougham sees only the black labor
ers who, on the other side of the Atlantic,
pick the cotton pods in slavery. Lord
Brougham deplores that in this tremendous
importation of thousand millions pounds
of cotton the lions share of the profit goes
to the United States, and has been produced
by slave labor. Instead of twenty. three
millions, the United States now send us
eight hundred and thirty millions, and this
is all cultivated by slaves. 1t is very sad
that this should be so, but we do not see our
way to remedy. There seems to be rather
chance of its becoming worse.
If France, who is already moving onward
in restless, purblind state, should open her
eyes wide, should give herself fair play by
accepting our Goals, iron and machinery,
and, under the stimulus of wholesale COM
petition, should take to manufacturing upon
large scale, then these three millions will
not be enough. France will be competing
with us in the foreign cotton markets, slim.
ulating still further the produce of Georgia
and South Carolina. The jump which the
consumption of cotton in England has just
made, is but a single leap, which may be
repeated indefinitely. There are thousand
millions of mankind upon the globe, all of
whom can be most comfortably clad in cot
ton. Every year new tribes and new nations
are added to the category of cotton wearers.
There is every reason to believe that the
supply of this universal necessity will for
many years yet to come fail to keep pace
with the demand, and, in the interest of that
large class OF our countrymen to whom cot.
ton is bread, we must continue to hope that
the United States will be able to supply us
in years to come with twice as much as we
bought of them in years past.
"Let US raise up another Market" says
the anti.slavery people. So say we all. We
know very well that the possibility of grow
ing cotton is not confined to the new world.
The plains of Bengal grew cotton before
Columbus was born, and we, with our me-
chanical advantages, can actually afford to
take the Bengal cotton from the growers
and send it back to them in yarns and pieces
cheaper than they can make it up. So, also
thousands Of square miles in China are COW
cred with cotton plant; and some day we
may perhaps repeat the same process there.
Africa, too, promises us cotton. DR..
Livingstone found country in which the
growth was indigenous, and where the chiefs
were very anxious to be taught how to Gull
tivate it for an European market. There is
no lack of lands and climate where cotton
could be produced. 1t is said of gold that
no substance in nature is more widely diff.
fused and more omnipresent but, unfortu-
nately, it is diffased under conditions which
make it seldom possible to wini with
profit. So it is Of cotton. The conditions
- IL a..