The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1866-05-11
COLUMBIA
) Friday Morning, May IL, 1855.
The Cotton Trade.

AS AuNcIpOOl COtCOn uA@1hct AI0-
quently exhibits some queer phases;
remaining steady in the face of large
shipments known to be on the way to
that port, and when these supplies
arrive in the docks, gives way from
fourpence to sixpence in ten days.
The New York Watchnsa,s has q
thoughtful and well-written article in
relation to a panic which occurred
during the week ending the 14th ult.
It says hat operators in the Liver
pool market, rs well as manufacturers
in the districts, were fully aware for
weeks and months of the heavy ship
ments of cotton on the way from
India and America, and unless the
vessels bearing it were wrecked, it
was morally certain those large sup
plies would be landed upon the quay
at Liverpool. Yet they look upon
those hundreds of thousands of bales
upon the wave with the utmost indif-
ference market scarcely chang
ing for the worse to the extent of a
heart-beat-and on one or two occa-
sions actually advancing in the face
Of them, and then, when the cotton
begins to arriue, the trade flies off in
a panic, and prices are pitched down
ward sixpence sterling in almost as
many days! But there is no reason
ing with panic; words even of Solo
mons wisdom are lost, and it must
needs go on until its force is spent,
and then reason returns, as general
thing, to see how silly we have acted.
OF course this extraordinary con-
dition of steadiness in the Liverpool
market had its effect on this side of
the water. Operators in New York,
and in the various markets through
out the Union, were amazed at the
stiff bearing of the Liverpool market,
and as it stood up SO long and we'll
up to the last week in March, they
were not prepared for the panic that
took place in the middle of April.
The WdacAman was right in the
opinion it expressed in the article we
refer to, written in its issue of the 9Th
inst, that there would be recovery
from this fright. The quotations we
have received from time to time since
the 14th April show that the market
had recovered the decline in part.
Liverpool dates of the Goth brought
an advance of I'd. to I'd. On the
26th, the advance during the week
was Id, and, on the 29th, the market
remained about the same, and though
the receipts will be probably heavy
for time, yet the proportion of
American cotton will most likely be
small. On the arrival of the news of
the heavy decline in the New York
market, the Southerners who had
cotton in that market on sale,
we're prompt to telegraph their
agents not to sacrifice it, as they felt
certain the tempest abroad would
soon subside, and once the unfavor-
able prospects for the next crop were
fully known, there would be an i'm
portant rally, and prices bound up
ward as rapidly as they had fallen.
If there be any large amount of
truth in the reports we receive from
various cotton-growing States, rela-
tive to the comparative worthlessuess
Of the seed, there can be little doubt
but the markets here and abroad,
when this becomes known, will not
only continue firm, but ultimately
advance to considerable extent. A
writer remarks, that if the seed has
lost its vitality from being too long
stored, caused by ill-advised restric-
tive legislation in several of the
States, and if no better can be pro-
cured, corn will have to take the
place of cotton. This month will
probably decide one way or another
what the result will be.
A desr,atch dated WASHINGTON 9Th