The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1874-12-31
INDIA COTTON. GOODS.

The successful experiment of cotton man
ufacture in India should teach the Southern
States a lesson of thrift and industry which
should not be permitted to pass UNDECIDED.
A few years ago India was absolutely depend.
ent upon England for her cotton goods just
AS the South is now dependent upon New
England and Manchester. But a noticeable
change has been made. The exports OF
British cotton goods to India during the last
ten years are just half what they were in the
preceding decade. The rapid multiplication
OF cotton mills in Bombay, together with the
| application to the manufacture of all i'm
proved machinery that has been made avail
able in England, is inspiring an appreciation
that the English hold on the Asiatic market is
slight, and that if something is not done to
enable the Manchester men to compete with
the cheap native labor and the large capital
American, French and German, as well as
English on the Hoogley, the time is not dis
tant when it will slip from them altogether.
The uncomfortable conviction is forced upon
them that il India the raw material is at hand,
and the goods, when manufactured, have not
to be sent to market thousands of miles away,
So it is with us. The South has as many, it
not greater, facilities for manufacture The
staple is better, and the natural advantages
are as great. We have, too, a market at our
door, among our own people, and in Mexico
and the South American States
1t is true that Asiatic ingenuity and skill in
the manipulation of the fibre are such as
might be expected from q people who were
adopts at manufacturing centuries before this
country was discovered, 1t only needed
railway connection and supplies of coal to
complete the conditions requisite to enable
all that vast populous region Of the British
Empire to place itself upon self-supplying
basis. That need, as regards the former, is
already partially met; and as if nature her
self was conspiring with native enterprise to |
spite the British manufacturer, coal in vast
quantities has recently been found in the |
Bombay presidency. Still the English manu- |
facturers are not willing to give up; and the |
course they pursue to regain their diminish
ing trade is exactly the reverse of what the
New England manufacturer would do.
Instead of asking for protection, they urge
the repeal Of the duty on cotton yarns and
goods imported into India from England.
The point they made was one in favor Of
freer trade, and that the duties, ranging from
20 to 80 per cent, which British cottons now
pay on entering there should be repealed
such an arrangement, it was urged, would
benefit both countries. The duties in cues
ion, though imposed for revenue, it was
produced all the evils of protec-
ion, for while the Indian consumer is injured
y having prices artifcially raised, the native
is tempted by an arbitrary
'onus to relax his energies.
The same principles and energies put to I
FORK in the cotton growing States Of the South
7ould produce precisely the same results. We
Guild build up here west of the Mississippi, !
nd almost anywhere south of the southern I
arallel, vast manufacturing interest which,
/ few years, would SO Ear overshadow those
+ New England and Manchester, as to nut !
Il possibility Of rivalry out of the question.
ST. Louis Times.