Pierre weekly free press. (Pierre, S.D.) 1889-19??, 1915-08-12
Cotton a. con,rahanu.
From the London Mail.

BEFORE this war most people imagined
that cotton was used principally for the
manufacture Of calico and cotton fabrics
In Lancashire or for the bandaging of
coming to understand that cotton is the
chief Ingredient in modern 'gunpowder,'
ana the substance with which men are
killed in the war of today. The explosive
which propels the bullet from the rifle and
the high explosive she'll from the field
gun is not. as in Napoleon's time. made
OF charcoal. saltpetre. and sulphur. 1t is
made chiefly of cotton.
70 convert cotton into an explosive 1t
Is dipped in nitric acid, washed, and dried.
The resultant in guncotton. Unless ex-
IRENE care Is taken in its manufacture
and unless the cotton is pure and clean.
there Is an early end of the explosive
factory and all employed in It. When
p r1I1 wGy4 mi rho howexsr it is stable and
dite, is two-thirds composed of guncot-
ton and the other third of various in
gredlents. The German and Austrian
powders are much the same. Without
guncotton the German guns and rifles
would be silenced. Without an ample
supply of cotton there could be no Ger
man guncotton.
The consumption of cotton in modern
wal Is prodigious. A bale of cotton
weighing 400 pounds, or about a fifth OF
q ton, is needed to make the powder for
one shot from one Of the Queen Eliza
beths 16-inch guns or from one of the
German 17-inch howitzers. The same
quantity OF cotton would provide ammu-
milton for 400 shots from a field gun or
$1,000 rounds from a rifle. The lowest call
c%ulation places the quantity Of cotton
daily fired by Germany and Austria at
700 tons; the highest at something over
1000 tons.
Cotton does not grow In Germany and
cannot be manufactured chemically there.
Every ounce that she fires away in killing
or manning the British troops and their
allies has to reach her by sea. If her
supply of cotton We're cut off she would
be most gravely embarrassed. Even sup
posing she could devise a new powder.
to change explosives in the midst of a
great war is a matter of tremendous DIFF
ticulty and peril.
Britain has not stopped Germany from
getting cotton abroad. There is one sure
way Of cutting off her supply. 1t is to
proclaim cotton c~ontraband or liable to
We have not done that. though 1t ought
to have been done in the first week of
the war. We proclaimed wool. copper,
everything but the one Indispensable food
for the German guns, contraband. For
many months we even allowed cotton to
be exported in great quantities from this
country to various neutral ports, whence
1t was notoriously dispatched to Ger
many. We have only recently stopped
this trade by al embargo, or prohibition,
on the export of cotton from Great Brit
cotton from the United States. where
most OF 1T is grown, in neutral ships to
neutral ports, and most of the cotton gets
to Germany in this manner.
If we proclaimed cotton c%ontraband we
could stop this traffic by Selling the ships
with cotton cargoes and calling on the
neutrals to show that the cotton was not
intended to reach the enemy. We could
do this under principles which the United
States clearly asserted in the civil war
with the confederacy and which Mr..
Bryan reiterated in his letter to Mr.. Stone
five months ago.
Why do we not issue the proclamation
and cut off the raw material of G~ermany's
powder? Are there not widows and or
phans enough in Europe?