Year: 1868

With all the drawbacks to the culti- vation of cotton, compared with the means and facilities just before the war, the crop of the present year is large and very valuable. It is now generally estimated at two million five hundred thousand bales and it must be remembered that this is not the es- innate of cotton spectators, who are often interested in misrepresenting the facts, but of the planters themselves and of those who prepare careful sta tistics of our productions. The cotton generally is of as fine quality, too, as in the most favorable seasons. This years crop, therefore, will be worth, fl the present price be kept up, about two hundred and fifty millions of dol lars. There is reason to believe the price will be sustained, or that it will decline but little. The stock of our American long staple on hand in Eu- rope is very limited and there is a large demand at home. The crop will realize, probably, more than any pre- vious one has realized; for when it reached four or five millions Of bales. as in the years just before the war, the market value per pound was not half what it is now.

 England has been making extraor- dinary exertions for many years past to stimulate the growth of cotton in India, Egypt and other parts of the world, in order to make herself inde- pendent, to some extent at least, of the United States for this article. The money expended by the British gov ernment, by the government of India, and by English capitalists and manu- lecturers for this purpose amounts to an enormous sum. The war in this country which cut off the supply to England and which at one time threat cned to break up and revolutionize the vast manufacturing business of that country alarmed the British people and government. At this crisis they re- doubled their former efforts to get a supply elsewhere. and they did increase the production vastly in India, and to some extent, in Egypt. Still, as soon as the war was over here and Ameri- can cotton could be obtained again. the demand for it was greater than the supply, and it continues to be so even at the high price of twenty-two to twenty-eight cents pound. Why is this The answer is plain. The cot ton of India is poor short staple arti- cle, and badly prepared for market the cotton from Egypt, though better than that of India, and said to be equal in quality to som of the best American, is raised only to limited extent, and the crops are very unreliable. It has been said that Egypt would produce two or three millions of bales a year with sufficient labor and skillful culti- yation; but there is neither the labor nor skill to obtain such vast produc- ton. We doubt, however, if anything like that amount could be raised under any circumstances. The truth is, our Southern States are the only reliable cotton producing region yet discover ed in the world for the best qualities, and there is no fear of other countries rivalling this in that production. Our soil, climate and labor, and, above all, that benefcent Gulf Stream which sweeps round our coast, giving the needful showers alternately with n sunshine, give us for all time a monopoly of cotton culture and the cotton markets.

 When we look at the terrible destruc- tion of property in the South during the war, at the universal poverty of the planters and of all classes of people, at the breaking up of the whole previous labor system, at the political and social at the wornout condi- ton Of all the implements and sprli-