It is a remarkable thing in the history of the United States that,
when the iron shackles were about to fall from the bondman, he was
caught by a cotton fiber and held for nearly a century longer. We were
about to emancipate the slaves a century ago when Eli Whitney invented
the cotton gin, multiplied cotton production by two hundred, and made
slavery profitable throughout the South. The South Carolina legislature
gave Whitney $50,000 and cotton became king and controlled our commerce
and politics.
Eight bags of cotton went out of Charleston for Liverpool in 1784. Now
about six million bales go annually, and we keep three million bales
for our own use. So two-thirds of our cotton goes to England. The
cotton we ship sells for more than all our flour. Cotton is still king.
In our civil war we came very near being thrown into conflict with
England by an entanglement of the same fiber which caught the black
man. One of the greatest industries of England in 1861-5 was cotton
manufacture, and when we, by our blockade system, closed the southern
ports so cotton could not be carried out, we nearly shut down all the
works in that country where cotton was made up. That meant hard times
to many towns and suffering to many families. That is why so many
Englishmen said we ought to be satisfied to cut our country in two and
let the people of the Confederacy have their way.
Cotton is a world-wide product. It grows in all warm countries
everywhere, sometimes as a tree and sometimes as a shrub. It is usually
spoken of as a plant. There was cotton grown in Chicago last year. Not
in a hot house, but in a back yard with very little attention. A little
girl got some seed, planted it, and had some fine bolls in the fall. It
is a pretty plant, and was cultivated in China nearly a thousand years
ago as a garden plant.
Herodotus tells us that the clothing worn by the men in Xerxes'
army was made of cotton. Their cotton goods attracted wide attention
wherever they marched. Columbus found the natives of the West Indies
clothed in cotton. Cotton goods is not only wide spread, but very
ancient. Cloth was made from this plant in China twenty-one hundred
years ago. At the coronation of the emperor, 502 A.D., the robe of
state which he wore was made of cotton, and all China wondered at the
glory of his apparel.
More capital is used and more labor employed in the manufacture and
distribution of cotton than of any other manufactured product. There is
one industry in Chicago which out-ranks cotton. It is the live-stock
business. More money is spent for meat and live-stock products than for
cotton, taking the whole country together. But cotton ranks first as a
manufacture.
We spend more for meat than for cotton goods, and more for cotton goods
than for wheat and flour. The hog and cotton seed have a peculiar
commercial relation to each other. The oils produced from them are so
nearly alike that lard makers use cotton seed oil to cheapen their
output. A large part of what is sold as pure leaf lard comes from the
cotton plant.
A hundred years ago a good spinner used to make four miles of thread
in a day. This was cut into eight skeins. Now one man can do the work
of a thousand spinners because of machinery. One gin does to-day
what it took a thousand workers to do then. Five men are employed in
the running of one gin, so the gin alone makes one man equal to two
hundred. Because one workman cleans two hundred times as much cotton
since Whitney's time as before, cotton-raising has become a broad
industry. The reason more cotton was not raised in the olden times is
that it could not be used. Now we can use as much cotton as we can
possibly raise.
At first there was strong opposition to these improvements in
machinery because the workmen felt their occupation would be taken
away. But the cotton workers are to be congratulated, for there are
four times as many men working in the cotton industries as there were a
hundred years ago, and yarn thread is produced at less than one-tenth
the cost while the workmen are all better paid for their labor.
James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny in 1767. He was an
illiterate man, and yet his machinery has not been materially improved
upon. The poor fellow was mobbed by the infuriated workmen who saw
that their labor was apparently to be taken from them by machinery. He
was nearly killed. He sold out his invention and died in poverty. He
received nothing from the government nor from the business world for
his great invention. But after his death his daughter received a bounty.
Two years after the jenny, in 1769, Richard Arkwright invented the
spinning frame. He was a barber by trade, but through the appreciation
of crazy old George III., he was struck upon the shoulder with a sword
and rose Sir Richard Arkwright. He amassed a great fortune from his
invention. His spinning frame and Hargreaves' spinning jenny each
needed the other to perfect its work. The jenny made yarn which was
not smooth and hard. So it was used only for woof, and could not be
stretched for warping. The result of the two inventions was a strong,
even thread which was better for all purposes than any which had been
made before.
Parliament imposed a fine of $2,500 for sending American cotton
cloth to England, and another for exporting machinery to America.
Massachusetts at once gave a bonus of $2,500, and afterwards $10,000 to
encourage the introduction of cotton machinery. Francis Cabot Lowell
was an American inventor. He brought the business of weaving cotton
cloth to this country. There had been some small attempts before his
time, but he introduced it extensively and profitably. He established
a cotton factory in Massachusetts in 1810, and was very successful.
In that year he was in England, dealing with makers of cotton goods.
The idea occurred to him that it would be more profitable to make the
goods on his side of the water where the cotton was raised. He acted
promptly. Lowell, Massachusetts, is named after him, and stands as a
monument to his good judgment and inventive genius.
Three years after he had established the manufacture of cotton goods in
this country, he invented the famous power loom. That was a great step
in advance. It has done more for the industry than anything since the
days of Hargreaves and Arkwright. By the use of power these looms set
the spindles running at a remarkable rate of speed. Twenty years ago
the world wondered at the velocity of our spindles, 5,000 revolutions
in one minute. But it has kept on wondering ever since, and the speed
of spindles has constantly increased as if there could be no limit.
15,000 revolutions are now common.
In Great Britain there are 45,000,000 spindles running at a wondrous
rate, and 17,000,000 are running in America. With cheaper labor and
more extended experience, they are doing more of it across the water
than we. For our consumption we make all the coarse grades, but all the
fine cottons are imported. They get large quantities of cotton now in
India. Egypt also is a great cotton country, producing the best cotton
grown with the one exception of our famous sea island cotton. Her crop
is worth $48,000,000 annually. England has hunted the world over for
cotton and good cotton ground, and while we were engaged in war she was
increasing her endeavors in this direction with much earnestness.
If you will notice the contents of a boll of cotton you will be
surprised to find that the fiber is not the main thing there. The seed
is far heavier than the fiber, and it really occupies more space when
the two are crowded into their closest possible limits. You can press
the cotton down upon the seed till the whole is but little larger than
the seed.
The fiber clings to the seed with great firmness, and you find it
difficult to tear them from each other. There is no wonder it was such
a slow process to separate them in the good old days. The Yankee, Eli
Whitney, went to Georgia to teach school, but by the time he arrived
there the school was taken by another, and he was out of employment.
That was a happy misfortune for him and for the country.
He was a nailer, a cane maker, and a worker in wood and metal. A Yankee
nailer cannot be idle in a strange land. The expression, "as busy as
a nailer," is a good one. Whitney looked about him to see what was
the popular demand in his line. He found the greatest difficulty the
southern people had to contend with was the separating of cotton from
its seed. He went at the business of inventing a machine to do the work
for them.
He placed a saw in a slit in a table so that cotton could be pushed
against its teeth as it revolved. The teeth caught into the fiber and
pulled it away from the seeds. As the seeds were too large to pass
through the slit in the table they flew away as the fiber let go its
hold upon them, and Whitney soon found he had solved the problem.
This is the first step in what may be called the manufacture of cotton
fabrics. In another article we shall examine all the various sorts of
textiles that are made from this interesting fiber, and speak of their
manufacture, treatment, sale, and use.
Under Whitney's gin the bulky seeds soon began to pile up
astonishingly, and it became customary to remove the gins as the piles
of this useless seed accumulated. It was left to rot upon the ground in
these heaps just as it fell from the gin. Another ingenious Yankee saw
there was a great deal of material going to waste in these piles, and
he experimented to see what could be done with the seed.
It was found to be very good for use on ground that had become poor by
exhaustive farming. An excellent fertilizer is made from it. The cake
is used for feed for cattle to great advantage. Dairymen regulate the
quality and color of the milk they get from their cows by varying the
amount of oil cake given in their food. The oil extracted from this
seed is used in the arts. It is not equal to linseed oil for painters'
use, but it is a great substance for use in mixing in with better oils
to make them go farther. In other words, it is largely used for the
purposes of adulterating other oils. Not only is it used in making
lard, but it is now sold on its own merits for cooking purposes.
Two days out of New York we sighted the black smoke of a great steamer.
At sea everybody is on the lookout for vessels and much interested in
the passengers that may be on the craft casually met. So we kept watch
of the horizon and were glad to see that a big one was coming our way.
She was headed so nearly towards us that we hoped to get a good view
of the many passengers that might be expected on so large a ship. When
she was near enough to show some of her side, she looked rusty and ill
kept. We wondered what the fare must be for a ride across the water
on such a cheap-looking monster. As she came nearer we saw there were
no passengers. "What is she?" "What does she carry?" The first mate
told us she was a tank steamer, running between the United States and
Belgium, carrying 4,200 tons of cotton-seed oil at a trip.