With the irregular and surreptitious exports of 1862, the total is swelled to the following figures:

Cotton, pounds..

$6 value...

1861. .1,221,179,642 $150,331,108

1862. 192,195,030

$38,606,206

The greater efficiency of the blockade in 1863, diminished the amount of cotton escaping from the southern States by sea, but enough was hauled from Texas to Metamoras, in the Mexican territory, and shipped from thence direct, or through the West Indies, to England, to give the latter a better supply of American cotton that year than she received in 1862.

In Mr. Ure's recent work on Cotton Manufacture, it is estimated that the number of cotton spindles in Great Britain, in December, 1860, wa. 33,099,056; that the number of pounds of cotton consumed that year was 1,050,895,000, and that the total value of the product was $141,664,713. It gives some idea of the rapid extension of the manufacture, when I state, on the authority of a parliamentary return, that during the ten years preceding the close of 1860, cotton spindles increased in Great Britain at the average rate of 20,718 spindles per week. In 1861, England consumed 43,350 bales of cotton per week; in 1862, 20,790 bales per week: in 1863, 25,750 bales per week.*

It appears to be imagined by some persons that cotton, or at least that American cotton, as a staple of industry, has had its day, that it will never again be extensively cultivated in our country,-that wool, flax, hemp, jute, and other textiles yet to be discovered, or made available, will become substitutes for it. There is not a shadow of foundation for such an opinion. Cotton is one of the greatest physical blessings which God has vouchsafed to man, and as a textile is only second to wool both in value and necessity. If it could be supplanted by any substitutes, those substitutes would, to the same extent, supplant wool-but, in reality, you, might as well talk of supplanting beef, pork or corn! Like each of the three great articles of sustentation just named, it is not, of itself, indispensable to the support of human life-but perhaps the loss of neither of them, taking the whole world together, would produce so irreparable a chasm in the comforts and solid utilities of life.

All the attempted substitutes for cotton have proved failures for general purposes, and in the comparative cost of production. Nor can wool be considered an exception, when it and cotton now command about the same prices, and when it costs about four or five times as much to grow a pound of wool as a pound of cotton.

* The bales of 1862 and 1863, are as five bales in weight in 1860 and 1861, being Surats, &c.

But, say some, the discontinuance of the cotton supply from the United States will force its production on other countries, and before civil war closes production will become so firmly established in them that it can not subsequently be supplanted; but, on the contrary, aided by cheaper labor and soils, it will drive the American article even from our own markets. Such a result would not benefit the wool grower, for it would cheapen a competing staple. And, let me remark, it would dry up one of the most prolific fountains of our national wealth, independence and prosperity.

*

But, in truth, there is no danger whatever of such a misfortune. Under the spur of the present demand, cotton exports are constantly increasing from India, Turkey, Siam, China, Japan, some of the West India Islands, Brazil, Peru and Honduras. But in the first place, not one of those countries can produce an article comparable with the American in value. Their cottons are all too long stapled, too coarse, or are defective in other essential qualities. In British India, the hardest struggle has been made to rival and supplant American production. But Surats, as India cotton is denominated in commerce, can not, on any present machinery, be profitably spun into yarn above No. 35. On January 30th, 1862, the price of middling to fair Surats in the Liverpool market, was from 14 to 18 pence, while that of a corresponding grade of American cotton was 22 to 26 pence per pound. The shipment of the former from India to Liverpool was smaller in 1862 than in 1861. In 1860, when these same competing cottons were in the market, and when Great Britain manufactured 20,196,420 pounds of cotton per week, 874 per cent. of it was American. In the report of Mr. Cassels, on Cotton in the Bombay Presidency, published in England in 1862, it is distinctly admitted that the staple of the India cotton can not be materially improved; that it must continue to hold a subordinate place in the European markets, and that the American variety can not be successfully grown there.

II. In none of the countries named can cotton production be rendered as profitable as in the United States, because none of them are so well adapted, by their natural conditions, to its culture. In India, for example, the average product is less than 70 pounds per acre; the number of acres per hand but two or three; and it is cultivated only as a rotation crop once in three or four years-while a fair yield in Texas is 500 pounds, and an average yield 400 pounds to the acre, and one hand tills ten acres, with five acres of corn. The average yield of all the cotton lands of the United States does not probably fall short of 350 pounds to the acre. The natural advantages of the United States are also regarded as decidedly

English pence, it will be born in mind, are nearly twice the value of United States cents.

superior to those of all other countries into which cotton culture has been introduced, excepting Queensland; and concerning this, Mr. Atkinson very properly observes that "the distance from market, the scarcity and high price of labor, and the neighborhood of gold fields, must prevent any very rapid development in the cultivation." It is well to remember, in this connexion, that not a thousandth part of the cotton lands of the Southern States have yet been devoted to that staple. As with our coal fields, a supply has obviously been prepared for the future use of the world through the coming ages.

There is one more very important question connected with this subject. Many persons are impressed with the idea that the healthy and profitable cultivation of cotton requires a particular kind of labor. But why should it? Cotton is mainly tilled on uplands, which are as healthy as Southern Ohio or Illinois, I have investigated the subject of profit carefully, and though I have not time now to give the facts and figures, I declare to you that it is as demonstrable as the simplest problem in arithmetic, that the cultivation of cotton is highly profitable, and that for some years to come it will be pre-eminently profitable-as profitable in proportion to capital invested as wool growing-to men of every color and social condition. Such being the facts, can there be any doubt that at the close of the rebellion, the cotton crop will be, as speedily as practicable, restored to its former magnitude?

I have dwelt on this topic at great length for the purpose of exhibiting an outline of those facts which demonstrate the fallacy of the idea expressed in the popular phrase, "King Cotton is dead," an idea which appears to have become widely and deeply imbedded in the public mind, and which, if adopted by wool growers, will establish a false basis of action, and lead to eventual disappointment and loss. I speak of cotton only as a material object of production and consumption. In any other connexion, a discussion of its prospects would be out of place on this occasion.

If, then, cotton is to be fully restored to its former place, driving back wool consumption to its natural and economical boundaries, and thus producing a subsidence in the prices of the latter staple, how rapidly and to what extent may that subsidence be expected to take place?

The prices of wool will probably not fall, unless at momentary intervals in transient fluctuations of the gold market during the civil war, because the main and essential circumstances which produced the rise in price must continue as long as the war continues. There is, indeed, a much stronger probability that the price will advance rather than recede. The great wonder is, that with the ruling prices of gold, exchange and cotton, it has

remained so low. I learn from Messrs. Euston & Company, of New York, that middling cotton has borne the following prices for the last three

Thus, American cotton, in 1863, rose more than 800 per cent., and averaged more than 600 per cent. above its average price, even in Liverpool, from 1846 to 1860-which was a fraction over eleven cents a pound.

The following table of wool prices, which I have received from Mr. George Livermore, of Boston, brings the quarterly averages from October, 1861, (the point where they were left in the table for the thirty seven preceding years, published in the Practical Shepherd,) down to the present day:

It appears from this that the average price of fine and medium wools have not, during any quarter since the opening of the civil war, advanced 100 per cent. above the average prices of the thirty-five preceding years; and that the prices of coarse wool advanced a little over 100 per cent. above such average during two quarters. During that thirty-five years, both of the above two first named classes of wool have been repeatedly worth more in gold than they now are.

The small advance in the price of wool in our country, compared with that of cotton, is attributable to several causes. It is not so scarce as cotton, taking the world together. The American wool grower comes into competition, in our markets, with the larger capital, or the semi-civilized labor, or the cheaper lands, or the winterless climates of other countries or with more or less of these circumstances combined-without adequate governmental protection; without that proportionable degree of it which

* These correspond with the New York Prices Current and Shipping List.

is extended to various other branches of industry which require protection. And incidental causes, heareafter to be named, operated against our wool growers in 1863, which cannot be expected frequently to occur.

pre

I have not time here to compare our existing woolen tariff with the ceding one. On manufactured wool, the value of which, at the last port of export, is 18c. per pound, or less, it imposes a duty of five per cent. (ad valorem ;) on the same, the value of which, at the last port of export, is more than 18c. and not more than 24c. per pound, a (specific) duty of 3c. per pound; on the same, the value of which, at the last port of export, is over 24c. per pound, a (specific) duty of 9c. per pound; on the same, imported in such a state by mixture of dirt, etc., as to reduce it to 18c. per pound, or less, a duty of 9c. per pound. On woolen cloths, cassimeres, shawls and all manufactures of which wool is a component material, if valued over one dollar per square yard, or weight under 12oz. per sq. yd., it imposes a duty of 18 cents per pound, and 35 per cent. (ad valorem). On the same articles, if not otherwise provided for, it imposes a duty of 18c. per pound, and 30 per cent. (ad valorem). On nine leading kinds of carpeting, value $1.25 per sq. yd., or under, it imposes a duty of 45c. per sq. yd.; on the same value, over $1.25 per sq. yd., a duty of 55c. per sq. yd., "provided that none of the above carpeting pay a less duty than 24 per cent." (ad valorem). On certain other kinds of woolen carpeting, it respectively imposes duties of 33c. and 28c. per sq. yd.

The annual average of prices of imported wool, as obtained by official data, from 1840 to 1857, ranged from six to thirteen cents, gradually increasing with occasional fluctuations. It is estimated for 1860 at fourteen cents; for 1861 at fifteen cents, and thence the record in pounds is kept officially as before, averaging a little over sixteen cents per pound in 1862, and about the same in 1863.

The amount of protection to the manufacturer of woolens, as compared to the protection given to the producer of wool, will be shown by taking the case of a yard of cloth that weighs 12oz., made of wool, imported at the valuation of 16c. per pound at the port of shipment. Two pounds of such wool should be abundantly sufficient to produce 12oz. of cloth. These two pounds of wool will cost thirty-two cents, and must pay a duty of five per cent. on that valuation, which will be one cent and six mills. Thus the manufacturer can purchase and pay the duty on the material for a yard of cloth that will weigh 12oz., for thirty-three cents and six mills. To this must be added the cost of transportation. If the same wool is manufactured before it comes to this country and is imported in cloth, it must pay in duties, first, eighteen cents per pound on its weight, which, for the twelve ounces that the cloth weighs, is thirteen cents and five mills;