قراءة كتاب The Fabric of Civilization A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States

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The Fabric of Civilization A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States

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Guaranty Trust Company of New York

دار النشر: Project Gutenberg

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The Fabric of Civilization

A Short Survey

of the Cotton Industry in the

United States

Guaranty Trust Company of New York

140 Broadway

FIFTH AVENUE OFFICE Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street			MADISON AVENUE OFFICE Madison Avenue and 60th Street
	LONDON OFFICES 32 Lombard Street, E. C. 5 Lower Grosvenor Pl., S. W.			LIVERPOOL OFFICE 27 Cotton Exchange Buildings
PARIS OFFICE 1 and 3 Rue des Italiens		HAVRE OFFICE 122 Boulevard Strasbourg	BRUSSELS OFFICE 158 Rue Royale

GUARANTY TRUST COMPANY OF NEW YORK

THE cotton industry touches the lives of the vast majority of the peoples of the earth. The ensuing survey does not pretend to cover the field in all its diversity. It aims to give, in brief compass, such general facts concerning the industry in the United States as may enable the reader quickly to familiarize himself with its broader outlines.

Contents

CHAPTER		PAGE
I	The Importance and Power of Cotton	5
II	Where Cotton is Grown and Spun and Why	10
III	The Raw Cotton Market	17
IV	The Cloth Market	27
V	Financing Cotton and Cotton Cloth	33
VI	American Cloth in Foreign Markets	38
VII	Some of the Grower’s Problems	41
VIII	In the Cotton Mill	45
IX	The Finishing Operations	57

The Fabric of Civilization

CHAPTER I

The Importance and Power of Cotton

COTTON is the fabric of civilization. It has built up peoples, and has riven them apart. It has brought to the world vast and permanent wealth. It has enlisted the vision of statesmen, the genius of inventors, the courage of pioneers, the forcefulness of manufacturers, the initiative of merchants and shipbuilders, and the patient toil of many millions.

A whole library could be written on the economic aspects of cotton alone. It could be told in detail, how and why the domination of the field of its manufacture passed from India to Spain, to Holland, and finally to England, which now shares it chiefly with the United States. The interdependence of nations which it has brought about has been the subject of numerous books and articles.

Genius that Served
The World’s Need

Nor is the history of the inventions which have made possible to-day’s great production of cotton fabrics less impressive. From the unnamed Hindu genius of pre-Alexandrian days, through Arkwright and Eli Whitney, down to Jacquard and Northrop, the tale of cotton manufacture is a series of romances and tragedies, any one of which would be a story worth telling in detail. Yet, here is a work that is by no means finished. Great inventors who will apply their genius to the improvement of cotton growing and manufacture are still to be born.

The present purpose, however, is to explain, as briefly as may be, the growth of the cotton industry of the United States, in its more important branches, and to endeavor, on the basis of recognized authority, to indicate its position in relation to the cotton industries of the remainder of the world.

America the Chief
Source of Raw Material

For the present, and for the future, as far as that may be seen, the United States will have to continue to supply the greater part of the world’s raw cotton. Staples of unusual length and strength have been grown in some foreign regions, and short and inferior fibers have come from still others. But the cotton belt of the Southern States, producing millions of bales, is the chief source of supply for all the world.

The following table, taken from "The World’s Cotton Crops, 1915," by J. A. Todd, gives the

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