633. Chief exports in 1860.—The following table gives the chief items among the exports of the country in 1860, and corresponding items made up from the annual average of the years 1802-1804, as a basis from which to appreciate the changes.

634. Changes since 1800.—It will be noted, as said above, that the foreign exports of the country did not increase during the period, and were actually less in 1860 than they were about 1800. Comparing the figures for the total exports of domestic merchandise we find that this, the most important branch of our commerce, increased about eightfold in value between the years chosen for comparison. All of the separate classes of wares contributed to the growth of our export trade, but in very different measure, as is apparent when the figures are compared. The export industries which were most prominent in the colonial and early national periods had not kept their place in the movement of progress, and their output for export had merely doubled, roughly, in this period. There is apparent, on the other hand, a great growth in the export of manufactured wares; and the export of cotton, which in 1789 was practically nothing, and about 1800 was less than seven million, had risen to the enormous sum of one hundred and ninety million, considerably more than half in value of the total exports of the country. The history of commerce presents no parallel to the rapid rise of cotton in the commerce of the United States at this period, and the subject demands careful consideration.

635. Cotton before 1800.—The word cotton, now applied exclusively to the fibers attached to the seed of a shrub of the mallow family, was formerly a general term used for vegetable fibers coming from several different sources. The fibers acquired from the present cotton shrub, or from a vine or tree, had been used for textile fabrics from ancient times. The manufacture of cotton goods, however, was neglected in Europe until the eighteenth century, and at the beginning of our national existence much of the supply of raw cotton still came from the ancient seat of the cotton industry in Asia. From almost the beginning of the colonial period in American history experiments had been made with cotton culture, but the colonists found no incentive to devote themselves to cotton cultivation on a large scale. The separation of the fiber from the seeds was a tedious process, there was no market for raw cotton in the colonies, and other crops were found to return larger profits to the cultivator. Cotton was grown successfully on some of the islands of semi-tropical America, but the territory now forming the United States counted for nothing as a source of cotton when the national government was established in 1789. So weak, in fact, was the cotton industry at this time, that it was protected by a duty of three cents a pound on imported cotton, included in the first national tariff.

636. Growth in importance of cotton.—Various influences, however, combined about 1789 to bring into prominence the possibilities of cotton as a regular crop. The great improvements in textile machinery caused at this time an increased demand for the raw material. The other crops which were then raised in the territory now occupied by cotton were not flourishing. The indigo culture, for reasons which have been noted above, was unpopular; rice culture had declined during the Revolution, as the war had broken up the organization of slave labor in the rice districts; tobacco was giving smaller returns, as the land was exhausted by continuous cropping. A new variety of cotton, moreover, had recently been introduced from the Bahamas, known as sea-island or long-staple; the fibers were long and silky, suited to the manufacture of fine threads and fabrics, and they were more readily separated from the seeds than were the fibers of the ordinary short-staple or upland variety. The cultivation of this variety was an assured success in the narrow strip along the coast where it could be grown; and further inland, where sea-island cotton could not be raised, people began to strive persistently to overcome the difficulties of the cultivation of the upland variety.

637. Demand for efficient means of cleaning cotton.—The chief obstacle to the cultivation of upland cotton was now the difficulty of separating the fibers from the seeds. To perform the process by hand-picking was out of the question, as a man in this way could clean only one pound of cotton in a day. Various simple machines had been devised to effect the separation of the seeds, and these were fairly successful when applied to sea-island cotton, enabling a man to clean fifty or sixty pounds. None of them, however, was a success when applied to upland cotton, whose short fibers adhered very tenaciously to the seeds.

The problem was solved by a native of New England, Eli Whitney, who had gone south as a teacher, and who invented the cotton gin (engine) which proved capable of cleaning upland cotton, and so made the cultivation of that crop a commercial possibility. The conditions may be described in Whitney’s own words, used in a memorial to the government, asking for an extension of his patent. He showed “That, being in the state of Georgia in the year 1793, he was informed by the planters that the agriculture of that State was unproductive, especially in the interior, where it produced little or nothing for exportation. That attempts had been made to cultivate cotton, but that the prospect of success was not flattering. That of the various kinds which had been tried in the interior none of them were productive, except the green seed cotton, which was so extremely difficult to clean as to discourage all further attempts to raise it. That it was generally believed this species of cotton might be cultivated with great advantage, if any cheap and expeditious method of separating it from its seeds could be discovered, and that such a discovery would be highly beneficial both to the public and the inventor.”

638. Invention of the saw gin by Whitney, 1793.—Encouraged by the terms of the national patent law, on which he relied for a monopoly of his invention, Whitney set to work, and in a short time had devised a form of cotton-gin which, with minor alterations, has remained in use ever since. The raw cotton was fed through a wire grating to a cylinder on the surface of which were wires or saw teeth, that caught the fibers and pulled them through, the seeds being retained by the grating. The gin was a complete success, enabling a man to clean several hundred pounds of cotton in a day. Whitney himself reaped comparatively little benefit from his invention, as he found it impossible to prevent infringements; he said in 1812, with slight exaggeration, that the total amount which he had realized was less than the saving in cost effected in one hour by his machines then in operation. The country, however, was an immense gainer, for the last obstacle to the successful cultivation of cotton was removed.

639. Extension of cotton cultivation, and increase of exports.—The exports of cotton, which in 1793, the year of Whitney’s invention, had been only two thousand bales, rose by leaps and bounds. In 1802 they passed one hundred thousand bales, in 1822 five hundred thousand, in 1834 one million, in 1843 two million, in 1858 three million. The States along the Atlantic coast, in which cotton culture first sprang up, continued for many years to be the main seat of the industry. After the war of 1812, however, the cultivation of cotton spread in the Southwest, where rich river bottoms and prairie lands offered soil of exceptional fertility, and where the numerous rivers facilitated transportation. The exports of cotton from New Orleans increased tenfold in the years 1816 to 1830, and at this later date the western States produced the larger part of the cotton supply. At the close of the period which we are studying (1860) over half of the total crop was raised in the three States Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

640. King cotton.—The success of the cotton culture in this country was attended by far-reaching results in economic and political history. We must restrict ourselves here to the commercial aspects of the cotton industry, without discussing such topics as its relations to slavery and its influence in bringing on the Civil War.

Never in the world’s history have producers enjoyed such an exalted position in commerce as that which was held by the planters of the cotton States. The larger part of the world’s supply of an article regarded as of the first necessity came from a comparatively restricted area in the South. The people of Europe and other continents had become used to cotton textiles, great factories had grown up to manufacture them, but it seemed as though people must go unclad and factories must stop work, if the United States should refuse to deliver raw cotton. For years before the Civil War fear of a cotton famine had haunted the minds of European manufacturers.

Cotton took a position in national commerce equal in importance to that which it occupied in international trade. Not only did it furnish directly more than half of the total exports of the United States; it shared its prosperity with other industries, and influenced the development of every part of the country. Northern merchants made fortunes in handling and transporting southern cotton; the manufacturers of every district found in the South a market where people had plenty of money to buy goods which they were too busy to make; the farmers of the Northwest supplied in considerable part the needs of the South for food. The people of the South were not blind to these facts, and tended, indeed, to exaggerate their importance. As a sample of their attitude this extract from a speech by Senator Hammond in 1858 may be taken: “Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us, we could bring the whole world to our feet. What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? I will not stop to depict what every one can imagine, but this is certain, England would topple headlong, and carry the whole civilized world with her. No, you dare not make war on cotton. No Power on the earth dares to make war on it—cotton is king.”

641. Slight contributions of the South to exports, aside from cotton.—In the period before the Civil War, when southern plantations were worked by slaves, it was considered to be the best policy to plant cotton continuously, without alternation or diversification of crops, though this policy led necessarily to exhaustion of the soil and required frequent removals to fresh land. Cotton was, therefore, the single product which the South contributed in great quantities to the internal and foreign trade of the country. The rice culture was maintained on the eastern coast and was extended along the Gulf, but there was little increase in the export of rice, as the crop was consumed largely at home. Indigo disappeared from the list of American products. Tobacco production spread in the States of the Ohio valley, and the exports of this ware rose after the middle of the century to double the value which they had about 1800, but a comparison of the figures given at the opening of the chapter shows that tobacco declined still further from the position it had held in colonial times.

642. Trade between the North, the South, and Europe.—In 1860 only one third, approximately, of the total exports of the country came from the North. Conditions in this period resembled closely those of colonial times, with the substitution of the southern States for the West Indies in the triangle of trade. The North imported from Europe far more than it could export in return; it shipped South, however, large quantities of foodstuffs and manufactures; and the South gave in exchange bills on Europe which were drawn against the great quantities of cotton sent thither. Cotton from the South to Europe, manufactures from Europe to the North, manufactures and foodstuffs from the North to the South: such were the three sides of the triangle.

643. Chief exports from the North.—The North could no longer look to colonial industries, like fisheries and forestry, to provide the means of purchasing the foreign wares which it required. The exports from those industries had increased, it is true, but were still so small that they had become items of slight importance in the total. The exports of manufactures, on the other hand, had grown very rapidly, and formed now a considerable item in our trade. The South contributed to this class some wares (manufactured tobacco, turpentine, cottonseed oil cake), but the products of developed manufacture came almost entirely from the North; manufactures of cotton and of iron were the leading items. The rise of these manufactures will be treated in the next chapter. At the North, however, as at the South, agricultural products held the first place among the exports. Foodstuffs and animal products were exported to the value of about fifty million dollars, and these wares came chiefly from the North. The total is small in comparison with that of the cotton export (one hundred and ninety million), and gave little promise of the remarkable expansion which was to follow after the Civil War; still, foodstuffs and animal products were the mainstay of the Northern export trade.

644. Gradual increase in the exports of foodstuffs.—The increase in the exports of northern agriculture was rather less than would be expected from a people rapidly increasing in numbers and provided with an abundance of fertile land. For many years after the close of the war of 1812 commerce in wheat and flour languished, and even toward 1840 the export of those articles was less than it had been at the opening of the century. There was talk, even, of imposing a duty on wheat, to protect the farmers of the Atlantic seaboard from imports. As late as 1835 Ohio was the only grain-exporting district of the West, and the first grain shipment on the Great Lakes, of which there is record, was made about that time. Chicago became of importance as a center of grain shipments only about 1850. In the decade from 1850 to 1860, however, the Chicago shipments increased (roughly) from two to twenty million bushels, and the total exports rose rapidly; canals and railways were at last bringing the cheap grain from the West to the people of Europe, who at last were ready to welcome it. The export of animal products was growing also. Lard and pickled pork were the chief items under this head, for the lack of modern appliances prevented the export of fresh meat; but the price of hogs at Cincinnati doubled in the fifteen years preceding 1860, and western farmers were encouraged to give increased attention to the supply of animal products.

645. Exports of precious metals; result of the California gold discoveries.—The last item in the list of exports given at the beginning of the chapter is that of precious metals, which we shipped abroad to the value of more than fifty million dollars. Ordinarily the exports and imports of precious metals are not included in the figures of a country’s trade. Coin and bullion are used to make up the balance of accounts between different countries; they may leave a country one year and may return to it the next year; and they represent, therefore, no contribution to commerce like that of the shipment of merchandise. An exception must be made, however, in the case of the few countries which produce such quantities of gold and silver that they can regularly export a surplus. The mines of precious metals are to these countries as much a commercial resource as are the coal or iron mines to countries like England and Germany. The United States was not at first among these favored countries: it produced little gold and less silver, and needed to import most of the precious metals which it required for use as currency and in the arts. These conditions were suddenly reversed by the discovery of gold in California in 1848. The gold production of the country, which had been formerly less than a million dollars a year, had risen by 1850 to fifty million, and provided the country with a handsome surplus which it could afford to exchange abroad for merchandise.

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