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by this enterprising American, from a long residence in Manchester, and from being engaged in an extensive branch of manufactures there, has probably enabled him to ascertain this fact with accuracy. The fuel forming the principal part of the expense of operating steam engines, by calculating the cost of coals in England and the United States, a comparative estimate may be formed of the expenses attending the operation of a steam engine in each of the two countries with a tolerable degree of correctness. In the manufacturing districts of France near Rouen, where the most extensive cotton and woollen mills are located, the coals used are brought principally from the mines at Charleroi, and are nearly as dear as in the United States. The coals exported from England to the United States are of a superior quality to those ordinarily consumed for manufacturing purposes, and sell at an advanced price in Liverpool of nearly four shillings per ton, or from fourteen to fifteen shillings sterling per ton. Virginia coal is about equal in quality to the common English coal for the purpose of operating steam engines, and costs on the seaboard of the northern and eastern states three times as much as the coals used in Manchester for steam engines. The daily wages of a fireman and good engineer is nearly as high in England as in the United States. The actual expense necessary for operating a steam engine in England, all other things being equal, may therefore be estimated at rather more than two fifths of what it is on the sea board of the middle and eastern states, when coals are used for fuel; while at Pittsburgh, on the contrary, from the wonderful abundance of coal, steam power is actually available at about three-fourths of the expense required in England. Pine wood seems to be preferred in the United States as fuel for steamboats, from producing a ready and intense heat without being attended with disagreeable sulphureous vapours during combustion.

Tenchloge

CHAPTER IX.

GROWTH OF COTTON.

Cotton, as represented by Baines.

Sea Island cotton.

A statement of the Arts and Manufactures of the United States of America, for the year 1810. Digested and prepared by Tench

Coxe, Esquire, of Philadelphia, 1817.

The capacity of the United States, in the country south of Annapolis, in Maryland, to produce cotton wool, in copious and extensive planters' crops, did not appear, in the year 1786, to have impressed the minds of the people of our own country, even from the thirty-first to the thirty-eighth degree of north latitude. Circumstances, in the family horticulture of the writer, arising among relations resident in Talbot county, had possessed him of the information, that cotton wool was constantly and familiarly raised there, in the little gardening of the children and domestics. It is distinctly remembered, that these impressions of early youth had matured, in the year 1785, into pleasing convictions, that the United States, in its extensive regions south of Anne Arundel and Talbot, would certainly become a great cotton producing country. This expectation was rendered the more deeply interesting, because European inventions of labour-saving machinery, for the carding and spinning of this raw material, were known to the writer to have occurred, though they were, at that time, very imperfectly understood, and not possessed in the United States.

An opportunity was taken, after the convention at Annapolis, in 1786, to examine into the opinions of persons of the highest qualifications, and the best opportunities to judge of the grounds of the suggested capacity for the cotton cultivation, and the connected prospects of those, who might become extensive planters. Mr. Madison was a member of the convention, and on an exami

nation of the suggestion of our capacity, was immediately and decidedly of opinion, that our success would be certain and great. The opinions of the best judges, and of those of the most frequent opportunities of observation, were decidedly favourable to the future success of the United States as a cotton producing country. In and before the year 1787, the United States had never exported one bale of domestic cotton to any country: no planter had adopted its cultivation as a crop: nor had we any of those numerous and invaluable labour-saving machines, which have been imported and adopted, to card, rove, spin, twist, colour, and print. Such was the real inadvertence, on the part of the intelligent cultivators of the south, to the natural advantages of our soil and climate: such the unacquaintance of the ingenious and energetic mechanicians of the whole Union with the form and value of labour-saving machinery.*

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* Cotton has been known to the world, as an useful commmodity, ever since the days of Herodotus; who, upwards of two thousand years ago, wrote that Glossypium grew in India, which, instead of seed, produced wool." Cotton clothes more of mankind than either wool, flax, hemp, or silk. It has grown for many centuries in the East Indies. It had been declared by Dr. Hewat, in his account of South Carolina, printed in 1719, "that the climate and soil of the province were favourable to the culture of cotton." The first provincial congress in South Carolina, held in January, 1775, recommended to the inhabitants "to raise cotton," yet very little practical attention was paid to their recommendation. A small quantity only was raised for domestic manufactures. The labour-saving machines promoted, greatly promoted, the manufacture of cotton. In this culture the Georgians took the lead. They began to raise it, as an article of export, soon after the peace of 1783. Their success recommended it to their neighbours. The whole quantity exported from Carolina, in any one year, prior to 1795, was inconsiderable, but in that year it amounted to £1,109,653. The cultivation of it has been, ever since, increasing; and in the first year of the present century, eight millions of pounds were exported from South Carolina. So much cotton is now (1809) made, in Carolina and Georgia, that if the whole was manufactured in the United States, it would go far in clothing a great proportion of the inhabitants of the Union; for one labourer can raise as much of this commodity in one season as will afford the raw material for 1,500 yards of common cloth, or a sufficiency for covering 150 persons. It has trebled the price of land suitable to its growth; and when the crop succeeds and the market is favourable, the annual income of those who plant it is double to what it was before the introduction of cotton. Nankeen cotton is cultivated, in the upper country, for domestic use. Mr. Whitney's saw-gin, for the separation of the wool from the seed, has facilitated that operation in the highest degree.

The presence of the raw material will provoke to, excite and produce the manufacture. American cotton will produce a home manufacture. The American will not be uncomfortable in his own cotton velvets, velverets, corduroys, swanskins, and cotton blankets.

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