UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. SAN DIEGO 3 182202751 2060 CUT TO AS A WORLD POWER JAMES A.3. SCHERER UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO Donated in memory of John W. Snvder by His Son and Daughter 1J VERS TV OF CAL FORNIA SAN DIEGO n 3 1822 02751 2060 Social Sciences & Humanities Library University of California, San Diego Please Note: This item is subject to recall. Date Due JfttUl rjUL 1 5 2002 Cl 39 (5/97) L/CSO Lib. COTTON AS A WORLD POWER A STUDY IN THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY BY JAMES A. B. SCHEREE, PH.D., LL.D. PRESIDENT OP THROOP COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY Author of "The Japanese Crisis," etc. NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1916, by FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPAITT All rights reserved TO GEOEGE B. CROMER ACKNOWLEDGMENT The core of this book was used as a lecture at Ox- ford and Cambridge Universities in the spring of 1914 with the caption, " Economic Causes in the American Civil War. ' ' The preparation of that lec- ture involved much fresh scrutiny of the subject, and I wish to thank the authorities of the Bodleian Li- brary and the British Museum for assistance. To my English friends Mr. Norman Angell and Sir William Mather I extend especial thanks for invaluable aid. On this side of the water I owe much to many friends and correspondents, including Major Harry Ham- mond, the late Mr. D. A. Tompkins, and Dr. Walter Hines Page, now the American Ambassador to Eng- land. I owe most, however, to my Pasadena friend, George Ellery Hale, without whose encouragement I should hardly have brought this book to completion. I desire to thank my colleagues, Professors Bar- rett, Judy, and Simons, as well as Mr. James Ford Ehodes, Professor John Bates Clark, and Mr. E. L. Ashley, for valuable suggestions made while the book was passing through the press. Alphabetical lists of the leading authorities will be found at the close of the volume. JAMES A. B. SCHERER, THEOOP COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY, PASADENA, CALIFORNIA. CONTENTS BOOK I FROM INDIA TO ENGLAND CHAPTER PAGE 1 THE NEW GOLDEN FLEECE 1 2 THE VEGETABLE LAMB 6 3 COTTON MYTHOLOGY 10 4 EARLIEST HISTORY 16 5 HINDU SKILL 19 6 ALEXANDER'S TRADE ROUTES 23 7 EGYPTIAN MUMMIES AND THE MICROSCOPE. .... 28 8 FROM ROME TO SPAIN 30 9 COTTON AND THE RENAISSANCE 34 10 THE WEAVER KING 39 11 COTTON ENTERS ENGLAND 44 BOOK II THE TRANSFORMATION OF ENGLAND i!2 THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION .... ". . ; . . . 51 13 BRITISH GENIUS . . 55 14 KAY AND HARGREAVES 59 15 ARKWRIGHT THE BARBER 66 16 CROMPTON AND CARTWRIGHT 71 17 WATT AND DAVY 78 18 BRINDLEY'S CANALS 84 19 GENERAL RESULTS 89 20 "CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY" 97 21 MALTHUS AND DARWIN ... 104 CONTENTS BOOK III COTTON IN AMEEICAN HISTORY: SECTIONAL EVOLUTION CHAPTER PAGE 22 COLUMBUS AND CORTES 113 23 COLONIAL LIFE 118 24 EARLY MANUFACTURE 122 25 THE DIS-UNITED STATES 127 26 STATES'-RIGHTS AND THE CONSTITUTION 132 27 EARLY SLAVERY 138 28 THE SOUTH AGAINST SLAVERY 141 29 SOUTHERN SLAVERY DECLINES 145 30 A STARTLING REVERSAL 149 31 WHITNEY IN GEORGIA 154 32 WHITNEY INVENTS THE GIN 158 33 ELI WHITNEY vs. HODGEN HOLMES 163 34 COTTON CHANGES THE SOUTH 168 35 COTTON AFFECTS NEW ENGLAND 172 BOOK IY COTTON IN AMEEICAN HISTORY: THE GREAT CONTROVERSIES 36 PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE; ANOTHER REVERSAL . . 179 37 NEW ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH 183 38 COTTON EXPORTS AND THE TARIFF 187 39 THE CONSTITUTIONAL DILEMMA 193 40 THE STRUGGLE FOR FRESH COTTON LANDS 197 41 SOUTHERN NATIONALISM 202 42 TEXAS AND THE WILMOT PROVISO 205 43 1850: CALHOUN SPEAKS 209 44 1850: WEBSTER ANSWERS CALHOUN 213 45 DANIEL WEBSTER ON THE POWER OF COTTON .... 217 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE 46 THE END OF AN EPOCH . . ... -..- .* . . . 223 47 "COTTON Is KING" . . . . . 4 . , t . . . 228 48 "THE IMPENDING CRISIS" ......... 231 49 SENATOR HAMMOND ON THE POWER OF COTTON . . . 235 50 THE SOUTH'S VALEDICTORY 240 51 SECESSION AND FACTIONALISM ..... . . > . 244 52 SECESSION AND THE CONSTITUTION 248 53 WAS SECESSION TAUGHT AT WEST POINT? .... 251 54 COTTON LOCALIZES SECESSION 253 BOOK V COTTON IN AMERICAN HISTORY: THE CIVIL WAR 55' COTTON AND THE SINEWS OF WAR 257 56 THE COTTON FAMINE IN ENGLAND 261 57 THE COTTON FAMINE IN FRANCE 270 58 NAPOLEON'S FAILURE _. . . 273 69 THE BRITISH WORKING-MAN 278 60 NAPOLEON AND THE COTTON LOAN 283 61 NAPOLEON, ROEBUCK, AND BRIGHT 286 62 THE FAILURE OF THE FAMINE 290 63 ECONOMICS AND FATALISM ......... 295 BOOK VI THE OLD SOUTH AND THE NEW 64 COTTON AND THE OLD SOUTH 301 65 THE NEW SOUTH : COTTON AND POLITICS ..... .. 310 66 THE NEW SOUTH: SOCIAL CHANGES ...... 316 67 THE NEW SOUTH: SOCIAL PROBLEMS ....... 323 THE RACE PROBLEM ILLITERACY CHILD LABOR CONTENTS BOOK VII COTTON AND WORLD TRADE CHAPTER PAGE 68 "THE MONEY CROP" 335 69 SOUTHERN MANUFACTURE 340 70 ARE AMERICANS EFFICIENT 1 ? 344 71 SEA SHUTTLES 350 72 WHEN WAR BREAKS 359 73 BRITISH PROSPECTS IN EGYPT 370 74 CALIFORNIA AND OTHER RIVALS OF THE SOUTH . . . 375 75 EVOLUTION AND HUMAN WELFARE 383 APPENDIXES, INCLUDING ILLUSTRATIVE STATISTICS . . 397 BOOK I FEOM INDIA TO ENGLAND COTTON AS A WORLD POWER CHAPTER 1 THE NEW GOLDEN FLEECE IT was in the Bodleian Library, while rummaging among the quaint and musty index papers of the Upper Beading Boom, that I heard one capped and gowned librarian muttering to another, as with an air of offended dignity: "Writing on cotton! Why on earth should he want to write on such a subject as that?" Yet it was another Oxford don, Professor James E. Thorold Rogers, who proved by his brilliant lec- tures on ' ' The Economic Interpretation of History ' ' that plants and fibers have interwoven with the development of civilization no less than fine-spun theories of government, while others, such as Gib- bins and Arnold Toynbee, attributed to cotton and wool the controlling influence in that remarkable transformation of England which began in the eighteenth century. While reading Frank Norris's fascinating Cali- fornia novel, "The Octopus," in South Carolina, fifteen years ago, the thought occurred to the writer : if "the epic of the wheat," as Norris has properly phrased it, holds so much of interest and suggestive- ness, might not the tracing of the great cotton influ- ence prove to be quite as alluring, like the quest of a new Golden Fleece f For I knew enough of Amer- ican history, and was sufficiently familiar with the mysterious nomadic career of this "vegetable wool" r 2 COTTON AS A WORLD POWER from the Orient, to suspect in such a connection an unworked quarry of wealth. I have therefore at odd moments engaged myself, as administrative duties permitted, in mining a few random fragments of ore, and smelting them as best I knew how. It is amazing the way the veins ramified enticing one on to become, as it were, a nosing adventurous Jason, prying in all sorts of places. "The gods send threads for a web begun." Through pleasant highways of half forgot prose and along quaint hedgerows of verse the quest of this fleece has mean- dered ; through mazes of myth as well as the straight paths of fact, through intimacies of obscure biog- raphy as well as large spaces of history, and along the avenues of trade. All at once burst the tem- pest of war; and, lo! cotton was puffed into air like so much thistledown, sensitive as it is to the cur- rents of civilization, and therefore blown into shreds like civilization itself by the shock of this world- wide storm. The Great War brought home to the public mind as nothing else could have done the knowledge that this vegetable fleece is really golden, and that its golden values are so interwoven with the solidarity of mankind as to depend to a peculiar degree for their stability on the maintenance of an unbroken network of international trade. Who knew, before the Great War, that the world's cotton crop, of which three-quarters, or thereabouts, is produced in the United States of America, exceeds in value the whole world's output of the precious metals by fifty per cent ? 1 Who realized that the United States, in i Value of eleven years' cotton crop (1901-11) 1,607,000,000 Value of gold for same period 807,000,000 > , non nnri rtnn Value of silver " " " 213,000,000 i 1,020,000,00 The Financier, Jan. 7, 1913. THE NEW GOLDEN FLEECE 3 addition to its large manufacture of cotton goods, exports raw cotton annually in a sum exceeding in ^ value its next three greatest export groups put together? 2 Who among us had stopped to think that this enormous production is almost entirely con- fined to a little group of Southeastern States, or paused to wonder what would happen to them if this stupendous source of revenue should become sud- denly clogged? How many intelligent Americans have been aware that this single Southern commod- ity has maintained an annual balance of trade in favor of the United States on the pages of the world's ledgers, by attracting a stream of European gold westward each autumn and setting in motion the current of liquidation necessary to sustain na- tional credit? As Mr. Theodore Price points out, . cotton is peculiar in that it is the only crop of / importance all of which is sold by those who produce it. Only seventeen per cent of the corn crop, for instance, leaves the farms; the rest is consumed or fed to stock by those who produce it. Cotton, therefore, generates an enormous commerce and v provides a medium of exchange that almost entirely takes the place of gold in the settlement of inter- state and international balances. 3 The late Wil- liam B. Dana, for many years editor of the Com- 2 "The value of cotton exported during the fiscal year. 1912 amounted to $565,849,271, or 26.1 per cent of the total value of all articles of domestic merchandise exported during the year. It ex- ceeded the amounts for iron and steel manufactures, meat and dairy products, and bread stuffs combined, these three groups ranking next in importance among articles exported. These large exports, combined with the more than five million bales consumed in do- mestic manufacture, strikingly indicate the importance of cotton in the economic affairs of the nation." Report of the U. S. Depart- ment of Commerce, July, 1913. For other financial facts and figures, see Chapters 67-68, 70-71. 3 See Appendix A. 4 COTTON AS A WOELD POWEE mercial and Financial Chronicle, once said that cotton, being practically imperishable and always convertible, possessed more of the attributes of a legal tender than anything produced by human labor except gold. 4 It is the world's Golden Fleece; the nations are bound together in its globe-engirdling web; so that when a modern economist concerns himself with the interdependence of nations he naturally looks to cotton for his most effective illus- _ tration, as witness the following: " A manufacturer in Manchester strikes a bar- gain with a merchant in Louisiana in order to keep a bargain with a dyer in G-ermany, and three or a much larger number of parties enter into virtual, or perhaps actual, contract, and form a mutually dependent economic community (numbering, it may be, with the workpeople in the group of industries involved, some millions of individuals) an eco- nomic entity so far as one can exist which does not include all organized society. ' ' 5 And yet it is only within recent times that cotton has entered the Occident from its ancient home in the Orient, and affected the welfare and wealth of western men. A century and a quarter ago its influ- ence had but just made its way from India through Europe as far as England, and meant as yet nothing whatever to North America. Its startling growth here is graphically exhibited in the following table, 6 showing the chief raiment supplies of Europe and * Cited in the Outlook, New York, September 9, 1914. In this article Mr. Price undertakes to demonstrate that cotton in normal years takes the place of gold in the settlement of America's huge annual indebtedness to Europe, as shown in Appendix A. s The Foundations of International Polity, by Norman Angell : London, 1914; p. xxiv. e Major Harry Hammond in the News and Courier Centennial Number: Charleston, 1903; p. 33, The Century in Agriculture. THE NEW GOLDEN FLEECE 5 America ten years before Eli Whitney invented the gin (1793), and a century later: 178S 188S Flax 18.4% 6.22% Wool 77.2% 20.65% Cotton 4.4% 73.13% To trace the skeins of this fleecy white fiber through mazes of fable and fact, from its cradle in India, where Alexander discovered it, to modern England by tortuous slow stages through Egypt, Rome, and Spain ; to tell the story of its revolution- ary influence in Great Britain and to suggest its wholly unappreciated effect on the history of the United States; to show the personalities and depict the times of some of the men whom it influenced and who in turn lent their vigor to increase its strength ; and, finally, to indicate the peculiar importance of cotton in contemporary world trade, and its relation to the Great War, is the object of the following pages. CHAPTER 2 THE VEGETABLE LAMB ALEXANDEB THE GREAT, who has perhaps influ- enced civilization more than any other personality except Christ, acquainted Europe with India ; and not the least wonderful of the oriental curios described by his generals 1 on their home-coming was that singular plant from which the natives plucked a 11 vegetable wool" which they spun into admirable clothing. Nearchus, for example, reported that there were in India shrubs bearing tufts or bunches of wool, and that from this wool the natives made garments of surpassing whiteness, "a shirt, or tunic, reaching to the middle of the leg, a sheet folded about the shoulders, and a turban rolled around the head;" 2 from which terse description it may clearly be seen that the costume of the con- servative Hindus remains unchanged to this day. Alexander's soldiers, Nearchus further reported, were quick to use this "vegetable wool" for bedding, and as pads for their saddles. It is highly probable, indeed, that they brought back with them assorted specimens of Indian cotton cloth: " Calicut cloth," or calico, with muslin from Mosul, and various other piece-goods. Ages elapsed, however, before the cotton plant came to be cultivated in Europe, and during that 1 Aristobulus and Nearchus are freely cited in Strabo's Geographia, xv. 2 Fabius Arrianus, Historia Indica, xvi. 6 THE VEGETABLE LAMB 7 period a myth slowly interwove itself with the strands of this " vegetable wool," one of the strang- est myths of which history holds record, unraveled only a few years ago by the patience of a British antiquarian. Theophrastus (about 372-287 B. c.) unwittingly sowed seed for this myth in his Botany, as will shortly be shown. In an admirable description of the cotton plant he said : "The trees from which the Indians make their clothes have leaves like those of the black mulberry, but the entire plant resembles the dog-rose. They are set out in furrows on the plains, at a distance resembling a vineyard. These wool-bearing shrubs have leaves like the grape-vine, but smaller. They bear no fruit, indeed, but the pod containing the wool resembles a spring apple (/?Aov), while this pod is still unripe and unopened. When ripe, it bursts open. The wool is then gathered from it and woven into cloth of divers qualities; some inferior, and some of considerable value. ' ' 3 The close resemblance between cotton fiber and lamb's wool must have led many Europeans to mis- take one for the other; or, rather, to regard cotton as a strange new species of wool. But rumor, truth- ful in one essential detail, persisted that this Orien- tal importation was a vegetable product, growing in Indo-Scythia on shrubs and trees ; especially since Herodotus 4 himself, the father of history, had described cotton as "wool from the trees"; writing elsewhere of "trees bearing, as their fruit, fleeces which surpass those of sheep in beauty and excel- lence. ' ' 3 De Historia Plantarum, iv, 4, 9. *Historia, iii, 47, 106, vii, 65. 8 COTTON AS A WOELD POWER Thus arose the fable of a vegetable lamb, or zoophyte, an animal growing on a tree! The name of this fabulous creature finally became fixed as the Scythian lamb, through confusion of Scythia with Indo-Scythia ; and subsequently also as the Tartary lamb, both because "Tartary" was loosely used to denote Scythia, and also because nomadic Tartar merchants brought with them in their cara- vans, together with the fleece of Tartary sheep and goats, "the fine white wool that grew on trees" in India. Many years after he had written his Botany, and when Greek had become a dead language in Europe, Theophrastus, by his ambiguous use of the word melon, as above quoted, was thought to give final and, as it were, scientific confirmation to the story of the vegetable lamb. Melon, in Greek, may mean either tree-fruit or sheep, and of course there are spring sheep, or lambs, as well as spring apples. Had not Theophrastus, therefore, botanized of a lamb that grew upon shrubs in India t It was but a step, then, to modify the language of Herodotus so as to make him seem to describe "plants bearing fruit within which there is a lamb having fleece of surpassing beauty and excellence"; and the myth was wholly made ! In more modern times, when travelers in Tartary searched for this famous zoophyte, naturally they did not find it. They did find, however, a shaggy toy made of the rhizome of a fern so as roughly to resemble a lamb, and this for a long time was sup- posed to be the prototype and justification of the enormous and confounding fable of the "Borametz," or "Barometz," these words being obscure deriva- tives from the Tartar word for "ram," and "Bara- THE VEGETABLE LAMB 9 nets" being Russian for the fern-plant Lycopodium Selago. It was not until 1887 that Mr. Henry Lee, acting on an ingenious guess of Ennan's, conclu- sively identified the "Vegetable Lamb of Tartary" with the cotton boll which Alexander had discovered in India. 5 6 Henry Lee, The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary: London, 1887. CHAPTER 3 COTTON MYTHOLOGY IMAGINATIVE writers have dallied delightfully with the Vegetable Lamb in several languages. Among his collection of literary tributes to this supposed "miracle of Nature," Mr. Henry Lee translates a Latin poem written by the eminent French botanist, De la Croix, so recently as 1791. The traveler who plows the Caspian wave For Asia bound, where foaming breakers lave Borysthenes' wild shores, no sooner lands Than gazing in astonishment he stands; For in his path he sees a monstrous birth, The Barometz arises from the earth : Upon a stalk is fixed a living brute, A rooted plant bears quadruped for fruit; It has a fleece, nor does it want for eyes, And from its brows two woolly horns arise. The rude and simple country people say It is an animal that sleeps by day And wakes at night, though rooted to the ground, To feed on grass within its reach around. The flavor of Ambrosia its flesh Pervades ; and the red nectar, rich and fresh, Which vineyards of fair Burgundy produce Is less delicious than its ruddy juice. If Nature had but on it feet bestowed, Or with a voice to bleat the lamb endowed, To cry for help against the threat 'ning fangs Of hungry wolves ; as on its stalk it hangs, Seated on horseback it might seem to ride, "Whit'ning with thousands more the mountain side. 10 COTTON MYTHOLOGY 11 Dr. Erasmus Darwin, 1 poetizing in 1789 with intent "to inlist Imagination under the banner of Science," went so far as to endow the fabled lamb with golden hair, a rosy tongue, melting eyes, and a voice: Cradled in snow, and fann'd by Arctic air Shines, gentle Barometz! thy golden hair; Booted in earth each cloven hoof descends, And round and round her flexile neck she bends ; Crops the gray coral moss, and hoary thyme, Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime; Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam, Or seems to bleat, a Vegetable Lamb. The extreme antiquity of this marvelous plant was certified by the Sieur du Bartas, who in 1578 described its discovery by Adam in the Garden of Eden: 2 Musing, anon through crooked walks he wanders, Round winding rings, and intricate meanders, False-guiding paths, doubtful, beguiling, strays, And right- wrong errors of an endless maze ; Nor simply hedged with a single border Of rosemary cut out with curious order In Satyrs, Centaurs, Whales, and half-men-horses, And thousand other counterfeited corses; But with true beasts, fast in the ground still sticking Feeding on grass, and th' airy moisture licking, Such as those Borametz in Scythia bred Of slender seeds, and with green fodder fed ; Although their bodies, noses, mouths, and eyes, Of new-yeaned lambs have full the form and guise, And should be very lambs, save that for foot Within the ground they fix a living root 1 The Botanic Garden, Part I : The Economy of Vegetation : Lon- don, 1791; Part II: The Loves of the Plants: London, 1790. 2 Translation by Joshua Sylvester as given by Henry Lee, as cited. 12 COTTON AS A WORLD POWEK Which at their navel grows, and dies that day That they have browsed the neighboring grass away. Oh ! wondrous nature of God only good, The beast hath root, the plant hath flesh and blood. The nimble plant can turn it to and fro, The nummed beast can neither stir nor goe ; The plant is leafless, branchless, void of fruit, The beast is lustless, sexless, fireless, mute : The plant with plant his hungry paunch doth feed, Th' admired beast is sowen a slender seed. Passing now from poetry to sober prose narra- tive, we derive the following account of Borametz from the famous Dutch traveler, Jean de Struys : ' * On the west side of the Volga is a great dry and waste heath, called the Step. On this heath is a strange kind of fruit found, called 'Baromez' or 'Barnitsch,' from the word 'Boran,' which is 'a Lamb' in the Russian tongue, because of its form and appearance much resembling a sheep, having head, feet and tail. Its skin is covered with a down very white and as soft as silk. It grows upon a low stalk, about two and a naif feet high, some higher, and is supported just at the navel. The head hangs down, as if it pastured or fed on the grass, and when the grass decays it perishes : but this I ever looked upon as ridiculous; although when I suggested that the languishing of the plant might be caused by some temporary want of moisture, the people asseverated to me with many oatbs that they have often, out of curiosity, made experiment of that by cutting away the grass, upon which it instantly fades away. Cer- tain it is that there is nothing which is more coveted by wolves than this, and the inward parts of it are more congeneric with the anatomy of a lamb than mandrakes are with men. However, what I might COTTON MYTHOLOGY 13 further say of this fruit, and what I believe of the wonderful operations of a secret sympathy in Nature, I shall rather keep to myself than aver, or impose upon the reader with many other things which I am sensible would appear incredible to those who had not seen them. ' ' 3 Jean de Struys published this restrained account at Amsterdam in 1681. In the same year Claude Duret included in his i l History of Plants ' ' a chapter on * ' The Borametz of Scythia, ' ' which affords inter- esting new characteristics: 1 'It was in form like a lamb, and from its navel grew a stem or root by which this zoophyte or plant- animal was fixed, attached, like a gourd, to the soil below the surface of the ground, and, according to the length of its stem or root, it devoured all the herbage which it was able to reach within the circle of its tether. The hunters who went in search of this creature were unable to capture or remove it until they had succeeded in cutting the stem by well- aimed arrows or darts, when the animal immediately fell prostrate to the earth and died. Its bones being placed with certain ceremonies and incantations in the mouth of one desiring to foretell the future, he was instantly seized with a spirit of divination, and endowed with the gift of prophecy. ' ' 4 About the time that the imaginary and highly imaginative "Sir John Maundevile" professed to have set out from St. Albans upon his memorable journey, Friar Odoric the Bohemian wrote an ac- count of his own recent travels in which he mentions Borametz as follows: "Another passing marvelous thing may be re- 2 Quoted by Henry Lee, as cited. * Quoted by Henry Lee, as cited. 14 lated, which however I saw not myself, but heard from trustworthy persons. For 'tis said that in a certain great kingdom called Cadeli there be moun- tains called the Caspean Mountains, on which are said to grow very large melons. And when these be ripe, they burst, and a little beast is found inside like a small lamb, so that they have both melons and meat ! And though some, peradventure, may find that hard to believe, yet it may be quite true; just as it is true that there be in Ireland trees which produce birds." 5 Boldest of all these historians, however, is Odoric's plunderer, who, writing as "Sir John Maundevile, Knight," professes to have set out from England in 1322, and, as he says in his ' * Voiage and Travaile," passed through "manye diverse Londes, where dwellen many dyverse Folkes, and of dyverse Maneres and Lawes, and of dyverse Schappes of Men" and eke of beasts, including Irish barnacles, but especially the Vegetable Lamb, which he duly and intimately encountered in the kingdom of the great Cham of Tartary. "And there growethe a maner of Fruyt," writes this mischievous author, "as thoughe it weren Gowrdes: and whan thei ben rype, men kutten hem a to, and men fynden with inne a lytylle Best, in Flessche, in Bon and Blode, as though it were a lytylle Lomb, with outen Wolle. And men eten bothe the Frut and the Best: and that is a gret Marveylle. Of that Frute I have eten; alle thoughe it were wondirfulle : but that I knowe wel, that God is marveyllous in his Werkes." 6 s Henry Yule, editor, Cathay and the Way Thither : London, 1866; p. 144. Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundevile, Kt. (Halliwell), reprinted from the edition of 1725: London, 1883; xxvi. COTTON MYTHOLOGY 15 To such substantial corporeality had grown the myth of the Indian cotton boll, at the very time when a few Flemish weavers were settling at Manchester (in 1328), and, under the shrewd patronage of Edward III, were beginning the manufacture of those so-called "Manchester cottons" that were destined to become the foundation of England's immense cotton industry. It is little wonder that this plant has laid hold on the imaginations of men throughout the world in various ages. Known to the people of India for two thousand years before Alexander's soldiers dis- covered it there, and plied by nimble Hindu fingers on primitive looms into fabrics so fair and delicate as to evoke the poetic description of "webs of the woven wind," cotton wended its triumphant way westward with the course of empire, itself a captain V of civilization, clothing Mark Antony's soldiers in the heat of the fierce Egyptian summer, bringing fame to Barcelona in the manufacture of sail-cloth, enriching Venice and Milan with fustians and dim- ities, and producing as by magic the industrial trans- formation of England, until at last in the new west- ern world it wove itself inextricably into the web of the national history, and now shuttles all the oceans with bands of intercourse and trade. CHAPTER 4 EAELIEST HISTORY THE cultivation and manufacture of cotton would seem to have evolved independently on three conti- nents, Asia, Africa, and South America; but Asia is of leading concern to us, since it was from India that the plant found its way into Europe. Three of the principal countries of the East have from remote antiquity been characterized by their more distinctive raiments: China as the land of silk, Egypt of flax, and India of cotton. India, preemi- nently the mother land of this plant, is to-day out- ranked as a cotton producing country only by the United States, and carries on a modern manufac- turing industry of large proportions, as will appear in the final section. The first known mention of cotton is found in a Eig Veda hymn, composed fifteen centuries before Christ, which honors the "threads in the loom," indicating that manufacture was already well ad- vanced. 1 The Sacred Institutes of Manu, dating from 800 B. c., contain such frequent references to cotton as to denote a very high esteem among the ancient Hindus. 2 In fact, they had come to hold this mystic plant in actual reverence, beautiful as it was in both blossom and fruit, responsive to culti- iHymn 105, vs. 8. Cited by J. F. Royle in The Culture and Commerce of Cotton in India: London, 1851. 2 Manu, ii, 44, viii, 236, 397. Cited in Bulletin 33, U. S. Dept. Agriculture: Washington, 1896. 16 EARLIEST HISTORY 17 vation, and so indispensable, indeed, with its copious perennial supply of strong and silken ''vegetable wool," being far better adapted to their peculiar climatic conditions than the downiest fleece supplied by shepherds from the plains. As indicating the reverential awe in which the Hindus held their white fiber, it is noteworthy that thefts of cotton thread were, according to the Insti- tutes of Manu, punishable by fines of treble the value of the stolen goods; moreover, it was required by the religious law that the sacrificial thread of the Brahmin should always be spun from this plant. The laws also mention weaving and sizing. Herod- otus said that the Hindus made their clothes of "tree wool," which is the name the modern Ger- mans give to cotton (Baum-wolle). We have seen that Alexander found it in general use when he invaded the Punjab, and that it was he who intro- duced it into Europe. In Persia it had attained to extensive use long before Alexander's invasion. The purdah (Persian parda), for excluding the heat, is no doubt a very ancient invention. Aristobulus, one of Alexander's generals, speaks feelingly of the severe heat of Susa, the capital city, not sparing his gifts of force- ful imaginative expression. "Lizards and serpents could not cross the streets at noon quickly enough to prevent their being burned to death mid-way by the heat," he declares; while "barley, spread out in the sun, was roasted, and hopped about" like pop- corn! "The inhabitants laid earth to a depth of three and a half feet on the roofs of their houses to exclude the suffocating heat. ' ' 3 This was in the fourth century before Christ. 8 See ch. 2, note 1. 18 COTTON AS A WORLD POWER Two hundred years earlier, the less fervid author of the book of Esther, describing a royal feast in this same capital city, mentioned the "white, green, and blue hangings " 4 of the royal palace, wherein the King showed ''the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honor of his excellent majesty many days." Just as Nearchus, the associate of Aristobulus, described the Hindu costume which still prevails (see page 6), so it is highly probable that these canopies of Ahasuerus were exactly the same as those hangings of white and blue striped cotton so common throughout India to-day; and that in the time of Aristobulus, as now, blue and white striped purdahs, stuffed with cotton, were hung before win- dows and doors in the summer to keep out the fierce Persian heat of which he complained with such vehemence. That cotton was early known in Assyria is wit- nessed by an inscription on a cylinder in the British Museum, descriptive of the great gardens which Sennacherib (705-681 B. c.) laid out along the river above and below Nineveh : ' ' The trees that bore wool they clipped, and they carded it for garments." * Esther i, 6. CHAPTER 5 HINDU SKILL THOUSANDS of years before the invention of cot- ton machinery in Europe, Hindu gins were separat- ing fiber from seed, Hindu wheels were spinning the lint into yarn, and frail Hindu looms weaving these yarns into textiles. The churka, or roller gin, was a rudimentary teak-wood machine consisting of uprights support- ing two cylinders, one above the other, this upper roller having a handle at the end. A woman turned this windlass, and the cotton fiber, fed between the rollers, passed on through, while the seeds, too large for passage, clattered against the base-board to the floor. The separated lint was then bowed, or teased, for the removal of rubbish and kinks. The bow was an interesting contrivance of elastic wood, made still more vibrant by the tension of taut cords. A work- man, placing his bow in contact with a mass of lint, would strike the resounding strings with a wooden hammer, so that powerful vibrations forced open the knots of the cotton, shook free the small rubbish of the fields, and produced a mass of downy fleece. It is difficult for a modern man, used as he is to ingenious mechanical contrivances, to understand how such rude devices could be made to render any useful service whatsoever ; but the fact remains that deft fingers wrought with the bow and the almost 19 20 COTTON AS A WORLD POWER incredibly simple East Indian loom so as to produce delicate fabrics that have never been surpassed. After the cotton had been bowed, Indian women spun it either upon a one-thread wheel, or on the ruder distaff. A Manchester manufacturer de- clared, only a quarter of a century ago, that the well managed use of the finger and thumb of the Indian spinner, patiently and carefully applied in the for- mation of the thread, and the moisture at the same time communicated to it, are found to have the effect of incorporating the fibers of the cotton more per- fectly than can be accomplished by our most im- proved machines. 1 Mill, in his " History of British India," 2 endeavored to explain this manifest man- ual superiority by remarking that the weak and delicate frame of the Hindu is accompanied with an acuteness of external sense, particularly of touch, which is altogether unrivaled; and the flexibility of his fingers is equally remarkable. ' ' The hand of the Hindu, therefore, constitutes an organ adapted to the finest operations of the loom, in a degree which is almost or altogether peculiar to himself." The introduction of modern implements has caused the decay of manual art in the India industry, and nowadays only the coarsest garments are produced by the rustic hand-looms. The ancient Hindu weaver was the most wonder- ful workman of all. Cotton, having been ginned and bowed and then spun into delicate yarn, was passed on to this magical master-craftsman, -plying his trade under the friendly shade of a tree. A handful of reeds, with balances suspended from i Isaac Watts in Enc. Brit., 9th edition, vi, 487. 2ii, 8 cited by E. Baines, Jr., in History of the Cotton Man- ufacture in Great Britain: London, 1835; p. 75. HINDU SKILL 21 overhanging branches, made up his frail apparatus, the workman sitting in a pit beneath it, his great toes treadling with looped threads, his hands wield- ing the wide shuttle-batten, the warp being stretched out along the ground. Orme, an early traveler, reports that when not near the high road or a princi- pal town, it was difficult to find a village in which every man, woman, and child was not employed in making up a piece of cloth ; 3 and Mr. Lowes Dick- inson, in a recent book of travel, still finds "the vil- lage weaver at his work, sitting on the ground with his feet in a pit working the pedals of his loom; while outside in the garden, a youth was running up and down setting up, thread by thread, the long strands of the warp." * "Webs of the woven wind" these fabrics were anciently called because of their delicate beauty. Two Arabian travelers, writing of the Hindus in the Middle Ages, say that they made garments of such extraordinary perfection that nowhere else were the like to be seen; being woven to that degree of fine- ness "that they may be drawn through a moderate- size ring. ' ' 5 Marco Polo mentions the coast of Coromandel as producing * * the finest and most beau- tiful cottons. ' ' 5 Tavernier, writing about 1660, describes some of the "calicuts" he saw as "so fine you can hardly feel them in your hand, and the thread, when spun, is scarce discernible." Of one muslin the texture was so delicate that "when a man puts it on, his skin shall appear as plainly through it, as if he was quite naked; but the merchants are not permitted to transport it, for the governor 3 Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire, p. 409; cited by Baines. * Appearances : New York, 1914; p. 27. e Cited by Baines, pp. 56-58. 22 is obliged to send it all to the Great Mogul's seraglio." 5 With the aid of a bamboo spindle not much larger than a darning needle, and rotated upon a piece of hollow shell to keep from breaking the thread, a single pound of lint could be spun by Indian craftsmen to a length of two hundred and fifty-three miles ; while the delicate woven fabric was of both plain and ornamental variety, some white, and some beautifully colored. The Rev. William Ward, writing at Serampore early in the nineteenth century, describes a muslin manufactured there as so exceedingly fine that when "laid on the grass, and the dew has fallen upon it, it is no longer dis- cernible." 5 6 Cited by Baines, pp. 56-58. CHAPTER 6 ALEXANDER'S TRADE ROUTES THE genius of Alexander first made way for the wonderful cotton weaving of India to come into Europe, by means of new highways completed under his generals, both overland and through paths of the sea. We know that India carried on an export trade in cotton so early as the reign of Amasis, 569- 525 B. c. ; but the Persians, averse to water, content with their own mighty empire, and contemptuous of foreign intermixture, had not extended their com- merce with India beyond their own borders. When Alexander turned back from the Hyphasis and sailed with his fleet down the Indus, his bold intention held fast to a demonstration of his belief that the opulent commerce of India could be transported through the Persian Gulf toward the interior of Asia Minor, as well as by the Arabian Sea to his noble namesake city, and so spread out to the world. After return- ing to Susa, he surveyed in person the courses of the Euphrates and Tigris, ordering the removal of cata- racts and dams and of all those obstructions near the mouths of the rivers that had been used by the Persians for prevention of interior commerce. Susa and other inland cities were thus directly connected with the sea. From Susa to Sardis, in the extreme west, there ran a great highway, fifteen hundred miles long, into whose paths were drawn all the diverse life of the busy ancient world. 23 24 COTTON AS A WOELD POWER "Carians and Cilicians, Phrygians and Cappado- cians, staid Lydians, sociable Greeks, crafty Arme- nians, rude traders from the Euxine shores, nabobs of Babylon, Medes and Persians, galloping couriers mounted on their Bokhara ponies or fine Arab steeds, envoys with train and state, peasants driving their donkeys laden with skins of oil or wine or sacks of grain, stately caravans bearing the wares and fabrics of the South to exchange for the metals, slaves, and grain of the North, travelers and traders seeking to know and exploit the world all were there, and all were safe under the protection of an empire the roadway of which pierced the strata of many tribes and many cultures, and helped set the world a-mixing. The organization and regulation of Alexander's empire was later made possible through the roads, and they were the conductors by which East and West were joined and the first cos- mopolitanism brought into being. ' ' 1 More important even than such channels of inter- course was the water-way, opened by Alexander's successors, in conformity with his brilliant designs, through the Indus and the Arabian Gulf to Alexan- dria. Ptolemy Philadelphus, with the intention of binding Indian commerce the more firmly to Alex- andria, undertook to dig a canal between Suez and the eastern branch of the Nile. Although this task was never finished, Ptolemy did build the port of Berenice, into which Indian commerce could come without incurring the ancient danger of navigating the northern end of the Arabian Gulf ; and the Indo- Egyptian traffic thus established was prosperously maintained for ten centuries. Goods landed at iB. I. Wheeler, Alexander the Great: New York, 1900; pp. 196-197. ALEXANDER'S TRADE ROUTES 25 Berenice were packed camel-back three hundred miles across the desert to Coptos, and thence floated down the Nile to Alexandria, from which they were trans-shipped to the various countries served by the Mediterranean Sea. Even in the time of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, Alexandria, as Ferrero 2 has said, was the Paris of the ancient world. "What was there at Rome to compare with Alex- andria?" he asks, Rome, in spite of its imperial power, abandoned to a fearful disorder by the dis- regard of factions, encumbered with ruin, its streets narrow and wretched, provided as yet with but a single forum, narrow and plain, the sole impressive monument of which was the theater of Pompey; Rome, where the life was yet crude, and objects of luxury so rare that they had to be brought from the distant Orient? At Alexandria, instead, the Paris of the ancient world, were to be found all the best and most beautiful things of the earth. There was a sumptuosity of public edifices that the ancients never tire of extolling the quay seven stadia long, the light-house famous all over the Mediterranean, the marvelous Zoological Garden, the Museum, the Gymnasium, innumerable temples, the unending palace of the Ptolemies. There was an abundance, unheard of for those times, of objects of luxury rugs, glass, stuffs, papyruses, jewels, artistic pot- tery because they made all those things at Alex- andria. There was an abundance, greater than else- where, of silk, of perfumes, of gems, of all the things imported from the extreme East, because through Alexandria passed one of the most frequented routes of Indo-Chinese commerce. Arrian, writing in the 2 Characters and Events of Roman History: New York, 1909; p. 55. 26 COTTON AS A WOELD POWER year 131 A. D., says that at that time "Indian cot- tons of large width, fine cottons, muslins, plain and figured, and cotton for stuffing couches and beds," were brought by water from India and launched by way of Egypt toward the countries of the West. 3 In view of the proximity of Egypt to Persia and India, and of the great importance of the cotton crop in Egypt to-day, it is a striking and unexplained fact that Egyptian cotton as we know it has developed from a garden plant of the Peruvian type into a field crop only within the last two hundred years, the earliest record of it going back no further than the end of the sixteenth century. This is all the more strange in view of the fact that the history of the Nile Valley, which has been laid bare to the period of five thousand years before Christ, con- tains abundant remains of other textile fabrics, of the very earliest periods; but fragments of cotton are not found at all, and even the literary trace of it ends with about two hundred years before Christ, such " antiquity'* being quite negligible in the his- tory of Egypt. There is a reference to it on the famous Eosetta stone, Herodotus describes a gift of a fine cotton corselet sent by Amasis to the Lace- daemonians, 4 Pliny records the growth of the plant in Upper Egypt, and there are hints of it in the time of the Ptolemies; but here the scant record ends. Professor Balls does indeed infer, from the exist- ence of several wild cottons in the Sudan, that some lucky excavation, or perhaps a casual glance through a microscope, may suddenly extend the known his- tory of cotton in Egypt by two or three thousand s Periplus Maris Erythraei, cited by Henry Lee. * Herodotus, iii, 47. ALEXANDER'S TRADE ROUTES 27 years ; 5 but as yet it is regarded as a modern upstart in comparison with the linen mummy-wrappings that establish the Egyptian antiquity of flax. W. Lawrence Balls, The Cotton Plant in Egypt: London, 1912; p. 2. See also Chapter 73. CHAPTEE 7 EGYPTIAN MUMMIES AND THE MICROSCOPE THE microscope, which disclosed in 1834 the sur- prising fact that Egyptian mummies never wore cotton, revealed at the same time the secret struc- ture of the cotton fiber that gives it such peculiar excellence in weaving. Mr. James Thomson of Cli- theroe presented to the Boyal Society, in the year just named, a paper "On the Mummy Cloth of Egypt/' 1 in which he proved incontestably, from innumerable microscopic investigations of mummy- wrappings, that cotton was not thus used by the Egyptians; basing his conclusion on the interesting fact, discovered in the course of his investigations, that cotton invariably shows, under the microscope, a twisted or corkscrew structure, while the fibers of linen are straight. Never once, throughout experi- ments conducted from 1834 to the present, has a trace of the distinctive corkscrew structure of cotton been detected in the ancient fabrics of Egypt. The filament of cotton, as Mr. Thomson pointed out in his paper, resembles a transparent glassy tube, flattened, and twisted around its own axis. This twisted form of the filament, which distin- guishes cotton from all other fibers, characterizes the fully ripe pod; the filaments in the unripe pod being simple untwisted cylindrical tubes, which never afterwards twist if separated from the plant i Given as Appendix by Baines, as cited. 28 EGYPTIAN MUMMIES 29 in an unripe condition but when the bolls ripen, the cylindrical filaments collapse in the middle, so that a cross-section roughly resembles the figure 8. The characteristic twist of the cotton fiber is per- manently retained throughout all the processes of ginning, spinning, weaving, bleaching, and dyeing, and even through the hardest wearing and washing, until the material is worn into rags. In fact, the violent process of reducing these rags to pulp for the manufacture of paper produces no change in the native twist of the fiber, so that the presence of any smallest vestige of cotton may be detected, with the aid of a microscope, in paper of supposedly all- linen manufacture. Now, it is precisely this corkscrew character of the cotton fiber that affords its advantage in cloth making. "The reason why cotton can be spun into very fine, strong yarns is because the cotton fibers are of a very fine diameter and are flat, twisted rib- bons in structure, which fact enables them to 'kink' together and interlock, thus forming a strong, com- pact thread." 2 Mercerized cotton is formed by stretching yarn on a frame and submerging it in a solution of caustic soda, which makes the fibers swell and to a greater or less extent lose their twisted structure. They thus become smoother, and take on a luster like silk. The microscope also discloses the fact that wool, as it comes from the back of the sheep, is covered with scales, so that, when the wool fibers are worked and massed closely together, the scales open out and interlock with one another, the interlocking of these scales enabling the wool to be "felted." 2K. B. Lamb on "Textile Fibers and Their Characteristics," in Scientific American: New York, Jan. 8, 1916, p. 56. CHAPTER 8 FEOM ROME TO SPAIN 1 IF India was the land of cotton, while China was characterized by the production of silk as Egypt by the manufacture of linen, then Greece and Borne were preeminently the almost exclusive dominion of wool. It is true that the Greeks knew of fine mus- lins as a precious curiosity, naming these goods "Gangitiki" because of their source near the Ganges; and that by the beginning of the second century before Christ, Indian raiment had so far encroached on the aristocratic dominion of the peplum and the toga that a popular comedy of that period contains reference to muslins and calicoes; but the importation does not seem either then or later to have attained to any great commercial im- portance. Yet cotton became eventually the Eoman cloth of luxury, at least. From India and Persia the Latin conquerors borrowed the custom of using cotton awnings as protection against the rays of the sun. Livy, for example, says that Lentulus Spin- ther in the year 63 B. c. introduced cotton awnings in the theater at the Apollinarian games; and that Caesar afterwards covered the forum with them, as also the sacred way from his own house to the Capi- toline hill "which appeared more wonderful than the gladiatorial exhibition itself." Moreover, cot- i Chief authorities: Baines, as cited; Henry Lee; Bulletin No. 33, as cited. 30 FROM EOME TO SPAIN 31 ton sails were sometimes seen on Roman ships. But it is doubtful whether the Oriental weavings ever broke beyond the bound of luxuries at Rome, although in Egypt they became so abundant and inexpensive that Antony could afford to give his men the comparative comfort of light cotton clothes. But linen persisted in its domination of the Egyp- tian clothing market for a very long period, so that the cultivation of cotton was not undertaken there on any considerable scale until the beginning of the seventeenth century. 2 This was a thousand years after its cultivation and manufacture had become an important item in the industries of Arabia and Syria, and had even fringed the northern coast of Africa. By the Sara- cens and Moors a knowledge of the plant and its uses was brought into Spain in the year 712 A. D., vast fields being whitened with its fleecy growth and looms set up in almost every hamlet, cultivation and manufacture alike increasing in importance until the expulsion of the Moors at the end of the fifteenth century. It was during this Spanish regime that cotton paper began to be made ; not to be confused, however, with the paper from linen rags that writers so highly esteemed; and thus cotton began to take the literary scepter away from the ancient papyrus plant in Egypt. During Mahometan rulership in Europe the Egyptian maritime commerce was closed, and trans- portation once more followed overland routes by means of the stately and picturesque caravan. Those famous "Damascus" cottons of early times were so-called merely because that city was a great distributing depot for India goods, the two great 2 See Chapter 73. 32 COTTON AS A WORLD POWER annual caravans of merchants and pilgrims which started from there and from Cairo meeting by pre- arrangement at Mecca, where they exchanged com- modities and then turned homeward again, great fleets of the desert, touching at port after port on their interminable voyages, and thus sowing the cotton influence, whether in the form of the actual staple or in guise of fabulous legends of the Vege- table Lamb, through all the principalities of the East. Caravans for strictly commercial purposes pro- ceeded at fixed times on voyages of enormous extent, penetrating even to the farthest confines of China. Until only a few years ago China and Russia main- tained a regular system of intercommunication by caravan, this system covering a distance of more than six thousand miles, and stretching for much of this distance through uninhabited desert, although the tedium of the journey was lightened now and again by touching at towns in the midst of their fes- tival fairs, such as the famous annual fair at Nijni Novgorod. As many as a thousand camels sometimes made up the medieval caravan, harnessed in strings of fifty or more, the leaders gay with colorful trappings and tassels, an unladen donkey preceding the party ' ' for luck." Packed on the back of these swaying ships of the desert, or wafted by its own sails from the shore of one sea to another, or floating down the Indus and the Nile, cotton wended its journey west- ward through the centuries, until its strands at length girdled the globe. Cotton sail-cloth became the distinguishing product of Barcelona after the advent of the Saracens and Moors, Spanish looms also becoming famous for FROM ROME TO SPAIN 33 fustians and other stout stuffs. Grenada, Cordova, and Seville were celebrated seats of the industry for several hundreds of years. But with the expulsion of the Saracens the European cotton manufacture fell into decay, not to flourish again until it partic- ipated in that great efflorescence of human achieve- ment known as the Renaissance, which unfolded in Italy and spread over every country in Europe. CHAPTER 9 COTTON AND THE RENAISSANCE REYBATJD has deftly indicated the influence of the Renaissance upon raiment. During the Middle Ages, he says, scant attention was given to refine- ment in clothing. "Neither chivalry nor the Middle Ages had any taste for it ; monks wore the cowl, the men of the sword wore armor; clean linen became almost a matter of over-refinement. But the epoch of the Renaissance," he continues, "lends itself more to it ; the awakening of the arts then introduces luxury, and with luxury the care of the person. From this moment the sphere of activity extends, and unexpected riches are acquired for the needs and enjoyment of man." 1 Cotton was very early responsive to the reawak- ened needs of mankind, being quickened into life again in Italy, chief source of the mighty Revival. First Venice, then Genoa, and then Venice again, sought control of East Indian trade; the Genoese uniting with the Greeks to recapture Constantinople, with its oriental commerce, after Venice had held it for half a century; the Venetians then turning suc- cessfully to the acquirement of the Indo-Egyptian trade-routes through a treaty with the Mahometans, so that Alexander's channels of intercourse were once more opened to the world. From this moment cotton weaves itself continu- i L. Reybaud, Le Coton ; Son Regime, Ses Problemes, Son Influence en Europe: Paris, 1863; p. 4. 34 COTTON AND THE RENAISSANCE 35 ously through the history of Europe, in an ever- widening pattern. Venice becomes preeminent for the distribution of cotton supplies, especially sought after by the people of Northern Europe, who, within fifty years, established a great manufacture of their own in Saxony, Suabia, and Holland, but especially in Flanders. Venice was the cotton market of the world, the Liverpool of those days ; Antwerp, the seat of manufacturing, corresponding to Manchester. 2 But the impulse of the Italian Renaissance, not to be hemmed in even by continental confines, again set in motion that world movement which had been re- tarded for so many centuries since Alexander first pushed it westward from the Himalayas and the mouth of the Indus. Influenced by a desire for freer intercourse with the commercial store-houses of India, wherein by no means the least precious com- modity was the world's cotton supply, Italy and Portugal sent forward in opposite directions two quests for the key to the Orient Columbus the Genoese sailing westward in 1492, and Vasco da Gama from Lisbon eastward in 1497, both seeking India. Gama was successful. Rounding the continent of Africa and touching near Zanzibar, he sailed across the Indian Ocean described by Arrian in connection with the early history of the cotton commerce, and landed at Calicut, the city of calicoes, ten months and two days out of Lisbon. Here he set up a marble pillar as a sign of conquest and in proof of discovery of India. After his return to Portugal another fleet was sent out under Cabral, who established a factory at Calicut. 2 G. von Schulze-Gaevernitz, Der Grossbetrieb : Leipzig, 1892 j p. 25. 36 COTTON AS A WORLD POWER Vasco da Gama, commanding a second expedition several years later, founded a factory at Mozam- bique, in the Portuguese possessions on the east coast of Africa, these being probably the first ex- amples of the penetration of western mechanical enterprise into the Orient. A whole chain of forts and factories was shortly established for the protec- tion of the Portuguese trade, ships plying between all the ports from the Cape to Canton. Venice, thrown into alarm, formed an alliance with the Turks, but the dauntless Portuguese maintained, at the cost of much blood and treasure, their mastery of the Indian Ocean, routing the Venetians com- pletely in this contest for Oriental supremacy, and reshaping the channels of commerce by shipment from India around Africa to Lisbon. The immediate result was a plentiful supply throughout Europe of Indian products, including cotton goods, and a con- sequent reduction in price ; but this situation, in turn, brought about a greatly increased demand for these plentiful and inexpensive goods from the Orient, so that the cotton trade received the greatest impetus that had thus far occurred in its history. Vasco da Gama's voyage, as Draper says, was to the last degree important in its effect on the future development of Europe. The commercial arrange- ments of Europe were completely dislocated ; Venice was deprived of her mercantile supremacy; the hatred of Genoa was gratified; prosperity left the Italian towns; Egypt, hitherto supposed to possess a preeminent advantage as offering the best avenue to India, suddenly lost her position ; the commercial monopolies so long in the hands of the European Jews were broken down. The discovery of America and passage of the Cape were the first steps of that COTTON AND THE RENAISSANCE 37 prodigious maritime development soon exhibited by Western Europe. And since commercial prosperity is forthwith followed by the production of men and concentration of wealth, and, moreover, implies an energetic intellectual condition, it appeared before long that the centers of population, of wealth, of in- tellect, were shifting westwardly. The front of Europe was suddenly changed; the British Islands, hitherto in a sequestered and eccentric position, were all at once put in the van of the new movement. 3 Englishmen took to the sea, and the great Age of Adventure, led by Cabot, Hawkins, and Drake, laid the foundations of a new international commerce. Shipbuilding became a famous British business. By means of newly developed trade-routes, both East and West were tapped for such wares as cotton, silks, tobacco, tea, coffee, cocoa, sugar, rum, spices, oranges, lemons, raisins, currants, rice and other strange products with which Englishmen had there- tofore somehow dispensed. The carrying trade of the world became an international bone of conten- tion. Spain and Portugal having been crippled in warfare, England next struck a blow at Holland in the famous Navigation Acts of 1650-1651, requiring that all imports for England or any crown colonies should be carried in English bottoms or in ships of the producing country. The ensuing wars resulted in British acquisition of the New Netherlands col- onies, embracing the present States of New York and Pennsylvania, thus driving out the wedge that had divided New England from Virginia and Maryland. With the subsequent settlement of the Carolinas and Georgia, the thirteen American colonies were com- s J. W. Draper, A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe: New York, 1863; pp. 449-450. 38 COTTON AS A WOBLD POWER plete. New imports from the colonies and the Orient called for an increased body of exports, and thus provided a powerful stimulus to British manu- facturing industry as a means in the development of this newly established international commerce. 4 But this is to run ahead of our story. * A. F. Pollard, The History of England; a Study in Political Evolution: London, n. d., ch's vi, vii. ("The Discovery of the New World began that economic revolution which changed every manu- facturing town into a mere booth in the world's fair." George Bernard Shaw in Fabian Essays: London, 1889; p. 174.) CHAPTER 10 THE WEAVER KING KING EDWAED HI (1327-1377) is called by Hallam "the father of English commerce." He taught his people, who monopolized the sheep culture of Europe at a time when Europeans wore woolen garments almost exclusively, to weave wool as well as to grow it; and thus augmented the national wealth by adding the profits of manufacture to the revenues derived from a monopoly of production. A hun- dred and fifty years before Vasco da Gama " dis- covered India," and just at the time when ''Sir John Maundevile" professed to be forming a personal acquaintance with the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, Edward was taking advantage of dissensions among the Flemish experts in wool weaving to invite them to settle in England. 1 This he did with such marked sagacity that throughout his entire reign, and for the better part of a century, Flemish weavers continued to emigrate to England, and by the introduction of that "mys- tery" for which Flanders had become famous, im- proved so greatly the crude British business in weav- ing that wool became what cotton now is to the Southeastern States in America the chief source of i H. Hallam, View of the State of Europe During the Middle Ages : New York, 1896, vol. ii, p. 512. 39 40 COTTON AS A WORLD POWER revenue, and, indeed, the principal article of national export; so that wool was styled in ancient records "the flower and strength, the revenue and blood of England," as is still symbolized by the wool-sack whereon the Lord High Chancellor sits as he pre- sides over the House of Lords. Down to Edward's time England had been almost entirely dependent on the Netherlands for comfort- able clothing ; but the * ' father of English commerce ' ' brought it to pass that instead of importing more than half of its cloth and practically all of its com- fortable clothing, as England had done when he ascended the throne, by the close of his reign the realm was exporting British cloth of three times the volume of its imports. Edward for his pains was nicknamed "the wool merchant'* by his royal brother in France, but, noth- ing daunted, he utilized to the fullest extent his mar- riage with the daughter of a Flemish count to woo the weavers. The quaint Fuller, in his ' ' Church His- tory," gives a delightful account of the persuasive arguments used by the King's agents in Flanders to show how much "better off" the operatives would find themselves in England. In Flanders, he says, it was a case of early up and late in bed, and all day hard work and harder fare, and all to enrich their masters without any profit to themselves. But, oh ! how happy should they be if they would but come over to England, bringing their mystery, which would provide them welcome in all places! Here they should feed on fat beef and mutton till nothing but their fulness should stint their stomachs. The richest yeomen in England would not disdain to marry their daughters unto them, and such the Eng- 41 lish beauties that most envious foreigners could not but commend them ! 2 In 1328 the first important colony of persuaded Flemish weavers settled at Manchester, and three years later seventy families came over. These weav- ers produced the famous " Manchester cottons," which in reality were not made of cotton at all, but of wool. The fact remains, however, that the settle- ment of these Flemings in Manchester provided the means of developing that part of Lancashire to a high degree of expertness in the weaving industry, so that when time at last was ripe and "vegetable wool" began to be manufactured in England it was Lancashire that gave the country that primacy in cotton manufacture which England still maintains, and which constitutes to-day its greatest industry, although all the raw material must cross either the Bed and Arabian Seas or the Atlantic Ocean. The immediate result of Flemish immigration was, as Edward so shrewdly had planned, an enor- mous stimulus to the wool trade. Fuller says that before the Flemings came to Manchester the English knew no better what to do with their wool than the sheep that wore it, for their best clothes were no better than friezes; while Thorold Kogers proffers the chilling assertion that a man in an English winter might as well have dressed himself with a hurdle as with English woolen cloth ; 3 but from this time on Britain grew able to compete even with Flanders it- self, and by a unique policy of protection in the ex- portation of raw wool so fostered the weaving in- 2 Cited by T. Ellison, in The Cotton Trade of Great Britain : Lon- don, 1886; pp. 4-5. 3 J. E. Thoroid Rogers, The Economic Interpretation of History : London, 1909; p. 286. 42 COTTON AS A WORLD POWER dustry at home as to develop heavy exports of the manufactured article, Flanders, with Germany, Russia, Italy, and Spain ranging up at length among the buyers, and Spain at the last playing into her enemy's hand by destroying the Flemish weaving industry altogether, the weavers fleeing in large numbers to augment the earlier immigration into England. Thus from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century "wool was king" in England quite to the same de- gree that cotton came to be king south of Mason and Dixon's line in America during the nineteenth cen- tury. From 1360 British resources were enormously enlarged by adding to a natural monopoly the incre- ment accruing from skilful manufacture thereof, just as the Carolinas and other Southern States are now undertaking to do with their cotton crop. 4 In this way woolen manufacture had become, prior to the Renaissance period, the pet industry of England, and a lively struggle ensued when cotton began to come in by way of Gama 's new route, and dispute the primacy. NOTE. The practical monopoly which the English possessed of wool was less due to the climate and soil of England, than it was to the maintenance of order in the kingdom. For a long time, every one in England, from the King to the serf, was an agriculturist. After the landowners had been constrained to give up arable farming, they still remained sheep masters, produced wool and sold it. Now when, owing to the diffusing or distribution of property, every one is interested in maintaining the rights of property, there is very little temptation given to theft or violence, and every inclination to detect and punish it. Hence, Englishmen could keep sheep, the most defenseless of agricultural animals. Every one who knows anything about the state of western Europe from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, knows that the husbandmen did not keep sheep, for they would have certainly been plundered of them by the nobles and their retainers if they had. The King's peace was the protection of the sheep master. England then had a monopoly of *See Chapter 69. THE WEAVER KING 43 wool. The monopoly was so complete, and the demand for the prod- uce so urgent, that the English Parliaments were able to grant an export duty on wool equal to more than the market value of the produce without diminishing its price. In other words, the export duty was paid by the foreign consumer, a financial success which every government has desired, and in which all, with this English exception, have failed. Rogers, as cited, pp. 9-10. CHAPTER 11 COTTON ENTERS ENGLAND COTTON first makes its appearance in English his- tory as a luminant, the first recorded importation, so early as the year 1298, being one of candle-wicks, at that time a most important commodity. 1 Other shipments wandered in from time to time, but the aspect of the East Indian trade was insignificant until the new routes had become fully established, and Lisbon's plenty began to overflow her own nar- row borders. By the end of the sixteenth century the Low Countries were casting jealous eyes toward Portugal, so lucrative had the Oriental commerce be- come; and expanding England vied with Holland in the establishment of a great trading agency for the exploitation of East Indian markets. On the last day of the year 1600 the British East India Com- pany received a royal charter. Having obtained permission from native princes to establish forts and factories, this East India Company was in 1624 in- vested with the plenary rights of government. Shortly thereafter the importation of cotton fabrics began in earnest, and the spider goddess of India enlisted straightway in a contest with the stout Minerva of British industry for the weaving su- premacy of the world. 2 The first arrival of Indian fabrics occurred in 1631. Ten years later one hears of Manchester i Baines, &s cited, p. 96. 2 See Appendix B. 44 COTTON ENTERS ENGLAND 45 weavers buying in London cotton wool imported from Cyprus and Smyrna, working the same into fustians, vermillions, and dimities, and then return- ing it to London, " where the same is vented and sold, and not seldom sent into forrain parts, who have means, at far easier termes, to provide themselves of the said first materials." 3 Almost immediately the cry of the commercial patriot was uplifted in hoarse clamor for the pro- tection of home industries. The war of the pam- phleteer raged violently, all of the arguments being on the side of British wool, while the insidious cot- ton fiber silently spun its webs over England. ' * In- stead of green sey," cried one voice of woolen lamen- tation, "is now used painted and Indian-stained and striped calico; and instead of a perpetuana or shal- loon to lyne men's coats with, is used sometimes a glazened calico, which in the whole is not above 12d cheaper, and abundantly worse. And sometimes is used a Bangale, that is brought from India, both for lynings to coats, and for petticoats too ; yet our Eng- lish ware is better and cheaper than this, only it is thinner for the summer. To remedy this, it would be very necessary to lay a very high impost upon all such commodities as these are, and that no callicoes or other sort of linen be suffered to be glazened." 4 Measurable legislative relief was granted, at least to the dead, by the passage of a parliamentary Act in 1666 providing that every dead person should be buried in a woolen shroud, in default of which the persons directing the funeral should forfeit the sum 8 Lewes Roberts in The Treasure of Traffic, 1642, cited by Baines, p. 100. * The Ancient Trades Decayed and Repaired Again : London, 1678; pp. 16-17; see Baines, as cited, p. 77. 46 COTTON AS A WORLD POWEE of 5. 5 "If the people while alive were so perverse and unpatriotic as to prefer foreign to domestic fabrics for their vestments," says Ellison, "they should at all events not be allowed to carry their fripperies with them to the grave. ' ' 6 In 1696 a pamphlet entitled The Naked Truth declared that muslins were "becoming the general wear in England"; and then the writer, intending to be contemptuous, pays a tribute rivaling that of Tavernier to the delicate shadow-like quality of the Indian weave. "Fashion is truly termed a witch," he says; "the dearer and scarcer any commodity, the more the mode ; 305. a yard for muslins, and only the shadow of a commodity when procured ! " 7 But fashion's slaves continued to bow down be- fore the cotton boll, as Brahmin priests had done three thousand years before them; although "the effect of such frippery was that our gold and silver went abroad, and that much excellent English dra- pery lay in our warehouses till it was devoured by the moths. And was it not a shame to see a gentle- man whose ancestors had worn nothing but stuffs made by English workmen out of English fleeces, 5 30 Car. II, st. i. c. 3. Blackstone, in his discussion of personal liberty, gives an amusing defense of this law: "The statute of King Edward IV, which forbade the fine gentlemen of those times (under the degree of a lord) to wear pikes upon their shoes or boots of more than two inches in length, was a law that savored of oppression; because, however ridiculous the fashion then in use might appear, the restraining it by pecuniary penalties could serve no purpose of common utility. But the statute of King Charles II, which prescribes a thing seemingly as indifferent (a dress for the dead, who are all ordered to be burried in woolen), is a law consistent with public liberty; for it encourages the staple trade, on which in great measure depends the universal good of the nation." Sir Wm. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England: London, 1809 (first edition, 1765). e Ellison, as cited, p. 8. 7 Cited by Baines, p. 78 COTTON ENTERS ENGLAND 47 flaunting in a calico shirt and a pair of silk stockings from Moorshedabad ? " 8 In 1700 an Act was passed by Parliament which forbade the introduction of "India silks and printed calicoes for domestic use, either as apparel or furni- ture, under a penalty of 200. ' ' 9 This, however, appeared to give little relief, for in 1708 we hear the genial author of " Robinson Crusoe" lifting up a mournful philippic against the growing rule of Bang Cotton. "The general fansie of the people," says Daniel Defoe, "runs upon East India goods to that degree, that the chints and printed callicoes, which before were only made use of for carpets, quilts, etc., and to clothe children and ordinary people, become now the dress of our ladies ; and such is the power of a mode as we saw our persons of quality dressed in Indian carpets, which but a few years before their chamber- maids would have thought too ordinary for them: the chints was advanced from lying upon their floors to their backs, from the foot-cloth to the petticoat; and even the queen herself at this time was pleased to appear in China and Japan, I mean China silks and calico. Nor was this all, but it crept into our houses, our closets, and bedchambers; curtains, cushions, chairs, and at last beds themselves, were nothing but callicoes or Indian stuffs ; and in short, almost everything that used to be made of wool or silk, relating either to the dress of the women or the furniture of our houses, was supplied by the Indian trade. The several goods bought from India are made five parts in six under our price, and, being s Macaulay's History of England: New York, 1873; vol. vi, pp. 165-166. Cited by Ellison, p. 11; Act 11 and 12, William III, cap. 10. 48 COTTON AS A WORLD POWER imported and sold at an extravagant advantage, are yet capable of underselling the cheapest thing we can set about." 10 Meanwhile, there are whispers that the woolen weavers at Manchester are busily engaged in making shrewd imitations of the much denounced Indian im- ports ! This marks the beginning of England's stub- born surrender. Parliament, however, made a final and desperate stand for the wool-sack. In 1720 n it prohibited the use or wear in Great Britain, in any garment or apparel whatsoever, of any printed, painted, stained, or dyed calico, under the penalty of forfeiting to the informer the sum of 5 thus virtually establishing the universal office of clothes- warden, after the modern fashion of some of the American States in the protection of game by award- ing a fine to informers. It was also enacted that persons using printed or dyed calico "in or about any bed, chair, cushion, window-curtain, or any other sort of household stuff or furniture," should be fined 20, and that dealers selling the stuff should be mulcted an equal amount. 12 This was just twenty years before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which with great sud- denness transformed rural England by introducing the modern era of machinery. 10 Weekly Review: London, Jan. 31, 1708. 11 Ellison, p. 12. 12 F. Wilkinson, The Story of the Cotton Plant: New York, 1906; p. 119. BOOK II THE TRANSFORMATION OF ENGLAND CHAPTER 12 THE INDUSTKIAL REVOLUTION WHITING of the Industrial Revolution in England, Professor Gibbins says: "The French Revolution took place about the same time, and as it was per- formed amid streams of blood and flame, it attracted the attention of historians, who have apparently yet to learn that bloodshed and battles are merely the incidents of history. Nothing has done more to make England what she at present is than this sud- den and silent Industrial Revolution, for it increased her wealth ten-fold, and gave her half a century's start in front of the nations of Europe." 1 Cotton chiefly produced it the struggle of cotton with wool. How complete the triumph in this battle, appears in the simple fact that cotton now takes the leading rank in British industries, whereas wool occupied the supreme position when the Industrial Revolution began. Cotton dispossessed wool; and yet every circumstantial advantage was arrayed on the side of the wool-sack, as has been shown. Town- send Warner sums the case aptly in Traill's "Social England," pointing out that the term "revolution" is amply justified by the three-fold test of trade ex- pansion, a transformed economic system, and the transfer of industrial sites. In the first place, then, this revolutionary era was iH. de B. Gibbins, The Industrial History of England: London, 1904; pp. 156-157. 51 52 COTTON AS A WORLD POWEE characterized by an enormous increase in trade. In 1740 there had been no true cotton manufacture at all; which is to say, that all of the so-called ''cot- tons" were made with the aid of linen warp. Even the import of cotton for fustians, candle-wicks, and other purposes amounted to only 1,645,031 Ibs. ; whereas in 1815 cotton imports reached a volume of nearly one hundred millions. Cotton, however, was by no means the only in- dustry affected ; other trades borrowed its stimulus. For example, in 1740 England made 17,350 tons of pig-iron ; but in 1806 there were 258,206 tons, and in 1825, 581,367 tons. In 1740 England exported hardly any iron, but imported much; in 1815 it ex- ported 91,000 tons: while conversely, between 1792 and 1812 the quantity imported dropped from 51,000 tons to 24,000 tons. The total merchandise exports rose from a value of 8,197,788 in 1740 to 58,624,550 in 1815, while the revenue increased from 3,997,000 to 71,900,005, and the population itself rose from 6,064,000 to more than ten millions. A change in mere volume, however, hardly justi- fies the term "revolution." A change in nature, far more important than a mere change in volume, also occurred. All industry was domestic in 1740 ; spin- ning and weaving being cottage occupations entirely. While the husbandman managed the loom at odd hours, wife and children spent all of their spare time in spinning. Factories in the modern sense did not exist. Except for Kay's fly-shuttle, the loom stood unchanged as from primitive ages, while spinning was equally ancient in all its methods. But in 1815 the master and mill had arrived, while men had be- come "hands," working on a time schedule, assisted by women and children. 53 But industry had not only changed in nature as well as in volume, it had also changed its location. Weavers, no longer scattered through the rural dis- tricts at random, had been attracted to the vicinity of the spinning mills, so as to work up the yarn which the master spinners gave out. Then water- power came into use, mills clustering on the river banks, and gradually moving up-stream. One inci- dental result of this movement was the abandonment of the woolen manufacture in the low countries, and, in fact, wherever water-power was not available. By 1802 steam power began to supersede water, whereupon industry drew in from the streams and built up large manufacturing towns, wherever coal was cheap and labor fairly abundant. The Industrial Revolution of England, as sum- marized so compactly by Warner, 2 serves to typify and typically illustrate those stupendous changes that were to be wrought throughout human society by the invention and large use of machinery ; and the cotton plant of the Orient is historically responsible for an important share in this Revolution, which brought about unnumbered benefits, with numerous attendant evils in their train. Perhaps the most startling feature of the English change was the rapidity with which it was accom- plished. In little more than twenty years almost all the great cotton inventions were achieved, Watt's new engine had applied steam power to novel looms, and the modern factory system had usurped the seat of a scattered and unorganized rural industry. England, with its accustomed phlegmatism, had been almost the last country in Europe to take up 2H. D. Traill, Social England: London, 1905; vol. v, pp. 600- 604. 54 COTTON AS A WORLD POWER the manufacture of cotton; but England, slow to arouse herself, makes a mighty stir when once awake. Convinced finally that the seductive Indian goods had permanently enchanted the fancy of her people in spite of political eloquence and excise laws and penalties, she taught her weavers surreptitiously to imitate the forbidden fripperies, and then at length the spirit of indomitable enterprise awakened, so that England resolved to take this fleecy stuff from the Orient, and, by the sheer application of brain power, turn disaster into opulence through a manipu- lation more dextrous than that of the Hindus them- selves. BRITISH GENIUS JUST on the unguessed verge of the Industrial Revolution, Daniel Defoe, 1 the eloquent champion of wool, went on an inland journey which he fully re- ported, giving a vivid picture of domestic England before machinery had made its appearance. "The land was divided into small Enclosures from two Acres to six or seven each, seldom more, every three or four Pieces of Land had a House belonging to them; hardly an House standing out of Speaking- distance from another. We could see at every House a Tenter, and on almost every Tenter a piece of Cloth or Kersie or Shaloon. At every consider- able House there was a Manufactory. Every clothier keeps one horse at least to carry his Manu- factures to the Market; and every one generally keeps a Cow or two or more for his Family. By this means the small Pieces of enclosed Land about each house are occupied, for they scarce sow Corn enough to feed their Poultry. The houses are full of lusty Fellows, some at the Dye-vat, some at the looms, others dressing the Cloths ; the women and children carding or spinning; being all employed, from the youngest to the oldest. ' ' Next to agriculture, the handiwork connected with cloth manufacture had come to be, since the time of iTour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain: London, 1727; iii, 144-146. 55 56 COTTON AS A WOELD POWEE Edward III, the chief occupation of the English ; but it was essentially a rural and domestic handiwork, as far as possible removed from the factory-town system of to-day. Pieces of goods, once made, were painfully collected in the huddled hamlets; slowly gathered from the hamlets into towns ; and then from the inland towns to seaports, over the worst of roads, and by the most rudimentary conveyances. There was certainly acute need of manufacturing improve- ment, as well as of better transportation. Professor Cheyney's terse sketch of the old pro- cesses of domestic manufacture may be still further condensed for the present purpose. The raw ma- terial, whether coming from the back of the sheep, the boll of the cotton plant, or the crushed stems of the flax, is in any case a mass of tangled fiber ; so that it is first necessary to straighten the skeins of this fiber, by " combing" in the case of wool, and other- wise by "carding"; simple hand implements having been used from time immemorial, and a thin fluffy roll of fiber resulting, known as the slubbin, or rove. Spinning, the next task, consisted in attenuating the rove into yarn, which in the same process was twisted to secure greater strength ; the implement being first the high hand-wheel, and then the low foot-wheel which left the hands free for more rapid manipu- lation of material. The thread thus produced was then set upon the loom, which required strong sub- stance for the lengthwise threads of the warp ; while the weft, or woof, which might be of weaker ma- terial, was wrapped on a shuttle and thrown hori- zontally by hand between the two diverging bands of the warp. The woven cloth, being then subjected to various processes such as finishing, fulling, shearing, and dyeing (unless this had already been done in BEITISH GENIUS 57 the yarn), the finished product was ready for the market. 2