Note 24 — PART I SOUTHWARD HO!

“Mr. Richard H. Edmonds, in an illuminating article in the Review of Reviews for February, 1906, has declared that no country ever dominated, as does the South, an industry of such value and importance as the cotton crop.... Three-fourths of this great crop, which must be relied on to clothe civilization, and in the exploitation of which two billions of capital are used, is raised in the South. It is a stupendous God-made monopoly. To-day, the South has invested, in 777 mills, with their 9,200,000 spindles, $225,000,000, as against $21,000,000 twenty-five years ago. The fields of the South furnish the raw material for three-fourths of the mills of all the world with their 110,000,000 spindles. The South now consumes 2,300,000 bales, which is about the amount consumed by the rest of the country, and is a fourfold increase over its consumption in 1890.”—Dr. E. A. Alderman: “The Growing South,” p. 18. A threefold increase in the cotton-crops seems easily possible; but whether prices could be kept up under such conditions is another question. Be this as it may, an immense agricultural development seems practically certain.