letin
No. 76.

[4] _Cotton Culture and the Cotton Trade_, p. 298.

[5] _The Cotton Trade of Great Britain_, by Thomas Ellison, p. 186.

[6] See article on "Dealings in Futures in the Cotton Market," in the
_Journal of the Royal Statistical Society_, vol. lxix, p. 325.

[7] Journal of the Statistical Society, 1906.

[8] See paper in the Journal of the Statistical Society for June 1906.

[9] Attempts to explain them were made in an article in the _Economic
Journal_ in December 1904, and in the paper already referred to read
to the Royal Statistical Society.

[10] See the paper already mentioned in the _Journal of the Royal
Statistical Society_ for June 1906, where the several points noticed
briefly above are fully discussed.

[11] The Association published a weekly paper known as The Cotton
Supply Reporter.

COTTON MANUFACTURE. The antiquity of the cotton industry has hitherto
proved unfathomable, as can readily be understood from the difficulty of
proving a universal negative, especially from such scanty material as we
possess of remote ages. That in the 5th century B.C. cotton fabrics were
unknown or quite uncommon in Europe may be inferred from Herodotus'
mention of the cotton clothing of the Indians. Ultimately the cotton
industry was imported into Europe, and by the middle of the 13th century
we find it flourishing in Spain. In the New World it would seem to have
originated spontaneously, since on the discovery of America the wearing
apparel in use included cotton fabrics. After the collapse of Spanish
prosperity before the Moors in the 14th century the Netherlands assumed
a leadership in this branch of the textile industries as they did also
in other branches. It has been surmised that the cotton manufacture was
carried from the Netherlands to England by refugees during the Spanish
persecution of the second half of the 16th century; but no absolute
proof of this statement has been forthcoming, and although workers in
cotton may have been among the Flemish weavers who fled to England about
that time, and some of whom are said to have settled in and about
Manchester, it is quite conceivable that cotton fabrics were made on an
insignificant scale in England years before, and there is some evidence
to show that the industry was not noticeable till many years later. If
England did derive her cotton manufacture from the Netherlands she was
unwillingly compelled t