pendent on the negroes. But to let the
slaves go meant ruin for the South. It was not alone, you see, that
their owners wished the profit derived from buying and selling them;
they needed them to work. Never had the South had such an opportunity
to coin wealth as that now opening. What wonder its residents were
angry at having this dazzling prospect for fortune-making snatched
away? Remember and take these facts into consideration when you think
harshly of those who took up arms to defend slavery."

There was an instant's pause.

"Of course, however, none of this justifies slavery or makes it more
right. The entire principle of it was wrong; it was un-Christian,
unjust, and cruel, and the only honorable thing to do was to bring it
to an end in this country. But that is another story altogether. What
we are talking about now is the cotton itself; and to get a big view of
this subject it is well to consider what was happening in the world
just at this time, and why cotton was such a desirable commodity.

"Over across the ocean James Watts's steam engine, combined with the
flying shuttle of John Kay, the spinning jenny of Hargreaves, the
water-frame of Arkwright, and the self-acting loom of Crompton, was
working as great a revolution in England's cloth-making industry as Eli
Whitney's cotton gin had done in the South. In other words the hand
loom had been supplanted by the more modern device of the steam-driven
spinning mill. This meant that in future cloth would no longer be made
in small quantities in the homes, women of the families spinning the
thread and weaving it whenever they could steal a bit of time from
other household duties. No! Cloth was to be made in factories on a much
larger scale, and sold to the public."

"No wonder the fact set everybody to raising cotton!" declared Mrs.
McGregor.

"No wonder indeed!" nodded her brother. "From a vintage so small that
even President Jefferson scarcely knew America had a cotton crop at all
this product of the South leaped forward by bounds. The year preceding
Eli Whitney's invention the United States exported less than one
hundred and forty thousand bales; but the year afterward the shipment
had soared to nearly half a million. The following year it was a
million and a half; the year after that six million."

"Gee whizz!" commented Carl. "That was some record, wasn't it?"

"Rather!" agreed his uncle.

"How much do we export now, Uncle Frederick?" Mary asked.

"