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IX The Finishing Operations 57

The Fabric of Civilization

CHAPTER I

The Importance and Power of Cotton

Cotton is the fabric of civilization. It has built up peoples, and has
riven them apart. It has brought to the world vast and permanent wealth.
It has enlisted the vision of statesmen, the genius of inventors, the
courage of pioneers, the forcefulness of manufacturers, the initiative of
merchants and shipbuilders, and the patient toil of many millions.

A whole library could be written on the economic aspects of cotton alone.
It could be told in detail, how and why the domination of the field of
its manufacture passed from India to Spain, to Holland, and finally to
England, which now shares it chiefly with the United States. The
interdependence of nations which it has brought about has been the
subject of numerous books and articles.

Genius that Served
The World's Need

Nor is the history of the inventions which have made possible to-day's
great production of cotton fabrics less impressive. From the unnamed
Hindu genius of pre-Alexandrian days, through Arkwright and Eli Whitney,
down to Jacquard and Northrop, the tale of cotton manufacture is a series
of romances and tragedies, any one of which would be a story worth
telling in detail. Yet, here is a work that is by no means finished.
Great inventors who will apply their genius to the improvement of cotton
growing and manufacture are still to be born.

The present purpose, however, is to explain, as briefly as may be, the
growth of the cotton industry of the United States, in its more important
branches, and to endeavor, on the basis of recognized authority, to
indicate its position in relation to the cotton industries of the
remainder of the world.

America the Chief
Source of Raw Material

For the present, and for the future, as far as that may be seen, the
United States will have to continue to supply the greater part of the
world's raw cotton. Staples of unusual length and strength have been
grown in some foreign regions, and short and inferior fibers have come
from still others. But the cotton belt of the Southern States, producing
millions of bales, is the chief source of supply for all the world.

The following table, taken from "The World's Cotton Crops, 1915," by J.
A. Todd, gives the comparative production of the great cotton-growing
areas, for the 1914-1915 season: