The Congressional Globe: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the Third Session Forty-Second Congress; An Appendix, Embracing the Laws Passed at That Session Page: 732
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732
THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE,
January 21,
emancipated labor to an anticipation of its
falling off from the old standard of care and
constancy.
The differences that I have pointed out con-
stitute grounds of reasonable doubt as to the
result of the present struggle. A summation
of the practical value of those differences may
be made: now in a review of the forces oper-
ating in producing the movements of the con-
flict—prices.
In December, X8G7, a report, already re-
ferred to, was made on the subject of cotton
by a committee of th-; Boston Board of Trade.
That report holds the following language:
"Upon this poiot your committee aro conyinced
from the evidence that has been laid before them
that the cost of raising cotton in India, allowing
only forty pounds as the product of clean cotton per
acre, does not exceed threepence sterling, say six
cents per pound, and that such cotton can now bo
laid down at four and a quarter pence, say eight
and a Jialf cents per pound, in Liverpool."
Mr, Nourse, one of our commissioners to
the Exposition of Paris, says, in a report sup-
plementary to that of "the committee on
raw materials and manufactures:"
"It is not to be expected that India cotton will
continue to bo exported to Europe after its price
shall have fallen to four and a halfpence per pound
for lair Dohlera, as in former times, if exoess of
supply should bring that about."
Indian cotton deposited in Liverpool at four
and three eighths pence, the .average of the
statement of the Commissioner to the Exposi-
tion of Paris and of the committee of the Boston
Board of Trade, will, it may be assumed from
these statements, hold the market against
American at rates over five and a half pence.
And this conclusion comes under the corrobo-
ration of Mr. Thompson, a mill owner of
Massachusetts, when he says, in a letter dated
December, 1869:
"It is my opinion that in order to control the
market of fcuropo tho greator part of our ootton
must bo laid down in Liverpool at iivepence to fivo
ana a half pcnce, or ten to cloven cents, per pound."
Thereporton the cotton fibers of the World's
Fair of 1862 says:
" I made careful inquiries respecting the prioos at
which the various countries can profitably produce
cotton, and was gratifiod to learfi that in many of
tho countries from which wo aro likely to obtain
any considerable quantities, sixpence per pound,
would bo surlictontly remunerative to encourage the
revival and extension of tho trade. I noticed this
to bo particularly tho ease in those countries which
were ionnorly producer*?, but had been obliged to
succumb to Ainorioan competition; and I bolieve
wo shall find them fully propared to maintain their
positions against the American producers, unless
the latter can in the cpurse of time again supply
good cotton at six ponco per bound."
Consular dispatches to the British Foreign
Office, reports of cotton fairs, and public letters
on the cost of producing cotton at the several
sources of its supply, are voluminous. From
a perusal of many of these I have no hesita
tion in declaring my conviction that even
though we may make for a time a further
advance into the market, we cannot maintain
long the ground we have even now recovered
until we shall have again supplied Liverpool
abundantly at less than sixpence per pound.
Can we under existing circumstances de-
posit. large masses of cotton in Liverpool at
less than sixpence per pound? In 1848 we
sold cotton in that market at four and a
quarter pence; but we did so without profit
to the producer. And the Financial and
Commercial Chronicle is undoubtedly correct
in declaring that "the cost of producing that
raw material now is double what it was before
the war"—twelve cents. Mr. Mudge, com-
missioner from this country to the Exposition
of Paris, says in his report:
"If the price shall be only sixteen cents iu New
l.ork or twelve cents to the planter, he cannot pay
ills hired laborers with the entire net proceeds."
The Commissioner of Agriculture cites the
average of (hree experiments as authority for
the conclusion that the cost of growing cotton
at a yield of two hundred pounds to the acre,
which i3 the average of the whole country, is
eleven and seven sixteenths cents per pound.
Now, with India able to produce her staples
at six cents, and thirty-five other countries,
each producing staples fully equal to ours,
able to deposite theirs at sixpence per pound
in Liverpool, there is no escaping the conclu-
sion that, our supremacy, as the struggle now
stands, is lost beyond recovery.
Deducting the tax, the net proceeds of
New Orleans middling in Liverpool stood, in
1867, at six and three eighths pence to fourteen
and five eighths pence per pound. The Sen-
ator from Ohio [Mr. Sherman] stated in the
debate of that year on the cotton tax, " the
price has now gone so low that it is said that
oven without'the tax it will not pay the ex-
penses of raising it," The Senator from
Massachusetts [Mr. Wilson] cited at the same
time the head of the Freedmen's Bureau in
Alabama as authority for the statement that—
" Tho planters have almost universally held to
their cotton iii hopes that Congress would repeal
the tax. This is to most of them the difference be-
tween profit and loss on the crop of this year, and
the only means by which the freedmen can be paid."
The Senator quoted a letter from Mr. Eli S.
Shorter, of Alabama, as authority for the state-
ment that—
" Not one planter in ahundred is able this season
to pay his expenses incurred in making the crop of
this yoar.
Says the report of Mr. Nourse, our commis-
sioner to the exposition of Pari3:
"The first half of the cotton crop of the United
btates for 1867 was sold by tho planters for less than
the cost of production."
This evidence being ample, it may now be
summed up in the conclusion that we cannot
maintain our production of raw cotton under
existing circumstances at the net prices of
1867—from six and three eighths pence, to four-
teen and five eighths pence per pound.
But this question of price may be examined
not on authorities only, but also on great pub-
lic facts. It may be put to the test in a review
ot its effects on the movements of this cotton
war. The Senator from Ohio in December,
1867, said: '
" It is urged by many persons in the South, some
of whom are now hore, that the planters should
know now before tho holidays whetherit is desirable
for them to proceed to raise eotton next year or
othor crops."
And six and three eighths pence to fourteen
and five eighths pence net in Liverpool for
New Orleans middling m 1867 so discouraged
the planters that even the removal of the tax
at the close of the year did not succeed in pre-
venting a reduction of our importance in the
market of 1868. _ The crop of that year yielded
in Liverpool without any reduction for tax
seven and three-eighths pence to twelve and
seven eighths pence per pound. But even this
advance of price did not prevent in the follow-
ing year further loss of our space in the
market. The conclusion from these facts is
irresistible, namely, that under the circum-
stances of the production of 1868 and 1861),
our cotton-planting retrograded under prices
trom even seven and three eighths pence to
twelve and seven eighths pence.
A Senator from Rhode Island, who is a
planter as well as a spinner, said in the debate
or 1867 on the cotton tax:
tho.people of the. South, those whose means
mvestod in this crop, knew the exact cir-
cumstances, my life for it, they would not invest a
smglo dollar m it."
And in corroboration of this picture of the
condition of the industry at that time, I may
cite the fact that we are told by the Commis-
sioner of Agriculture that the prices of even
1868 threw one million acres out of cotton
culture an 1869. But that year the prices ad-
vanced. They stood at eleven pence to four-
teen pence. This increase gave us in 1870
an addition to the breadth of our planting
of twelve per cent. In 1870, however, prices
were again low. They ranged from eight
pence to eleven and fifteen sixteenths pence.
Is off resulted the following year in
a tailing off in the acreage to the extent of
fifteen percent. While these facts go to show
that our cotton culture totters backward and
forward over great areas of debatable ground,
they leave no room for doubt that, as the
struggle now stands, our supremacy in raw
cotton is irretrievably lost.
Our cotton culture is marked by wide dif-
ferences of strength. In the rich bottoms of
our rivers it is invincible in the fullness of its
yield. The uplands are the seat of its weak-
ness. Our victory of the past was obtained
at the cost of au exhaustion that has been
carried on over great areas of those uplands
to the verge of sterility. Representing the
greater part of the outturn, most of these
large areas give more or less evidence of ex-
haustion, while a very considerable proportion
of them gives an average yield not greatly in
excess of averages obtained by our most
threatening rival—British India.
I have no means of showing the breadth or
the degree of our weakness on the uplands.
But a general view of both may be obtained
by reading the yield-averages of the Bureau of
Agriculture under the light of the fact that
the river bottoms of our cotton belt average
more than four hundred pounds of lint per
acre. When, in connection with this, we
find the average culture of Georgia. Florida,
and South Carolina—including their river
bottoms—to be from one hundred and sixty-
five to one hundred and seventy-three pounds
of lint, we may conclude in general that our
cotton industry is called on to struggle for
its life over great areas of very low yield.
And interpreting this conclusion under the
light of the oscillations of this cotton war,
taking as a basis the position to which we
had been restrained by the low prices of
1868—-thirty per cent, of space in the mar-
ket—we may be driven back at atly moment
from one half of the position we now occupy
in the market, by total rout 'at the point of
our weakness—our exhausted uplands.
The review made here of our position in this
cotton war is by no means encouraging. And
its conclusions are not wanting in corrobora-
tion of authorities. The Seuator from Maine
[Mr. Morrill] declared, when speaking of
our cotton in the debate of December, 18o7 :
It has monopolized the market at home, and it
nas monopolized the cotton markets of tho world.
Is it so to-day? Clearly no. Is it to be so in the
future? Clearly no. The monopoly is lost forever."
.Mr. SchencK", in the House of Represent-
atives said in December, 1867 :
TTl'ifiTa?*"1 controls the cotton market of the
United States instead of being controlled by it."
The Senator from Rhode Island f Mt.SpragueI
said in the debate of December, 1867 :
' The question before you is not whether you
snail tax an existing interest, but it is whether cot-
ton an existing interest, -Sir, in my judgment
y?u -j'*uetnot ^18 lnterest in your hands. I am
afraid that you have lost it forever."
But that which is iu danger is not necessarily
lost. What America has won from the world
i6 1?nPotrJ'ke'y to sun"ender without a strug-
® iv. ,^enatP1' from Ohio, [Mr. Sherman,1
m the debate already referred to, said :
The .result is, that unless we can encouraee the
production of cotton in this country, instead of dis-
3r?;£^V0Sha!1 los,e the ma&ctofthe world
n d - °.!! 'Jcf iost productive industry that we had
m the bruted States before the ,oar." (
The Senator from Massachusetts, IMr Wit-
son,] m the same debate, said â–
" The permanent inferestf, of tk/> onvntvn An a
that cotton culture should be fostered
of oH1' secure against the competing
othsr countries, and again control
cotton suppjy of the world." control the
me?fure proposed to the Senate is
designed to call our Government, to the rescue
in order to save those "permanent interests of
that ' u i?08t productive industry
that we had m the United States before the
war,-; by opening a retreat to our planting
from its untenable position on our impoverished
uplands t<> a position _ of invincible strength in
the luxuriant delta which, on tho authoutv ot the
chief engineer of the Army, embraces <'seâ„¢n
miuiou acres of the best cotton land in the
world, capable of yielding a bale to the acre."
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United States. Congress. The Congressional Globe: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the Third Session Forty-Second Congress; An Appendix, Embracing the Laws Passed at That Session, book, 1873; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc30903/m1/64/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.