But when the Manchester spinners
took up the manufacture of cotton, the fight was won. The
Manchester spinners, however, used linen for their warp threads,
for without machinery they could not spin threads sufficiently
strong from the short-fibered Indian cotton.
In the New World the Spanish explorers found cotton and cotton
fabrics in use everywhere. Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro, Magellan,
and others speak of the various uses to which the fiber was put,
and admired the striped awnings and the colored mantles made by
the natives. It seems probable that cotton was in use in the New
World quite as early as in India.
The first English settlers in America found little or no cotton
among the natives. But they soon began to import the fiber from
the West Indies, whence came also the plant itself into the
congenial soil and climate of the Southern colonies. During the
colonial period, however, cotton never became the leading crop,
hardly an important crop. Cotton could be grown profitably only
where there was an abundant supply of exceedingly cheap labor,
and labor in America, white or black, was never and could never
be as cheap as in India. American slaves could be much more
profitably employed in the cultivation of rice and indigo.
Three varieties of the cotton plant were grown in the South.
Pages:
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50