1 Cotton has been known to the world as an useful commodity ever since the days of Herodotus, who upwards of two thousand years ago wrote that "Gossypium grew in India which instead of seed produced wool." As rice feeds more of the human race than any other grain, so cotton clothes more of mankind than either wool, flax, hemp, or silk. Both of these articles have grown for many centuries in the East Indies in a country similar to Carolina. Though the same reasoning and analogy, and the same information that led to the introduction of rice might have pointed out the propriety of attempting the culture of cotton in Carolina, yet the latter was not planted to any considerable extent for 100 years after the introduction of the former. It had been declared by Dr. Hewat in his valuable historical account of South-Carolina printed in 1719, "that the climate and soil of the province were favorable to the culture of cotton." The first provincial congress in SouthCarolina held in January 1775, recommended to the inhabitants "to raise cotton," yet very little practical attention was paid to their recommendation. A small quantity only was raised for domestic manufactures. This neglect cannot solely be referred to the confusion of the times, for agriculture had been successfully prosecuted for ten years after the termination of the revolutionary war before the Carolinians began to cultivate it to any considerable extent. In this culture the Georgians took the lead. They began to raise it as an article of export soon after the peace of 1783. Their success recommended it to their neighbors. The whole quantity exported from Carolina in any one year prior to 1795 was inconsiderable, but in that year it amounted to £1,109,653.2 The cultivation of it has been ever since increasing, and on the first year of the present century eight millions of pounds were exported from South-Carolina. The uncertainty of this crop has disgusted a few planters, and brought them back to the less hazardous culture of rice. These two staples have so monopolized the agricultural force of the state, that for several years past other articles of export and even provisions have been greatly neglected. In the great eagerness to get money, the planters have brought themselves

1 Ramsay, History of South Carolina [1809], II, 212–216.

2 Pounds weight is obviously meant.

into a state of dependence on their neighbors for many of the necessaries of life which formerly were raised at home. So much cotton is now made in Carolina and Georgia that, if the whole was manufactured in the United States, it would go far in clothing a great proportion of the inhabitants of the union; for one. laborer can raise as much of this commodity in one season as will afford the raw materials for 1500 yards of common cloth, or a sufficiency for covering 150 persons. That part of it which is now manufactured in Europe, and brought back in an improved state, sometimes pays more, and on a general average nearly as much in duties to the United States, as the planter gets for the raw material. The duty, being in proportion to the value, on a pound weight of fine cotton goods is much more than the cultivator of the commodity gets for the same weight of cotton in its merchantable state. This staple is of immense value to the public, and still more so to individuals. It has trebled the price of land suitable to its growth, and when the crop succeeds and the market is favorable the annual income of those who plant it is double to what it was before the introduction of cotton.

The cotton chiefly cultivated on the sea coast is denominated the black seed or staple cotton, which is of the best quality and admirably adapted to the finest manufactures. The wool is easily separated from the seed by roller-gins which do not injure the staple. A pair of rollers worked by one laborer give about 25 lbs. of clean cotton daily. The cotton universally cultivated in the middle and upper country is called the green seed kind. It is less silky and more wooly, and adheres so tenaciously to the seed that it requires the action of a saw-gin to separate the wool from the seed. This cuts the staple exceedingly; but as the staple of this kind of cotton is not fit for the finer fabrics it is not considered injurious. The quality of these two kinds is very different. The wool of the green seed is considerably the cheapest; but that species is much more productive than the other. An acre of good cotton land will usually produce 150 lb. of clean wool of the long staple kind. An acre of land of equal quality will usually produce 200 lb. of the green seed or short staple kind. Besides these, yellow or nankeen cotton is also cultivated in the upper country

for domestic use. Two ingenious artists, Miller and Whiteney of Connecticut, invented a saw-gin for the separation of the wool from the seed which has facilitated that operation in the highest degree. The legislature of South-Carolina purchased their patent right for 50,000 dollars, and then munificently threw open its use and benefits to all its citizens.

Such have been the profits of the planters of cotton, and so great has been their partiality for raising it to the exclusion of other valuable commodities, that the history of the agriculture of Carolina in its present state comprehends little more than has been already given. . . .

CHAPTER VII

RISE OF INTERNAL COMMERCE

INTRODUCTION

The transition from colonial to national economy was marked by the rapid growth of internal commerce. This internal commerce was a factor of scarcely less importance in our economic development during the period from 1815 to the Civil War than foreign commerce had been in earlier times. It did not, however, represent an entirely new influence in our economic affairs, for it was closely connected with foreign commerce and to a large extent dependent upon it. In fact it was the means by which the economic advantage arising from an increasing foreign demand for our extractive products was diffused over the entire country and made to stimulate nearly all of its industries. To make clear the part which internal commerce played in our economic history during this period it will be necessary to trace briefly its rise and point out the way it effected the different sections of the country.

It is common to attribute the rapid growth of internal commerce to the settlement of the West. It was of course connected with that event, but this in itself is not a sufficient explanation. People had been moving west in great numbers for more than a generation before the volume of internal trade became large enough to produce any marked effect upon economic affairs. The small volume of this trade is most strikingly shown by the complete absence of any considerable growth of the towns and cities which depended upon it. The seaboard cities of the North grew rapidly before 1815, but that growth was entirely due to their foreign commerce and the carrying-trade. In the interior little growth of towns took place. In 1795 the English traveler Weld found Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the largest town in the country not on tide water. It was in fact nothing more than a large village. As late as 1810, after Louisiana had been annexed and at least a million and a half of people had settled west of the mountains, there was only one city of any importance in the whole region. New Orleans which handled most of its exports and a large part of its imports, had a population of 24,562; Pittsburg had 4768; Lexington, Kentucky, 4326; and Cincinnati 2540. This was all the town life which the trade of the entire West was able to support. In 1900, the three agricultural states of Nebraska and the two Dakotas, with but little larger population, had one city of 100,000, another of 40,000, a third of 26,000, and thirty-two towns ranging from 2500 to 10,000. This comparison illustrates better than anything else the early commercial backwardness of the West.

The reason for this small development of internal commerce is not far to seek. During all this time the pioneers, whether in the back country of the colonies, in Kentucky, Tennessee, and the northwest, or in western New York and northern New England, were without any valuable products which could be exchanged for commodities to satisfy their wants. Furs would stand the expense of land carriage to the seaboard, a few cattle could be driven there, and a little grain and provisions floated down the rivers, but these were only sufficient to purchase a small amount of the most pressing necessities. Each little community was compelled to live to itself, producing by its own labor almost everything it consumed. Millions of settlers under such conditions could give rise to no swelling volume of commerce. The western people had to buy a few things in order to support civilized life, and these were supplied chiefly by the merchants of Philadelphia and Baltimore. But the interest which the seaboard cities felt in western trade before 1815 was aroused more by the prospects of future development than by its actual importance.

The influence which rapidly changed all this was the introduction of cotton culture into the South and its extension after 1815 over the southwest. About the same time, also, there was a considerable extension of sugar culture in Louisiana, and tobacco culture in Kentucky and Tennessee. Here was a group of commodities almost as much in demand everywhere as the precious metals themselves, and having large value in small bulk so that they were able to bear the expense of land transportation for long distances over the poor roads of new settlements. The soil and climate of a vast region were peculiarly suited to the production of cotton, the demand for which was increasing at a prodigious rate. This region was covered by a network of navigable streams that could easily and cheaply float this valuable product to tide water. The timely application of steam power to navigation perfected a natural transportation system entirely adequate for a community devoted to producing a few such commodities and exchanging them with the outside world.

In this combination of favoring circumstances the southern half of the country possessed an economic prize beside which the more dramatic discovery of gold in California a generation later sinks into comparative insignificance. It provided the inhabitants of a large part of this section with the means of satisfying their wants by trade similar to that which the later gold discoveries furnished to a comparatively small number of people. It furnished to the settlers in the southwest both the staples they could easily produce and a market for those staples. Thus for the first time did the pioneer of the West possess the necessary conditions for rapid progress in the accumulation of wealth.

The effect of these economic advantages was not confined to the South. Very soon they were felt by every other section of the country. The great profit to be secured in the cultivation of cotton and sugar caused the people of South Carolina and the Gulf States to devote themselves chiefly to these industries and to neglect the other branches of agriculture. The gradual absorption of these industries by planters with slave labor increased this tendency, as