Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 423, January 1851Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 423, January 1851
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
forth in our public journals as a doctrine of the highest value.
There is, however, no such thing as a universal code of political
economy. The Americans listened and laughed, and ran up their factories
faster than ever, and ransacked the bowels of the earth for their
inestimable strata of minerals, believing with a proper faith that
they would not have been placed there unless it was intended that man
should convert them to his use. Our cotton manufacturers, being thus
situated, had some reason to despond. The nation that gave them their
raw material, and that was also their best customer for fabrics,
seemed on the very point of deserting them in both ways. True, a much
greater quantity of cotton than was ever yet grown might be raised in
America, but then the demand, though great in itself, has limits; and
an unusually large crop has the effect of extinguishing profit to the
grower. This will be better understood by the American estimate of the
value of crops:--
Crop. Amount of Product, lbs. Estimated Value, dols.
1844 812,000,000 65,772,000
1845 958,000,000 56,000,000
1847 711,000,000 72,000,000
1848 1,100,000,000 60,000,000
The estimate for the latter year, says Mr Carey, was that made at New
Orleans before the occurrence of the frosts and freshets, which, we
presume, raised the price of cotton wool. We see, however, from this,
that the small yield of 1847 was infinitely more profitable to the
grower than the large yield of 1845, and this will explain the reason
why the culture of cotton cannot be indefinitely extended. It therefore
became necessary, at all hazards, if cotton-spinning in Britain was to
be maintained in its former palmy state, that some further concession
should be made to America, to bribe her, since she could not be forced
to abstain from the encouragement of her own manufactures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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