By Richmond Pearson Hobson. The price of cotton, like other prices, is settled by the relation of supply and demand. In face of the sudden depression, due to the increased volume of supply in the large crop, we are liable to overlook and underestimate the importance of the factors influencing the demand. Sojourning about the world has convinced me that the factors of demand are more pliable and more accessible than those of supply. In truth, a single factor reducing demand, the war in the Orient, is responsible for depression amounting to from 7 to 8 cents a pound, while the total depression due to the big crop is scarcely more than 3 cents a pound. Furthermore, the question of adjusting the supply for the next year, cannot be intelligently settled until after investigation of the probable demand. Therefore, I invite your attention for a few minutes to the question of demand, and especially to the factor of war, since we are now in the presence of the great struggle in the Orient. The old sources of demand, Europe and America, have gone on slowly increasing with the increase of population, and the rise of the standard of comfort, though a check was sustained by the outbreak of the Boer War, which saw a falling off of over one million bales in the consumption of the united commodities. This slow increase in demand has been more than balanced by the steady increase in supply, coming chiefly from the larger acreage and larger increase of commercial fertilizers in the South. Consequently, for several decades the price of cotton has had a steady trend downward. It was only when new demands came from new markets that the price started upward. The chief of the new markets are those of the Orient. Japan has made great strides in the cotton mill industry, until at the outbreak of the present war, she was consuming over $50,000,000 worth of cotton annually. But more important even than Japan, has been the new market of China, which, when the present war came, amounted to $90,000,000 annually, chiefly coarse cotton goods, of which a large part has been furnished by Southern mills. These two markets have come to consume more cotton than is produced by Alabama and Mississippi combined. It is not surprising, therefore, that in spite of the steadily increasing production, the price has steadily risen. The rise has been especially marked since the Boxer disturbances that were followed by a new impulsion in the opening up of China. As great as this new market has become, it is only in its infancy.