But when we have discussed the questions involved in the planting and culture of the cotton crop, as serious as they are, we have had to do with the least important phase of our subject. The crop of 7,000,000 bales, when ready for the market, is worth in round numbers $300,000,000. The same crop when manufactured is worth over $900,000,000. Will the South be content to see the whole of this added value realized by outsiders? If not, how much of the work necessary to create this value will she do within her own borders? She has abundant water-powers, that are never locked a day by ice or lowered by drought, that may be had for a mere song; cheap labor, cheap lands, an unequaled climate, cheap fuel, and the conditions of cheap living. Can these be utilized to any general extent? It may be premised that there are questions of the utmost importance to the South outside of the manufacture of the lint, which is usually held to cover the whole question of cotton manufacture. There is no particle of the cotton plant that may not be handled to advantage. Mr. Edward Atkinson is authority for the statement that if a plant similar to cotton, but having no lint, could be grown in the North, it would be one of the most profitable of crops. And yet it is true that up to a late date the seed of the cotton has been wholly wasted, and even now the stalk is thrown away as useless. A crop of 7,000,000 bales will yield 3,500,000 tons of cotton seed. Every ounce of this seed is valuable, and in the past few years it has been so handled as to add very heavily to the value of the crop. The first value of the seed is as a fertilizer. It has been discovered of late that the seed that had been formerly allowed to accumulate about the gin-houses in vast piles and rot as waste material, when put upon the fields would add twenty-five to thirty-three per cent. to the crop, and was equal to many of the fertilizers that sell in the market for $25 per ton. In 1869 a mill was established in New Orleans for the purpose of pressing the oil from the cotton seed, and manufacturing the bulk into stock food. Its success was so pronounced that there are now fifty-nine seed-oil mills in the South, costing over $6,000,000, and working up $5,500,000 worth of seed annually. The product of the seed used sells for $9,600,000, so that the mills create a value of $4,500,000 annually. They used only one-seventh of the seed produced in the South. A ton of seed which can be worked for $5.50 a ton, and cost originally $8 to $10, making an average cost when worked of $15, is estimated to produce thirty-five gallons of oil worth $11.50, seed-cake worth $5.50, and lint worth $1.50—a total of $18.50, or profit of $3.50, per ton. The oil is of excellent quality, and is used in the making of soaps, stearine, white oils, and when highly refined is a table oil of such flavor and appearance as will deceive the best judges. A quality has been lately discovered in it that makes it valuable as a dye-stuff.