_Cotton._ The geographical limits of the cotton belt had been reached before 1860 and consequently there was no further extension, but the cotton acreage was increased from about 13,000,000 acres to more than 30,000,000 acres during the period. Texas in 1900 had over 7,000,000 acres of land devoted to cotton raising and seven more of the thirteen states in the cotton belt each had an acreage of more than 1,000,000. The chief interior cotton markets in 1898 were Houston, St. Louis, Memphis, Augusta, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Little Rock and Shreveport. The city of Houston, through which passed a large part of the Texas crops, destined for export from Galveston, had the heaviest receipts amounting to 1,800,000 bales. St. Louis and Cincinnati owed their prominence to their position as natural gateways through which cotton passed to Northern markets from Texas and the lower valley of the Mississippi. Among the Southern seaports New Orleans held the lead in cotton receipts until 1899, when Galveston took first place. Together these two cities shipped nine-tenths of the cotton exported by the way of the Gulf of Mexico. On the Atlantic coast Savannah held the lead in cotton receipts. The trade of Charleston declined somewhat after 1880; Norfolk and Wilmington, of relatively small importance before the war, became large markets during this period, the former ranking next to Savannah after 1880. The "overland movement" of cotton by rail to the North, which began in 1855, developed to large proportions after the war. This movement represented the results of the efforts of the railroads to secure a share of the traffic that had formerly belonged entirely to the coasting trade. The "overland" traffic originated in all the cotton states, most of it passing through St. Louis and the gateways on the Ohio and Potomac rivers to North Atlantic States to be sold to Eastern spinners or exported to Europe. In 1899 the all-rail movement of cotton amounted to 1,370,000 bales, as compared to a coastwise movement of 2,019,153 bales. A noteworthy feature of the cotton trade of this period was the increase of cotton consumption in the South. After 1885 there was a rapid expansion of cotton manufacturing in several Southern States, and in 1899 their mills used 1,400,000 bales of cotton, only a third less than the number of bales consumed in Northern mills. The decline of cotton receipts at Charleston was largely due to the growth of cotton manufacturing in South Carolina, whose mills were consuming more than one-half of the annual product of the state at the close of the century.