Yes, the pessimist will say, the change would be delightful, but it is not possible. That very interdependence of which you speak makes the whole world but one market, and renders it impossible for any one country to raise wages while other countries keep theirs low. This alleged impossibility rests, it will be observed, upon the assumption that higher wages conduce to higher selling prices, an assumption which experience shows to be fallacious. And since it is always more convincing, especially, perhaps, to the British mind, to narrate what has happened than to declare what must happen, the purposes of my argument will be best served by a brief account of the English cotton trade. Before entering upon this, let me point out how very remarkable a phenomenon it is that there should exist an English cotton trade at all. We cannot grow the required material: every ounce of raw cotton has to be imported at a price, imported too from a great distance, and owing to its bulky nature, at comparatively a high heavy cost. Originally the possession of coal, iron and a seaboard gave advantages to England: the factory system developed early with us, and we manufactured cotton, as we manufactured other goods, because our energies were turned towards manufacture in general. But the same influences which caused mechanical production to begin here have caused it to arise elsewhere, and the natural development of industry must, one would suppose, eventually carry the manufacture of cotton to regions where cotton can be grown, especially if they happen also to possess the means of motive power. The Southern States of America, where cotton grows, where coal and water power are plentiful, and where population is no longer sparse, would seem to be marked out by nature as the home of the cotton industry. And in fact mills are rapidly rising in that region. Not only so, but the workers in them are employed for much longer hours and paid at a far lower rate per hour than English cotton workers. Readers of the chapter upon child labour, in Part I. of this volume, will be aware that children are working, both by day and by night, in these mills, whereas no child may work full time in any English mill, nor any child or woman at night. Yet these Southern mills, with every advantage of position, with cheap labour, and comparatively cheap land, have not succeeded, and are not succeeding, in winning from the English their immense preponderance in the markets of the world. This undeniable fact is explained in some quarters as being due to our much abused English climate, which is said to provide exactly the degree of temperature and humidity most favourable to the manipulation of cotton yarn. That a very dry atmosphere will not suit some processes of the trade seems to be generally acknowledged, and if England were the only damp country in the world, or even the dampest, we might perhaps regard ourselves as possessing a sort of monopoly advantage.