Great Britain 55,576,108 United States 30,579,000 Germany 10,920,426 Russia 8,950,000 France 7,400,000 India 6,400,000 Austria 4,864,453 Italy 4,580,000 Latin America 3,100,000 Japan 2,250,000 Spain 2,200,000 Belgium 1,468,838 Switzerland 1,398,062 Scattering 2,499,421 ----------- Total Spindles 142,186,308 Such figures can be only approximate. The war has brought growth in the United States and in Japan, but has certainly reduced the numbers of spindles in Germany, Austria, and Russia. It is doubtful, moreover, how well the French industry has been able to maintain itself. But the tabulation is accurate enough to show the relative standing of the various countries. There are, as has been indicated, other standards than the number of spindles. The United States, through the fact that it specializes, generally speaking, on the coarser fabrics, uses about 5,000,000 bales of cotton annually, as compared with Great Britain's 4,000,000. The British product, however, sells for much more. Thus the value of the spindle standard is affirmed. England, then, produces well in excess of one-third of the cotton cloth of the world; the United States considerably more than one-fifth of it, with the other countries trailing far behind, but prospering nevertheless. The Individuality of the Cotton Fiber [Illustration: _The cotton fiber--a highly magnified view, showing the twist_] It is a curious ruling of fate which makes the spinning of cotton fiber possible. There are many other short vegetable fibers, but cotton is the only one which can profitably be spun into thread. Hemp and flax, its chief vegetable competitors, are both long fibered. The individuality of the cotton fiber lies in its shape. Viewed through the microscope, the fiber is seen to be, not a hollow cylinder, but rather a flattened cylinder, shaped in cross-section something like the figure eight. But the chief and valuable characteristic is that the flattened cylinder is not straight, but twisted. It is this twist which gives its peculiar and overwhelming importance to cotton, for without this apparently fortuitous characteristic, the spinning of cotton, if possible at all, would result in a much weaker and less durable thread. The twist makes the threads "kink" together when they are spun, and it is this kink which makes for strength and durability.