Considered without reference to any particular country, its economic importance is far beyond numerical expression; for while the total crop of the world is approximately ascertainable, the effect of cotton upon the commercial and social relations of mankind is too far-reaching for estimation. Of the four great staples that provide man with clothing--cotton, silk, wool, and flax--cotton, by reason of its cheapness and its many excellencies, is rapidly superseding its several rivals. Sixty years ago only about two million five hundred thousand bales of cotton, or less than the present production of Texas, were annually converted into clothing; the spindles of the world now use over thirteen million bales per annum. Yet less than half the people of the world are supplied with cotton goods made by modern machinery, and it has been estimated that it would require annually a crop of forty-two million bales of five hundred pounds each to raise the world's standard of consumption to that of the principal nations. Cotton stands preëminent among farm crops in the ease and cheapness of its production, as compared with the variety and value of its products. No crop makes so slight a drain upon the fertility of the soil, and for none has modern enterprise found so many uses for its several parts. The cotton plant yields, in fact, a double crop--a most beautiful fibre and a seed yielding both oil and feed, which, although neglected for a long time, is now esteemed worth one-sixth as much as the fibre. In addition to this, the stems can be made to yield a fibre which waits only for a machine to work it, and the roots yield a drug. It is entirely possible, therefore, that cotton may ultimately be grown as much for these parts as for the lint. The history of cotton production in the United States differs from that of almost every other agricultural product in several important particulars. For nearly three-quarters of a century slave labor was almost exclusively employed in this branch of agricultural industry, and an immense majority of the colored people of to-day look to it for their chief support. Cotton was also the great pioneer crop in the new Southwestern States. Not only has the westward movement of the industry been more rapid than that of any other crop, but the centre of production has always been farther in advance of the centre of population. As long ago as 1839 Mississippi was producing almost one-fourth of the entire crop of the country. Recent years have witnessed an enormous development in the regions to the west, which would have carried the centre of production across the Mississippi River if the cultivation of cotton, unlike that of wheat and corn and other products, had not taken a new lease of life in the older States along the Atlantic seaboard, where the use of manures has both extended the area and increased the production.