While these principal articles of raw produce have fallen to one-third of the prices of 1815, iron, copper, tin, and lead, the commodities that she supplies to the world, have not fallen more than twenty-five per cent. It is more difficult to exhibit the changes of woven goods, but that the planters are constantly giving more cotton for less cloth will be seen on an examination of the following facts in relation to a recent large-crop year, as compared with the course of things but a dozen years before. From 1830 to 1835, the price of cotton here was about eleven cents, which we may suppose to be about what it would yield in England, free of freight and charges. In those years our average export was about 320,000,000, yielding about $35,000,000, and the average price of cotton cloth, per piece of 24 yards, weighing 5 lbs. 12 oz., was 7s. 10d., ($1.88,) and that of iron £6 10s. ($31.20.) Our exports would therefore have produced, delivered in Liverpool, 18,500,000 pieces of cloth, or about 1,100,000 tons of iron. In 1845 and 1846, the _home consumption_ of cotton by the people of England was almost the same quantity, say 311,000,000 pounds, and the average price here was 6-1/2 cents, making the product $20,000,000. The price of cloth then was 6s. 6-3/4 d., ($1.57 1/2,) and that of iron about £10, ($48;) and the result was, that the planters could have, for nearly the same quantity of cotton, about 12,500,000 pieces of cloth, or about 420,000 tons of iron, also delivered in Liverpool. Dividing the return between the two commodities, it stands thus:-- Average from: 1830 to 1835. 1845-6. Loss. ------------- ------------- ------- ----- Cloth, pieces.... 9,250,000 ... 6,250,000 ... 3,000,000 And iron, tons... 550,000 ... 210,000 ... 340,000 The labour required for converting cotton into cloth had been greatly diminished, and yet the proportion, retained by the manufacturers had greatly increased, as will now be shown:-- Weight of Cotton Retained Weight of given to the by the Cotton used. planters. manufacturers. ------------ ---------------- -------------- 1830 to 1835... 320,000,000... 110,000,000... 210,000,000 1845 and 1846.. 311,000,000... 74,000,000.... 237,000,000 In the first period, the planter would have had 34 per cent. of his cotton returned to him in the form of cloth, but in the second only 24 per cent. The grist miller gives the farmer from year to year a larger proportion of the product of his grain, and thus the latter has all the profit of every improvement. The cotton miller gives the planter from year to year a smaller proportion of the cloth produced. The one miller comes daily nearer to the producer. The other goes daily farther from him, for with the increased product the surface over which it is raised is increased.