The Future of the Cotton Industry
I
THE improvement in the design and quality of cotton fabrics during recent years has enabled these fabrics to encroach relatively more and more on the markets for other textiles, as well as to hold their own in the demand for articles of everyday use. Fine cotton cloth competes with some classes of silk goods. For other purposes, — blankets, and summer clothing for men, for instance, — cotton fabrics compete with woolens and worsteds. For still other purposes, such as table-coverings, cotton fabrics have largely supplanted linen. In the manufacture of hosiery and underwear, the use of cotton has increased far more rapidly, over a period of years, than the use of wool and silk. Although the demand for fabrics made from other fibres continues to expand, there is no apparent reason for believing that this tendency of cotton goods to invade the fields of other textiles is at an end.
The competition of cotton with other fibres manifests itself in still another direction. The woolen and worsted mills and the silk mills are heavy consumers of cotton yarn, for admixture with yarns made from more costly fibres. Cotton also competes, in the shoe industry, with leather for linings, and in some seasons shoes with tops made entirely of cotton fabrics are in popular demand.
For cotton fabrics, furthermore, the market is expanding, not only in wearing apparel and for household uses, but also for industrial purposes. Cotton fabrics are used, for example, in the manufacture of belting for factories. Typewriter-ribbons constitute a small but not a negligible market. In bookbinding, cotton cloth is used. Bags for sugar, salt, flour, and numerous other products are made of cotton.
These illustrations suggest a few of the varied and ever-increasing uses to which cotton fabrics are put in industry. These markets are by no means saturated.
A new market for yarns and fabrics has grown rapidly during the last ten years with the expansion of the automobile and tire industries. Automobile tops are made of cotton, and occasionally cotton fabrics are utilized for other purposes in the manufacture of automobiles. The automobile-tire manufacturers recently have demanded such great quantities of fine cotton yarn and fabrics, as materials for tires, that this has been one of the primary causes of the high prices of cotton stockings and other cotton goods. The quantity of yarn or fabric in each small-size tire is stated to be ordinarily about 2.7 pounds; in each large-size tire, about 5.6 pounds; and in a pneumatic tire for trucks, about 14 pounds. During the current year, it is estimated, from one tenth to one fifth of the world’s entire production of long-staple, high-grade cotton will be consumed in the manufacture of automobile tires in the United States. Under existing conditions, the widespread demand for these tires tends to hold up the price of cotton dresses. As the tire-manufacturing industry increases its output, particularly in heavy pneumatic tires for motor-trucks, it will afford an even greater market for cotton yarns and fabrics.
The industrial demand, such as that to which reference has just been made, arises primarily in the countries that have reached the stage where industries are carried on in large factories, and where package goods and automobiles are articles of common use. The foreign markets of the Orient and Africa, which at the present time absorb vast quantities of cotton cloth each year for the scanty clothing of their people, are still far below America and Western Europe in per-capita consumption.
British India is the largest import market for cotton cloth in the world; approximately 29 per cent of the world’s exports of cotton cloth, in quantity, is taken by India each year. These imports into India amount to more than one third of the total exports of cotton cloth from England; they are nearly five times as great as the total quantity of cotton cloth annually exported from the United States under normal conditions. Before the war the province of Bengal alone imported as much cotton cloth as was imported by all the countries of South America taken together. In passing, it may be noted that over 90 per cent of the cotton cloth imported into India is from England, and about one half of one per cent from the United States.
The demand for cotton goods has been increasing steadily in India, where the climate makes cotton dhooties and saris the chief wearing apparel. Nevertheless, several million people in India, even to-day, are existing precariously upon such a narrow margin of income that a poor monsoon, resulting in crop failure, leaves them with no buying power to purchase clothing, even if starvation is averted. The primitive agricultural and industrial methods still prevalent in many parts of India yield the most meagre sort of a livelihood. As these methods are modernized in the future, the buying power of the inhabitants obviously will be increased. Because of the inherent desire of these people, like that of other human beings, for more clothing in new styles, the cotton-cloth market doubtless will be one of the first to feel the effects of the new demand.
China ranks second only to India in the quantity of cotton cloth annually imported, chiefly from England and Japan. As in India, the primitive industrial methods and the lack of transportation facilities keep the buying power of large masses of people in China at a point where they barely can afford a few essential garments, much less indulge in the luxury of a wardrobe. For example, more than one half of the cotton cloth used in China, it is estimated, is woven on hand-looms in the peasants’ homes. Substantial quantities of cotton yarn even are spun by hand. The contrast between these methods and the methods universally employed in England and the United States indicates one of the chief reasons for the gap in incomes and in standards of living. On a hand-loom in the Orient about four yards of cloth are woven by one weaver in a day. On one power-loom, such as is used in the United States, the daily output of cloth is fifty yards; and each weaver in an American cotton-mill tends from six to thirty power-looms. This contrast is typical of other industries as well as cotton-weaving.
When political stability is achieved, and industry is stimulated on a more productive scale, in China, by the extension of facilities for transportation by railroad and motor-truck, the demand for cotton goods surely will be accelerated. Industrial prosperity will increase substantially the quantity of cotton cloth purchased by the Chinese. It does not seem to require an excessive degree of optimism to believe that such transformations may take place in China within a generation.
In Africa another potential market for cotton cloth awaits industrial development. The Belgian Congo, for instance, has natural resources in minerals, forests, and agriculture, which sooner or later will be developed. The world needs the materials stored there by nature. Railroad projects already planned will provide an initial stimulus to industry in that region. If the primitive savages acquire purchasing power as a result of the investment of foreign capital in transportation systems and in industrial enterprises in that country, one of the first articles for which they will spend their wealth, judging from past experience, will be cotton clothing. In such communities a bright-colored cotton garment becomes a badge of distinction. Here is practically a virgin market, which will open as fast as civilization progresses.
Estimates were prepared last year by the Research Committee of the National Council of Cotton Manufacturers of the per-capita consumption of cotton cloth in each country in the world. These figures, of course, were only rough approximations, but they suggest the possibilities of the market for cotton goods in foreign countries. The estimates were for the pre-war years 1910 to 1913 inclusive. In the United States, owing primarily to the quantities used for industrial purposes, the estimated annual consumption of cotton cloth was nineteen pounds per capita; in South America, two to eight pounds; in northern and western Europe, six to eight pounds; in Russia and southeastern Europe, three to six pounds; in Asia, two to three pounds; and in Africa from less than one pound to two and one half pounds. In the Belgian Congo and other territory in central Africa the consumption was the lowest — nine tenths of a pound per capita. These markets await only means of increasing their purchasing power to make a latent demand effective.
II
From this brief summary, it appears that the normal increase in population, the rising standards of living, the tendency to substitute cotton, to some degree, for other textiles, the utilization of cotton fabrics for industrial purposes, and the probable opening of undeveloped foreign countries to industry and commerce — all these influences, taken together, indicate a heavy demand for cotton fabrics in the future. Taking a long look ahead, it is not difficult to imagine that the world-demand for cotton goods may be doubled during the next generation, provided adequate supplies of the merchandise are available at reasonable prices.
The problem of providing a supply of cotton goods to meet this demand, however, is not easily solved. The solution involves four factors of primary significance: equipment, labor, management, and raw material.
The facilities for manufacturing cotton-mill machinery are limited. The quantity of machinery manufactured cannot be increased within a short time, as has been proved during the last twelve months, when the machinery manufacturers operating at full capacity have booked orders two years ahead, and would have received even more orders if their plants could have turned out machinery for immediate delivery. Despite these limitations, however, it is reasonable to anticipate that, in the long run, an adequate supply of mill machinery can be provided for whatever demand may develop. Over a period of years there appears to be no insuperable, or even particularly serious, obstacle to be overcome in securing the production of as much textile machinery as can be used.
The labor-problem in the mills is one of real concern, especially in the United States, where immigration has shown such a marked decline and where shorter hours have tended, temporarily, at least, to reduce output. While new operatives for much of the work in a cotton mill can be trained within a short period, it may be possible to obtain the requisite supply only by attracting workers to the cotton mills from less essential occupations.
Opportunities exist, to be sure, for more economical use of labor in cotton mills. The automatic loom, for example, is a labor-saving machine that is by no means universally in use in cotton mills. There are numerous American mills that have not installed automatic looms, usually because of reluctance to scrap plain looms that are still serviceable. One weaver can tend twenty or more automatic looms, whereas in the United States one weaver on plain looms ordinarily tends from six to ten machines. In other countries the automatic loom has been adopted less extensively than in American mills. In Europe one weaver generally tends two to four plain looms. In Japan, India, and China the number of power-looms to a weaver is one or two, and at least three quarters of a million hand-looms are employed in the homes of the workers in weaving cotton cloth. Although the opportunities for economy in labor may be less in other departments of the industry than in the weaving mills in which automatic looms have not been installed, nevertheless, new inventions, improvements in machinery, and means of economizing in labor through better management-methods, have been introduced constantly during the last century, and it is idle to assume that perfection has been attained. By taking advantage of these opportunities, it may be possible to meet the labor requirements of the future.
Managers for cotton mills cannot be provided as easily as the supply of machinery and labor probably can be obtained. Men with managerial ability, however, constantly are coming up through the ranks; the mills thus provide training-schools of a sort. In the United States and in several European countries, textile schools afford a flourishing supply of men who, with experience, may become overseers, or department foremen and managers. The development of education in business administration, furthermore, will produce some apprentices who eventually will acquire the experience to qualify as managers of cotton-manufacturing enterprises. If adequate interest and foresight are manifested by the executives now in charge, it is fair to expect that the necessary recruits for managerial positions will be available for whatever expansion may take place.
The supply of raw material is the real stumbling-block for cotton manufacturers in the years to come. Just where or how an adequate quantity of raw cotton for many new spindles is to be secured is not evident at the present time. The conditions affecting the future production of raw cotton, furthermore, are as portentous for American manufacturers as for those in other countries.
The United States, during recent years, has furnished slightly more than sixty per cent of the world’s supply of raw cotton. Upland cotton, with fibres varying from three fourths of an inch to one and one eighth inches in length, constitutes the bulk of the American crop. This is the mainstay of the cotton industry of the world at the present time, as it has been for a century. In the United States the highest quality of cotton also is produced. This is Sea Island cotton, with fibres varying from one and one half to more than two inches in length. From these long fibres the finest yarn can be spun; for the spinning process in essentials is a twisting together of the fibres with only sufficient overlap to give strength to the thread. The Sea Island crop, though high in value, is small in quantity, and the output is not increasing. Other kinds of long-staple cotton, intermediate between Upland cotton and Sea Island cotton, are produced in the United States in substantial quantities; but the supply is far from adequate. There are grounds for grave apprehension, moreover, regarding the prospects of a permanent increase in the production of Upland cotton in this country.
The obstacles to an increase in the production of cotton of all sorts in the United States are the boll-weevil, lack of labor, and the competition of other agricultural crops.
Despite the efforts of the Federal government, through the Department of Agriculture, and of various other agencies seeking to check the ravages of the boll-weevil, the pest continues to spread. It ruins millions of pounds of cotton each year. In addition to this direct loss caused by the boll-weevil, its depredations discourage farmers from planting cotton in the districts where it is most active. Starting on a small scale in Texas, near the Mexican border, in 1892, the boll-weevil has migrated steadily eastward and northward until it has infested the entire cotton belt, with the exception of portions of Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina. These districts are not likely to remain immune. Unless some means be discovered for getting rid of the bollweevil, it will tend directly and indirectly to lessen the quantity of raw cotton that otherwise would be grown each year in the United States.
The supply of labor available for the cotton-fields in this country does not appear to be sufficient for the future. For several years there has been a shortage in the supply of agricultural labor in the South as well as in other districts. The high wages and other attractions of industrial centres have drawn workers away from the rural districts. In the South, furthermore, the labor-shortage seems to be intensified by the racial problem and by the difficulty of stimulating regularity in industry among the negroes.
The cotton crop is one that requires a highly unbalanced supply of labor. Labor-saving machinery has been applied far less extensively in picking cotton than in harvesting the other staple crops. Two to three times as much labor is required, for example, to grow and pick an acre of cotton as to cultivate and harvest an acre of corn. The chief difference comes during the picking season. In order to keep the fibre free from leaves and dirt, and to make sure that all the ripe cotton on the plant is picked without injuring the immature bolls, cotton is picked mainly by hand. For three and one half months each season the cotton farmer needs a much greater supply of labor than during the remainder of the year. This seasonal peak is not easily met. A universally successful machine, with practically human intelligence, for picking cotton, would be a godsend to the South and to the cotton-manufacturing industry of the world.
Owing to the prevalence of the bollweevil, the labor-shortage, and market conditions, cotton must compete with other crops for the favor of the Southern farmers. From the standpoint of these farmers, a diversification of crops doubtless will prove beneficial. It is possible, nevertheless, that experience in growing crops other than cotton may wean the farmers away from it and thus tend to lessen the quantity grown in the future.
The other cotton-growing countries of the world are Egypt, India, Turkestan, Persia, China, and small districts in South America and Africa.
Egyptian cotton is of high quality and long fibre. For spinning purposes, it ranks above American Upland cotton and second only to Sea Island. Because of its peculiar suitability for certain purposes, substantial quantities of Egyptian cotton are imported each year into the United States. The yarn spun from it is used in the manufacture of fine cloth, hosiery, and automobile tires.
Cotton is grown in Egypt, in the Nile Valley, by means of irrigation. The cotton-growing area in that region may possibly be extended by reclamation. The limitations imposed by physical conditions, however, appear to preclude an increase of more than one hundred per cent in the Egyptian cotton crop at any time in the future. That would amount to an addition of only six per cent to the world’s total crop. Such an increase in the Egyptian crop would be heartily welcomed as a relief to fine-yarn spinners; but the rank and file of the cotton trade cannot rely upon Egypt for alleviation of their raw-material troubles.
The Indian crop ordinarily is about one fourth as large as the American, and from two to three times as large as the Egyptian. The cotton grown in India is short in fibre and of low grade. It ranks below American Upland cotton, and can be used only for the manufacture of coarse goods. The low quality of Indian cotton is due to poor selection of seed, primitive methods of cultivation, and poor methods of picking and handling. The degree to which the Indian crop can be increased in volume and improved in quality depends primarily upon the possibility of overcoming the traditions and the inertia of the native growers.
In China cotton is grown; but no one knows how much, for many pounds are spun in the homes each year by antiquated hand-methods. This cotton has short fibre but is of better quality than Indian cotton. It is possible that the spread of agricultural education and the development of transportation facilities in China may result in an increased production of raw cotton, as well as in a greater demand for cloth.
The cotton grown in Turkestan and Persia is of low quality. Heretofore it has been used mainly by the Russian mills. Because of the influence of tradition on agricultural methods and the handicaps of social and political conditions, progress in cotton cultivation in these countries probably will be slow. During the last year optimistic opinions have been expressed in England regarding the possibilities of extensive cotton cultivation in Mesopotamia, but no tangible results have yet been shown.
Experiments in cotton-growing in the Sudan and in parts of eastern and western Africa indicate that soil and climatic conditions there are suited to the crop. Transportation facilities are lacking, however, and the labor that is available is of the lowest order. The British Cotton-Growing Association, financed chiefly by English spinners, has been engaged actively in this experimental work for two decades, in an effort to secure relief from complete dependence on the American crop. Eventually, the efforts of this association, together with the industrial development that seems likely to take place in Africa, may provide an abundant supply of cotton from these undeveloped sources. The demand for cloth from this quarter, however, may develop more rapidly than the quantity of cotton grown there can be increased.
While means may be found, possibly, for producing substantially larger crops of cotton in the United States, it seems probable that sooner or later raw-cotton production will expand faster in other countries than in our own Southern states. This would not be an undesirable event. Except for the rather superficial gratification that comes from mere bigness, there is little gain to the people of the United States in having this country produce sixty per cent of the world’s supply of raw cotton, if other crops are equally profitable to the farmers. Whatever the size of the crop, this country’s position in the raw-cotton trade is not in any way monopolistic; the growing and marketing of cotton are thoroughly competitive, and doubtless they will remain competitive. Instead of gaining an advantage from our preponderant share in the production of raw cotton, both the American farmers and the American manufacturers tend to suffer therefrom. The trade is at the mercy of weather conditions that have similar effects, good or bad, throughout the entire growing district each season. If cotton-growing could be heavily, but not too suddenly, increased in other parts of the world, where the weather conditions would be likely to differ each season from those in this country, the result would be greater stability in prices; there would be less likelihood of a glut or a famine in the world’s markets in any one year. With broader producing markets, fluctuations in prices would tend to be less severe, and the degree of certainty as to prices is nearly as important to the farmer and to the manufacturer as the absolute amount per pound to be received or paid.
III
Assuming that an adequate supply of raw material may be provided from some source by the action of economic forces, there remains one further question to be considered regarding the future of the cotton industry. What peculiar conditions affect the outlook for the expansion of the industry in each of the leading cotton-manufacturing countries?
Since the middle of the eighteenth century, when Arkwright, Crompton, and Watt, by their inventions, founded the factory system and transformed calico from an Oriental luxury to an article of common, plebeian use, England has been predominant in the world’s trade in cotton goods. At the present time about 39 per cent of the world’s cotton-spindles are located in Lancashire, in England, and four fifths of the cloth manufactured in Lancashire is, ordinarily, exported. The Lancashire spinners and manufacturers have the advantage of a humid climate, free from sudden changes in temperature, local supplies of fuel, good shipping facilities, plant-specialization, and, above all, a labor force that through experience in the cotton mills for several generations has become highly skilled. The English merchants, moreover, know how to cater to the demand for cotton cloth in every corner of the world’s markets.
The English cotton mills have enjoyed for a century and a half the foremost prestige. This prestige has been endangered during the last year, however, not by external causes, but by the developments within the English cotton industry itself. As a result of the inflation of values arising from credit and currency conditions in England, the nominal worth of the cotton mills rose far above their original cost. Financial promoters grasped the opportunity to enter the industry. Mills were purchased at what, in the long run, are likely to prove exorbitant prices. Amalgamations of mills have been formed that we should call ‘trusts,’ with heavy capitalization.
There has been ample experience in the past to indicate that large combinations in the cotton industry, in England or in the United States, have not been successful, either financially or from the operating standpoint. The gains from the larger scale of operation are not sufficient to overcome the handicap of the more extensive system of management required, or to offset the loss that results from the unwieldiness of thelarge mass.
In the case of the recent combinations in England, one of the valuable assets of the industry may have been sacrificed, in part, at least. Heretofore the typical English cotton mill has been efficiently and economically managed. The manager of a mill usually has been an expert. With the manageable size of the unit under his direction, and with the high degree of specialization of his plant, he could give intimate personal attention to all the operations, and also take care of the sale of the product. Overhead expense for skilled management was at a minimum. Many of these managers were part owners in the mills of which they were in charge. With the sale of the properties, these managers have tended to be supplanted; and, at all events, the new system of management under the combinations is bound to be less flexible.
In addition to the probable impairment of the effectiveness of the management, the inflated capitalization of the new combinations is likely to prove to be a handicap to the English industry in the future, when prices come back to normal. The usual attempt to pay dividends on an excessive capitalization is likely to work against the proper maintenance and improvement of the plantequipment. If financial instability results, it may deter other investors and entrepreneurs from entering the industry in England. Finally, the excessive capitalization of the combinations, in anticipation of inflated profits, already has intensified unrest among the workers in the mills. The industry is thoroughly unionized. For fifty years it has been a conspicuous example of success in collective bargaining. So long as the new owners of the mills attempt to earn dividends on an inflated capitalization, so long will the employees demand higher wages, or resist reductions in the wartime scale.
In brief, these speculative combinations threaten to impair the morale of the English cotton industry and to retard its future growth.
The countries on the Continent of Europe before the war had in the aggregate about two thirds as many cotton spindles as England. The industry there had been expanding gradually. The continental mills were equipped largely with machinery manufactured in England. In several instances, as in some of the Russian and Polish mills, managers also had been imported from England.
The cotton-manufacturing industry on the Continent suffered severely during the war. Many of the French cotton mills were in the invaded regions. Lille, for example, was the centre of the fine-cotton-spinning industry in France. The machinery in these mills that was removed or destroyed has now been largely replaced, and with few exceptions the French cotton mills are again in operation. The annexation of Alsace, furthermore, has added twentyfive per cent to the cotton-manufacturing capacity of France. The French mills thus are in a position to supply the domestic needs of that country for cotton cloth and to maintain the trade with the colonies and protectorates; and probably they will have some surplus for export to other countries. As soon as France has recovered sufficiently from the effects of the war, new cotton mills doubtless will be built; but it appears probable that the rate of increase in the production of cotton cloth will at best be gradual. The Belgian, Italian, and Czecho-Slovakian cotton mills are in much the same condition as those in France.
In Germany, the cotton mills had only about one twelfth their normal supplies of raw cotton for three years before the Armistice was signed. Some of the machinery in these mills was used for manufacturing paper fabrics, and the plant equipment generally deteriorated. Owing to lack of supplies of raw cotton and fuel, the German mills as yet have been able to resume operations to less than one half their normal capacity. The transfer of Alsace to France has reduced the German spindlage by sixteen per cent. This loss more than offsets the total quantity of cotton cloth annually exported from Germany before the war. Except in so far as the German manufacturers are forced to export yarn or cloth in order to purchase raw materials or to meet national reparation liabilities, there will be no surplus available for other markets for many years.
In Poland and Russia, even if normal industrial life is again restored, the effects of the war and of Bolshevism obviously will long retard the establishment of new manufacturing plants.
While it certainly is to be hoped that the cotton mills of Continental Europe soon will enjoy full prosperity, in order to provide for the needs of the people, there is no apparent reason for expecting that they will be able to supply a substantially larger share of the world’s requirements in the future than they supplied before the war.
In the past the Continental mills produced chiefly for domestic consumption and for colonial markets, such as the French enjoyed in Algeria, Madagascar, and Indo-China, and the Dutch in Java. With a few exceptions, the cotton cloth shipped to neutral markets by the Continental manufacturers consisted of specialties of fancy designs produced in small lots.
In the Orient, cotton-manufacturing is one of the industries that already has begun to experience the industrial revolution. In India and Japan, practically all the cotton-spinning is carried on in factories. In China, factory-spinning predominates. The quantity of cloth woven on power-looms in Asia, in the aggregate, probably exceeds the quantity woven on domestic hand-looms.
The number of cotton spindles in India, Japan, and China at the present time is about 11,500,000, or approximately one third of the number in the United States. The increase in the number of spindles in these Asiatic countries during the last twenty years has been 4,600,000. In the United States, during the same period, 16,000,000 new cotton spindles were put into operation. The Japanese have gained one advantage during these years, however, so far as quantity of output is concerned, by keeping their plants continuously in operation, night and day; this practice generally has been discontinued in other countries, either voluntarily or by legislation.
The bulk of the cotton goods manufactured in the Orient is of coarse texture, because of the lack of managers and employees trained in the production of fine goods, and also because of the general use of short-fibre Indian cotton. In securing orders in foreign markets, the Japanese have shown especial enterprise. By carefully studying demand and catering to it persistently, the Japanese manufacturers have largely displaced American cotton goods, for example, in Manchuria.
While further expansion in the cotton-manufacturing industry doubtless will take place in Japan, India, and China in future years, the mills in those countries have difficult obstacles to overcome. Well-trained managers are hard to obtain; in India many of the mill-managers are Englishmen. Asiatic labor is cheap, but in the cotton mills it is inefficient. In Japan, moreover, it is stated that the lives of many of the girls entering the mills under a contract system have been so unhappy, that the girls have been retained only by stringent control. Such social conditions are not the basis on which large industries are successfully built for permanence and long endurance.
The Asiatic mills, finally, have been equipped mainly with English machinery. So long as this dependence on foreign machinery-manufacturers continues, the industry must be considered in a measure exotic. The rate of expansion in the future will be affected by the genius displayed by the Oriental manufacturers in making adaptations in the technique of the industry to meet the conditions peculiar to their countries.
IV
The American industry remains for consideration. The total number of spindles in the United States at present is approximately 35,000,000; this is about 23 per cent of the total number in the world. As has been indicated, the industry has shown constant growth in this country, and it has not been subject to the devastation of war or to speculative combinations like those in England. While there are many more spindles in England, the American mills, manufacturing fewer fine fabrics and using less China clay as a substitute for fibre, annually consume at least one and one fourth times as much cotton as is used by the English mills.
During the last generation, one of the noteworthy features of the growth of cotton-manufacturing in America has been the expansion in the Southern states. Forty per cent of the spindles in this country are located in the mills in the Piedmont district of the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. The chief reason for the rise of the industry in that region was not proximity to the cotton-fields, but the supplies of relatively cheap labor that were tapped in the mountains and other backward districts in the South. Whatever saving has occurred occasionally in the cost of raw materials from nearby fields has been offset by the extra expense incurred in shipping the products to northern markets. With the depletion of the available supplies of mountaineers, wages have risen in the South; and during recent years, manufacturers who have mills in both sections have found operating costs to be fully as high in the South as in the North.
On the technical side, the American manufacturers have shown special initiative in inventing machines that are particularly suited to conditions in this country, where it is necessary to secure a large output per operative, and where much of the labor has been unskilled immigrants or mountaineers. The ring spindle and the automatic loom are conspicuous examples of this process of adaptation. These machines have helped to make it possible to continue to pay money-wages that were high in comparison with those paid in other countries, while reducing manufacturing costs.
While the Southern mills have utilized local supplies of labor, the Northern mills have employed many immigrants. Frequently, in a single mill in Massachusetts, it is necessary, even today, to post signs in six or more languages, in order to have them intelligible to the entire working force. Under present conditions, it appears that both the Northern and the Southern mills may soon be forced to seek supplies of labor from some new, untried source.
So far as foreign competition is concerned, the American manufacturers seem to be in a position to meet it successfully for most kinds of staple goods. The problem of the future, however, is to provide enough goods for the world’s markets. While there are certain to be occasional depressions in this industry as in others, during which foreign competition may be felt keenly, there appear to be enough new markets at home and abroad awaiting development, to absorb readily all the cotton cloth that can be manufactured here or elsewhere. The task of the American cotton manufacturer is, not to win existing markets away from foreign competitors, but to be prepared to supply a share of the new demand that will arise, not only in this country, but in other countries, such as India, China, and Africa. To the men who are able to cope with these problems, the cotton industry affords unusual opportunities for sound, enduring progress.