Mr, Kearsley said it was quite impossible in @ lecture of an hour's duration, to give the full history of the Cotton Growing Association during the last twelve years. His intention was to give a general idea of the Association's successes and failures, for in all pioneering work they were bound to have failures along with successes. A great debt would always be due to Mr. Benjamin Crapper, one of the most active members of the Association. He thought every Lancastrian was aware of the distress caused through the failure of the American cotton crop, when all the mill hands had 4] to be put on short hours. But at the present time Lancashire was making a determined effort to. prevent such a calamity from occurring in the future, and judging by results so far, he thought the object would be achieved. A good work was being accomplished by the British Cotton Growing Association in every British colony where cotton could be grown, for if the supply was broadened they could look with less misgivings at the failure of a crop in any particular country, for it would probably be balanced by a good crop in some other part of the world.
Speaking particularly, Mr. Kearsley said West Africa had proved a success as regards the growing of cotton, but British East Africa had not, up to the present, come up to expectations. In 1906 Uganda pro-Auced about 300 bales, and in 1913 this figure had grown to 98,000 bales. Nyasaland was not a large country, but the crop had increased
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.