We are producing far more food and clothing material than we need for our own people, and we' inst either cattail production or find outside riarkets for the surplus. Our cotton industry' is not suffering so much from over-production as from tudor-distribution.
I believe there is a. market. in the world, if we can find it, for twenty million instead of a ten million bale crop ton cents, because at that price cotton is the chethest material for clothing known to man. Its uses have so multi-blipd in the last quarter of a century that there seems no limit to its possibility An eminent authority: has- made the calculation that. it would" require ain annual crop of more than' 40 millioti bales properly toclothe the population of the' world. Its use. is constantly ov the increase.
Take China; for example; in' 1903 our' exports of cotton fabrics wore valued at only $8;800,000," while this year, if the present rate is maintain ca, it will be nearly forty millions. 'The mills cannot sipply the demand,' and, great as t demand, it represents hut an insignificant fraction of the consuming capacity of 400 million people, rich with the stored-up wealth of the centuries." At the present rate of export we are souding less thain'one yard per capita. of cotton cloths to these silk-clad millly If the consumption per capita app ed that of the United States,'there would. be-no cotton left for the balance of the world,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.