ewhere.

America was the only hope of the cotton manufacturer; but as at that
time the United States produced little or no cotton, for a few years all
the increased supply came from Brazil.

As Great Britain was the last of the European countries to take up
cotton manufacture, and has carried it to its fullest development, so
the United States was the last to enter the list of cotton-producing
countries, and has been for nearly a hundred years the foremost of them
all. The powerful influence that the production of cotton has had upon
the commerce, industrial development, and civil institutions of the
United States can scarcely be realized by one unfamiliar with the
subject.

It is doubtful whether cotton is indigenous to any part of this country,
as we have no authentic record of the precise time of its introduction.
Cotton seed was brought in from all quarters of the globe, and the
American plant, the result of innumerable crossings, remains, as to its
origin, a puzzle to botanists.

The beginning of the culture of cotton in the United States occurred
about one hundred seventy-five years before the industry became at all
important. The first effort to produce cotton on the North American
continent was probably made at Jamestown the year of the arrival of the
colonists. In a pamphlet entitled _Nova Britannica; Offering Most
Excellent Fruits of Planting in Virginia_, published in London in 1609,
it is stated that cotton would grow as well in that province as in
Italy. In another pamphlet, called _A Declaration of the State of
Virginia_, published in London in 1620, the author mentions cotton,
wool, and sugar-cane among the "naturall commodities dispersed up and
downe the divers parts of the world; all of which may also be had in
abundance in Virginia."

According to Bancroft, the first experiment in cotton culture in the
colonies was made in Virginia during Wyatt's administration of the
government. Writing of that period he says: "The first culture of cotton
in the United States deserves commemoration. In this year (1621) the
seeds were planted as an experiment, and their 'plentiful coming up' was
at that early day a subject of interest in America and England."

Cotton-wool was listed in that year at eightpence a pound, which shows
that it may have been grown earlier, for it is scarcely possible that it
could have been grown, cleaned, and received in market in the same year.
Seabrook states that the "green-seed,"