imported into Liverpool.

"1788. Fifty-eight thousand five hundred (58,500) pounds
imported into Liverpool.

"1789. One hundred twenty-seven thousand five hundred
(127,500) pounds imported into Liverpool.

"1790. Fourteen thousand (14,000) pounds imported into
Liverpool. We can find no reason for this marked decline in
the exports except it may be that the crop was a failure
that year. Our first supposition was that the cause was one
of price, but on examining the quotations in Took's work on
'high and low prices' we do not see any marked decline in
the values of other descriptions of cotton, and the American
staple is not given in his list until 1793.

"1791. One hundred eighty-nine thousand five hundred
(189,500) pounds imported into Liverpool, the price
averaging here 26 cents.

"1792. One hundred thirty-eight thousand three hundred
twenty-eight (138,328) pounds imported into Liverpool."

Great difficulty was experienced in separating the seed from the lint of
upland cotton. The work was done by hand, the task being four pounds of
lint cotton per week from each head of a family, in addition to the
usual field-work. This would amount to one bale in two years. A French
planter of Louisiana (Dubreuil) is said to have invented a machine for
separating lint and seed as early as 1742. The demand for such a machine
not being very great at that date, no record as to its character has
been preserved. The roller-gin, in very much the same form as Nearchus,
the admiral of Alexander the Great, found it in India, was still in use.
In 1790 Dr. Joseph Eve, originally from the Bahamas, but then a resident
of Augusta, Georgia, made great improvements on this ancient machine,
and adapted it to be run by horse- or water-power. A correspondent of
the American Museum, writing from Charleston, South Carolina, in July of
that year, states "that a gentleman well acquainted with the cotton
manufacture had already completed and in operation, on the high hills of
Santee, near Statesburg, ginning, carding, and other machines driven by
water, and also spinning-machines with eighty-five spindles each, with
every article necessary for manufacturing cotton." A machine dating
anterior to this year, and having a strong resemblance to the above,
possessing in fact all the essentials of a modern cotton-gin, was
exhibited at the Atlanta Exposition in 1882. It ca