are taken to the sales-room
of the commission house, where they are open to the inspection of
buyers. The quality of the cotton is carefully noted, the length of
the fiber or staple, the whiteness of the sample, and its freedom from
dust or fragments of cotton-stalks. Not one bale in twenty is ever
seen by the buyers until after its purchase. Frequently the buyers
transfer their cotton to other parties without once looking upon
it Sometimes cotton is sold at auction instead of being offered at
private sale, but the process of "sampling" is carried out in either
case.

In '63 and '64, New Orleans could boast of more cotton factors than
cotton. The principal business was in the hands of merchants from
the North, who had established themselves in the city soon after its
occupation by the National forces. Nearly all cotton sent to market
was from plantations leased by Northern men, or from purchases made
of planters by Northern speculators. The patronage naturally fell
into the hands of the new possessors of the soil, and left the old
merchants to pine in solitude. The old cotton factors, most of them
Southern men, who could boast of ten or twenty years' experience, saw
their business pass into the hands of men whose arrival in New Orleans
was subsequent to that of General Butler. Nearly all the old factors
were Secessionists, who religiously believed no government could exist
unless founded on raw cotton and slavery. They continually asserted
that none but themselves could sell cotton to advantage, and wondered
why those who had that article to dispose of should employ men
unaccustomed to its sale. They were doomed to find themselves false
prophets. The new and enterprising merchants monopolized the cotton
traffic, and left the slavery-worshiping factors of the olden time to
mourn the loss of their occupation.

At the time I visited New Orleans, cotton was falling. It had been
ninety cents per pound. I could only obtain a small fraction above
seventy cents, and within a week the same quality sold for sixty.
Three months afterward, it readily brought a dollar and a quarter per
pound. The advices from New York were the springs by which the market
in New Orleans was controlled. A good demand in New York made a good
demand in New Orleans, and _vice versa_. The New York market was
governed by the Liverpool market, and that in turn by the demand at
Manchester. Thus the Old World and the New had a common interest in
the produ