urer needed a tariff on imported goods to protect him
from European competition; the Southern cotton-planter who purchased
much of his supplies abroad was hurt by the tariff. After about sixty
years of strained relations between the two sections there occurred the
Civil War which wiped out nearly one million lives, and rolled up a
debt, direct and indirect, of nearly six billions of dollars.

The world's cotton-crop aggregates from twelve million to fifteen
million bales yearly, of which the United States produces, as a rule, a
little more than three-fourths. Egypt is rapidly taking an important
place among cotton-producing countries, and, with the completion of the
various irrigating canals, will very soon rank next to the United
States. India ranks about third; China and Korea produce about the same
quantity. There are a few cotton-cloth mills in these states, but in
Japan the manufacture is increasing, the mills being equipped with the
best of modern machinery. Brazil has a small product, and Russia in Asia
needs transportation facilities only to increase largely its growing
output.

[Illustration: COTTON]

The cotton-crop of the United States is quite evenly distributed;
one-third is manufactured at home; one-third is purchased by Great
Britain; and the remaining third goes mainly to western Europe. In the
past few years China has become a constantly increasing purchaser of
American cotton. New Orleans, Galveston, Savannah, and New York are the
chief ports of shipment. The imported Egyptian and Peruvian cotton is
landed mainly at New York. Most of the cotton manufacture is carried on
in the New England States, but there is a very rapid extension of cotton
manufacture in the South.

=Wool.=--The wool of commerce is a term applied to the fleece of the
common sheep, to that of certain species of goat, and to that of the
camel and its kind. There is no hard-and-fast distinction between hair
and wool,[32] but, in general, wool fibres have rough edges, much
resembling overlapping scales which interlock with one another; hair, as
a rule, has a hard, smooth surface. If a mass of loose wool be spread
out and beaten, or if it be pressed between rollers, the fibres
interlock so closely that there results a thick, strong cloth which has
been made without either spinning or weaving.

This property, known as "felting," gives to wool a great part of its
value, and is its chief distinction from hair. Some kinds of hair,
howev