The Lexington Dispatch

Our friend of the Lexington Dispatch wades through two columns to answer our criticism of his untenable position in advocating a high tariff on imported raw cotton as a means to help the South and cotton producer. He does not question the accuracy of our figures as to there being only 100,000 bales of Egyptian cotton imported into this country, and does not attempt to disprove our statement that this small amount even though absolute forbidden access to our shores would not help the cotton farmer to any appreciable extent, but simply goes on to say that these importations might increase. Well, that is a weak one. They might, but why haven't they? Great Britain has been ransacking the world to find some favored land that would produce a staple equal to ours. So have her continental neighbors and they have not yet found it. And the proof of it is found from statistics which we submit from governmental reports, the accuracy of which he cannot afford to question, and which will be a sufficient answer to the unsupported claim which he makes that we do not produce one-half the cotton of the world. The figures are for 1894-95, and show the total consumption of cotton in the world to be 13,737,000 bales. Of this amount Great Britain consumed 4,850,000 bales of cotton, the continent of Europe consumed 5,096,000 bales of cotton, the United States 3,219,000 bales, and some other countries smaller amounts. Our total crop for that year was something near 10,000,000 bales, showing a production of something near three-fourths of the world's supply of cotton by the Southern States. Those figures dispose of the Dispatch's contention. and we must accept the figures of official reports, as otherwise argument is useless. As a further answer to the Dispatch in regard to the claim that the South manufactured the bulk of its cotton we submit the following figures as to the number of spindles in the world all taken from the same source. Great Britain had 45,100,000 spindles. the continent of Europe 28,250,000, the United States 16,233,000, India 3,110,000, making a grand total of 92,693,000 spindles in the world, only a little over 16 millions of which are in the United States and a little less than 7 millions in the South. From these figures it would seem that the cotton manufacturing of the South is only an infinitesimal part of the manufacturing of the world. To simplify this a little, if every one of the 13,737,000 bales weighed 500 pounds there were 6,868,500,000 pounds of lint cotton consumed, which would give a little over 73 pounds per spindle. At this rate the Southern mills consumed about 292 million pounds The mills of the United States consumed 1 billion 177 million pounds, while the mills of the rest of the world consumed 5 billion, 787 million, 791 pounds, or more than five times as much as we consumed here at home. What becomes of the Dispatch's contention in view of these figures? And it is a lame and impotent conclusion that it arrives at when it says that it is trying to bring the Democratic party back to its ancient faith of high protection when it is recalled that the Democratic party has been for nearly three quarters of a century fighting the monster of a protective tariff and that our own State came near being plunged into war in nullifying this very atrocious law, and that almost every Democratic platform for that time has put the party on record against it. High protection deprives us of the foreign market and does not help us much in the home market