_Consumption of Cotton in Thousand Bales of about 500 lb. each._
+-----------+----------+----------+---------+----------+---------+ | | Southern | Northern | Total | Great | | | | States. | States. | United | Britain. | Europe. | | | | | States. | | | +-----------+----------+----------+---------+----------+---------+ | 1900-1901 | 1583 | 1963 | 3546 | 3269 | 4576 | | 1901-1902 | 2017 | 2066 | 4083 | 3253 | 4836 | | 1902-1903 | 1958 | 1866 | 3824 | 3185 | 5148 | | 1903-1904 | 1889 | 2046 | 3935 | 3017 | 5148 | | 1904-1905 | 2270 | 2292 | 4562 | 3620 | 5148 | +-----------+----------+----------+---------+----------+---------+
The densest distribution of mills in the South is along the line of the Southern railroad, in the district known as the Piedmont. Of this group Charlotte in North Carolina is the natural centre: roughly, half the spindles and half the looms in the Southern States would be included within a circle around Charlotte of a radius of about 100 m. Of the remainder a large proportion is scattered over a wide area.
Much interest has been excited by this newly created Lancashire of a new type, and much speculation as to the causes that account for it has been elicited. An informal commission of Lancashire spinners and manufacturers crossed the Atlantic to make inquiries in 1902 and investigations have been undertaken by other persons[56], and much has been written on the subject. A general explanation can now be framed without much difficulty, as in all probability most of the relevant facts have been brought to light. First and foremost the general development of the cotton industry in the United States must be emphasized. The industry was unquestionably foredoomed to expansion at this time, and the only question was where the expansion should take place. It was plain that the growth might be so great as to present the appearance of a new industry created with new labour rather than an extension of an old industry. It was not altogether surprising, therefore, that the exploitation of a new field of labour was thought of. The labour market of the North was comparatively exhausted; in less developed parts of the country larger supplies of intrinsically good labour might be looked for at lower wages. Skill was not a matter of much moment, because in the North it would have been necessary to incorporate much labour without previous experience in the industry, the work was intended to be of the rough kind upon which manual skill is least important, and it was intended to repose reliance for economy upon machinery in the main. The choice of new fields meant at the outset the sacrifice of some of the economies of localization, but so large an expansion was looked for that projectors did not despair of creating fresh industrial localization of sufficient magnitude to produce such economies as are derived from it, which, it must be observed, are inconsiderable in America, and have declined relatively with falling cost of transport and the adoption, as regards machinery, of the principle of interchangeable parts. And at any rate a new local industry would have a slight advantage in supplying markets in proximity to it.
