Cotton 
be confined to regions where there is plenty of cheap, unskilled labor, 
the kind of labor that is supplied by the negroes of the southern 
states or the felaheen of Egypt. There must also be easy means of 
transportation to take the fiber to the factories where it is made into 
cloth; otherwise the marketing of the product may cost so much that 
it does not pay the farmers to grow it. 
Hence we see that profitable cotton growing is limited by conditions 
of temperature, rainfall, sunshine, soil, labor, and transportation. 
Almost every other crop has similar limitations. 
Where cotton is grown in other countries. Now that we know 
the conditions required for the growing of cotton, let us examine the 
world outside the United States to see where else it is grown, and why 
it is grown there. 
India. Figure 7 shows that next to the United States, which raises 
from a half to two thirds of the world’s supply of cotton, stands India. 
In India, cotton is grown principally in the western part of the south- 
ern plateau. There the temperature, rainfall, and sunshine are 
favorable and the so-called “ black-cotton soil,” formed by the decay 
of dark volcanic rock, is exceptionally good. There, too, labor is 
cheap; and as the British have built many railway lines, the crop is 
readily transported to market. 
China. As a producer of cotton China probably comes next to India. 
The Hoang Ho valley is the region of greatest production. While 
southeastern China has favorable climatic conditions resembling those 
of our southern states, it has not so much level land covered with fertile 
soil, and it lacks adequate means of transportation. To offset these 
disadvantages, China has an almost unlimited supply of cheap labor. 
WORLD 
COTTOM 
PRODUCTION 
REPRERENT™ 
WORLD ROL. 1 
28 IOI OO RAL © 
f16. ¢. More than half the cotton crop of the world is grown in the United States. Egypt and 
India make up a little more than a quarter of the crop, and the remaining quarter is accounted fos 
mainly by Russia. Brazil. China. Persia. Peru, Mexico. and the Caribhean region.