Page:Guatimala or the United Provinces of Central America in 1827-8.pdf/214

Rh 1790, the productions in cotton and wool of the capital, Antigua and Quezaltenango amounted to a million of dollars annually. As the contraband trade however increased, these gradually declined, and since the trade with Belize has been thrown open, they may fairly be considered as annihilated.

To the encouragement and progress of home manufactures, the memorial above alluded to, appears to attach an undue importance: it says, “Every country has some one principal branch of industry, on which the greater part of the rest are dependent. Among us it is very visible, that the link of our prosperity has been in former ages, our manufactures of cotton, which occupy a prominent place in our internal riches, because the material is the product of our own land, and capable of considerable augmentation,—because it occupied so many hands in preparing the thread and picking the cotton, and because it was capable of extension all over the kingdom. The great mass of the people were clothed in our own cotton cloths, and the produce of the labour was scattered among all classes of the state, thus assisting in the maintenance of the other parts of the community, and giving vigour to the whole. The branch of preparing the thread alone, employed almost all our Indian women and children, the use of the wheel being