Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/54

 a high degree of civilization before it will have approached the limit of this economy. The cotton of Java is conveyed in junks to the coast of China; but from the seed not being previously separated, three quarters of the weight thus carried is not cotton. This might, perhaps, be justified in Java by the want of machinery to separate the seed, or by the relative cost of the operation in the two countries. But the cotton itself, as packed by the Chinese, occupies three times the bulk of an equal quantity shipped by Europeans for their own markets. Thus the freight of a given quantity of cotton costs the Chinese nearly twelve times the price to which, by a proper attention to mechanical methods, it might be reduced.