San Francisco Daily Alta California, August 3, 1860

While the political cauldron is seething, and the efforts of local politicians are daily adding to the violence of sectional feeling, commerce is preparing a bond of common interest, which will not only allay the fires of present discord, but add so much to the mutual dependence of the present adverse sections of our country, that no question of disunion can, in the future, be entertained. The production of cotton has now reached a point in which its increase will, for a time, be greater than the increase of consumption; the very great surplus of the present year bids fair to be largely added to the coming year, not only from the rapidly increasing products of other countries. The supply in the English markets, from India alone, during the coming season, is expected to amount to one million of bales; and as the China war will probably check export of raw cotton to that country, this amount will, in all probability, be largely increased. The immediate effect of this war will also check the sale of manufactured cottons, in some measure offsetting the regular annual increase of cotton consumption. The supplies of raw cottons in the English markets, this last year, from other sources, was equal to one-third of that supplied from the United States. The Brazil and African crops are rapidly increasing, so much so that European supply from all these sources will, at the same ratio, soon equal one-half of that shipped from the United States. Already we see the effect of these supplies in a falling price, and a greater care in selections. When price receipts in the foreign markets, the power of the cotton planter is weakened, and the home market is magnified in importance. The value of the Northern market for the sale of raw cottons will increase faster to the planters, then be decreased value of freights will affect the northern shipowners. An era of mutual benefit and dependence is dawning upon our people, which, in a few short years, will cement the bonds of the Union beyond all the efforts of ambitious politicians, and unite our country in a common labor interest, that will crush out the embers of sectional fanaticism.

There has been no time, in the history of our Government, when our people, for commercial reasons, were so ready for change in their political relations. The heretofore free-trading West will now call for a protective tariff to create consumers for her produce and employment to her people; the South will ask for home manufactures to offset a lessened foreign market; and the North, prosperous in a productive labor, will reinvest her capital on the water powers of the Great West, increasing the wealth, stability, and export of our common country. This is no dream of a dim and distant future, but a link in the chain of events which will, in a measure, be worked out before the close of our next Presidential term. Whenever cotton falls in price, so planters' profits are reduced, the South and North will clasp hands in common interest, so firmly, that no art of politician can create strife. Trade, commerce, and common interest, are stronger than sectional feeling—the world's progress faster than the foresight of our aspiring demagogues. The wheels of production are being urged with a power and inventive genius in no age surpassed, and have now overtaken the world's present call for consumption; and, in the interval of lower prices and more ingenious manufacture which will surely intervene, our whole people, North and South, East and West, will learn there is no market so profitable as the home market, no labor that combines so many mutual benefits, as the home manufacture of the raw material of our own product.