150 years ago today - Jun 25, 1864 (Afternoon)

[Brigham Young Sermon] ... The first cotton we raised in the region we call our '"Dixie'" cost us about $3.65 a pound; we proved that cotton could be raised there. The next season it cost $1.84, and the next season about 70 cents, and that is the way we proved to the people that we could raise cotton. The experiment cost us thousands of dollars, but now we have cotton. They have shipped cotton to California. We sent some to the States to show that we could raise cotton here, and it sold for some 70 cents a pound, not so much as it would have brought if it had arrived a few days earlier. We now have some cotton factories in operation... I now have machinery sufficient to keep thirty-five power looms going, and I wish I had them; but this will not supply the Territory. ... If we go to work and manufacture for ourselves, we can stop the continual drain upon us through purchasing the articles of clothing which we require. It has been said '"Cotton is king.'"

[Source: Journal of Discourses, Liverpool, England, 1853-86. 10:332-334; Deseret News. Also Deseret Evening News, Deseret News Weekly, Deseret News Semi- Weekly, and Deseret News Extra, Salt Lake City as quoted in The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young, Ed. Richard S. Van Wagoner, Smith-Pettit Foundation, Salt Lake City (2009), http://bit.ly/BY-discourses]

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