COTTON-SPINNING SOUTH AND NORTH. 801 



one is propelled by water at Augusta, and that of the other by 

 steam north of the Potomac. Let both mills be required to pro- 

 duce the yarn from 4,000 bales of raw cotton, each weighing 480 

 pounds. The annual consumption will then be, in each mill, 

 1,920,000 pounds. With waste estimated at fourteen per cent, the 

 quantity sent to the waste-pile will be from each mill 268,800 

 pounds, and each will yield the same amount of net yarn — viz., 

 1,657,200 pounds. 



For my Augusta mill I buy a water-wheel or wheels of say 

 200 horse-power, and rent my power from the Augusta Canal Com- 

 pany. The rent charge is five and a half dollars per horse-power 

 per annum ; so that for 200 horse-power I will have to pay $1,100 

 for a year. My water-wheels will certainly cost less than a 200 

 horse-power engine, with its engine-room, boiler-house, stack, coal- 

 bunkers, etc. But let us claim no advantage in first cost of 

 power. I start my Augusta mill by simply giving a few turns to 

 an eighteen-inch wheel on top of my gate-shaft, and it requires no 

 attention until the rest-time arrives about noon, when the same 

 number of turns in the opposite direction shuts off the water and 

 all is at rest. At Columbus, Ga., at the Eagle and Phoenix Manu- 

 facturing Company's mill No. 1, our water-wheels of 112 horse- 

 power each made eighty-four revolutions per minute. So you 

 perceive I get a higher first speed from water-power than I 

 would like to exact from a steam-engine of the same power. 



In this section of country it is almost true to say that the 

 motion of the water-wheel is never impeded by ice, as it is 

 elsewhere. "Water-power is not considered by some as being as 

 steady a power as steam. I think this must be a superstition. 

 The water-wheel has a continuous circular motion. The steam- 

 engine changes rectilineal into circular motion at every revolu- 

 tion, and if with only one cylinder, at every half revolution. How 

 can a revolution with one or two dead points be as continuous as 

 a circular motion without any dead points ? 



Next I go to start my steam mill — exactly like the other except 

 as to power. I must hire a costly engineer, for I can not trust my 

 fine engine and my dangerous high-pressure boilers, with all the 

 interests dependent upon their continuous action, to a Jack Leg. 

 I must hire firemen and coal-handlers, for I would need three, 

 four, or five tons of coal daily, and its handling is laborious and 

 must be paid for. Then I must buy, let us say, three tons of coal 

 per day at a minimum for three hundred and ten days — say nine 

 hundred tons yearly. For my water-wheel a few tons or a few 

 cords of wood will keep me and my hands comfortable and my 

 machinery protected. Are these differences insignificant ? Sup- 

 pose both my mills last twenty years, and that they both run all 

 the time. I have to buy in the twenty years eighteen thousand 



VOL. XXXVII. — 58 



