802 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tons of coal for one mill and a few cart-loads for the other. If 

 my engineer and firemen and coal-handling cost me in all $5 per 

 day, I must pay out for this charge $1,550 per annum, and in 

 twenty years $31,000. So, for these two items, I have to pay in 

 twenty years $85,000 for one mill, while the other costs me for the 

 same items nothing. It really seems as if " a masterly inactivity " 

 is the true policy when one considers the propriety of starting 

 the cotton manufacture at the North with steam ; but, on the 

 contrary, a very masterly activity at Augusta, Ga., and at many 

 other points in this favored land of " Dixie." 



Our mild climate and short winter enable the operatives to 

 make themselves comfortable at little expense for fuel and cloth- 

 ing. They swarm to all new mills that are inaugurated, and 

 think they are fortunate to find work. We have few strikes 

 here ; hardly any in my experience of nearly fifty years. The 

 relations between the employed and the employers are almost 

 always of a kindly character. If we had twice as many mills at 

 work to-day in the South as we now have, employe's could be 

 found to take every position except for a time some especial de- 

 partments of the work. 



I have to buy 4,000 bales (1,920,000 pounds) of raw cotton for 

 each of my mills. For the Augusta mill I pay probably fifteen 

 cents per bale to get it from the Augusta market to my mill on the 

 canal — say $600 in all. For my other mill I have to pay a small 

 drayage here, and fifty-five cents per hundred pounds to get it 

 from Macon (if bought here) to, let us say, Philadelphia ; 1,920,- 

 000 pounds, at fifty-five cents per hundred pounds, costing me for 

 freight alone $10,560 against $600 for my Augusta mill. If the 

 same prices and the same rates should continue, my twenty years 

 would net me an outlay for freights alone, without drayage, 

 $211,200 against my Augusta drayage of $12,000, leaving a bal- 

 ance of $199,200 against my Northern steam mill as compared 

 with my Augusta water mill ; and adding the power items as 

 above estimated, viz., $55,000 for twenty years, there has grown 

 up a balance against steam of $254,200. It thus appears that, if 

 both mills should endure for twenty years, I would have made a 

 quarter of a million dollars more by staying at home than by 

 wandering out in search of pastures new. 



The account seems to be growing very large against my steam 

 mill, but I am compelled to bring up other items against it. For 

 instance, I buy the same quantity of cotton for each mill, and I 

 choose to take fourteen per cent as the measure of waste in both 

 mills, not quite believing that it should be so much. But the com- 

 parison is fair, as the amount is the same in both suppositions. 

 Fourteen per cent of 4,000 bales is 560 bales, which I haul to my 

 mill at Augusta at fifteen cents per bale drayage, or $84 in alb 



