COTTON-SPINNING SOUTH AND NORTH. 803 



and my waste goes to the waste-pile in Augusta. But I can not 

 send my 560 bales of waste to Philadelphia so cheaply, but must 

 pay the same rate as on raw cotton. My 560 bales weigh 268,800 

 pounds, and on this I pay fifty-five cents per hundred pounds to 

 Philadelphia, or $1,478.40. Suppose this process to continue for 

 a twenty years' life of the mill at the same rate of freight. At 

 the end of twenty years I will have paid out to the Transpor- 

 tation Company $29,500 instead of $1,680 for my Augusta waste 

 account. 



I think, with Mr. Atkinson, that some very enthusiastic South- 

 ern spinners overrate the advantage the Southern spinner has in 

 this respect. I doubt if it will average more than one half cent * 

 per pound to the Northern than to the Southern spinner; and 

 there are some very serious considerations, such as higher rates of 

 interest, the absence of construction and repair shops, etc., which 

 may considerably reduce any advantage we have now in cotton 

 price. We are also at a greater distance from the large consum- 

 ing markets, but the freight charge on the finished product is 

 lower than on the raw material. 



Last spring I was asked by a spinner what I thought would 

 be the cost of changing half his spinning capacity from sixteen 

 and twenty to number forty yarns. This is what must come in 

 the not very distant future ; and as the South advances to forty, 

 the North must go to sixty, eighty, etc. The product of Southern 

 mills can be made as perfect as that of any other section. Why 

 not ? The skill may be as great here as elsewhere, except for 

 those branches of the work which are not yet attempted, but 

 which will come in time. 



Mr. Atkinson writes disparagingly of the longer working time 

 in Southern than in Northern mills. He probably had not heard, 

 when he penned his essay, that the Legislature of Georgia, at its 

 last session, fixed the working time in cotton-mills at eleven hours 

 per day. Many working folks North are clamoring for eight 

 hours per day. I do not think eleven hours too much for a day's 

 work in a comfortable mill, done by young people who can not 

 elsewhere find occupation to give them home and subsistence. I 

 do not think it injures them any more than ten hours would, and 

 my experience teaches me that it is better to give them in their 

 destitution the opportunity they are so glad to embrace. The 

 mill working -day in Pennsylvania is, I believe, of ten hours' 

 length. Here is another point of advantage which my Augusta 

 mill has over my Philadelphia mill. I have ten per cent more 

 working time, and of course produce eleven pounds of yarn in 



* As this article goes to press the Macon Telegraph quotes middlings in Macon at 10J- 

 cents, and in Philadelphia at llf cents, both on the same date — August 27th. 



