2 9 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



so in respect to the colored population on Sundays and holidays. 

 After balancing higher speed against the finer number, this last 

 element of greater power to purchase would lead us to assume, or 

 to expect to find, a steady but moderate increase in the ratio of 

 spindles to population : when I give the facts, I think many will 

 be somewhat surprised at the justification which the figures will 

 give of this hypothesis. 



In treating the conditions of the South I date my computations 

 from the year 1870. This was the year in which the worst effects 

 of the war had been in part overcome. In 1870 our Southern 

 friends made a fair beginning, on which they continued in rather 

 slow and even measure in their progress until about 1880, when 

 at last the new industries of the new South began to make prog- 

 ress with leaps and bounds ; the greatest impetus being imputed 

 to the Atlanta Cotton Exhibition by the Southerners themselves. 

 It seems as if the display in this exhibition had shown to them- 

 selves, even for the first time, the wealth of minerals, of timber, 

 and of other resources which proved to them that cotton was very 

 far from being king even of its own land. 



There is another very important factor which enters into this 

 consideration to which no attention has been given in any treatise 

 upon Southern manufactures that I have yet seen, namely, the 

 great number of people in the Southern States who were clad in 

 homespun or in hand-woven fabrics, both before the war and 

 throughout the period of reconstruction down to 1870. 



The moment attention is called to this element in the ques- 

 tion, all will doubtless admit that a change from homespun to 

 factory-made goods, whatever its measure may have been, was the 

 equivalent of so much added population and so much increased 

 demand for the products of the cotton-factories. Conversely, in 

 any computation of the ratio of spindles to population at different 

 dates, a deduction must be made in 1860 and 1870 for those who 

 were at these respective dates clothed in hand-made fabrics. Per- 

 haps it may be said, and perhaps it may rightly be said, that if an 

 allowance must be made according to each man's judgment for all 

 these variable elements of the problem, what dependence can be 

 put upon the final figures ? Each one may answer his own ques- 

 tion or doubt in his own way. I shall only give what appear to 

 be the facts, and I will say, as I have so often said before, that 

 all statistics, unless qualified by sound judgment, are mere rub- 

 bish, not worth the compilation. I think many may be some- 

 what surprised, however, by the apparent certainty of the rule 

 presented. 



I have corresponded with a large number of my old Southern 

 friends in respect to the homespun consumption of former times. 

 I omit Texas from among the Southern States, for the reason that 



