THE FUTURE OF OUR COTTON MANUFACTURE. 307 



Manchester ; but when the cotton reaches Manchester it will be 

 taken over upon the cars and hauled up this heavy grade. The 

 spinners did not make this change without a reason. What was 

 it ? Can there be any reason except the climatic conditions ? 



Our textile factories first gathered in centers where there was 

 water power. It happened that Samuel Slater landed in Rhode 

 Island, midway in the section where, I think, the cotton manu- 

 facture will stay. But water power carried many mills away up 

 into New Hampshire, down into Maine, and elsewhere. That 

 influence has gone by. Steam has taken the place of water 

 power. 



My judgment has been for a very long time that, barring one 

 element which I will treat later, the greater part of the cotton 

 spinning and weaving of this country will tend to concentrate 

 along the south shore of New England, from New Bedford by 

 way of Fall River, Narragansett Bay, and so on along the Sound, 

 at the points to which coal can be carried in barges at very mod- 

 erate cost, to which the cotton can be brought at diminishing 

 rates of transportation from the South, and where the conditions 

 of life are comfortable, the supplies abundant, and where all the 

 subsidiary arts will gather or have gathered around the factories. 



It is along this shore that the Gulf Stream exerts an influence 

 somewhat like that which affects Lancashire. Although perhaps 

 less in degree, the humidity of the atmosphere is more constant 

 and more nearly consistent with the best conditions for spinning 

 and weaving than it is in any other section of this country within 

 my knowledge. I will not speak dogmatically upon this point, 

 because I do not think we yet know enough of atmospheric con- 

 ditions to be able to determine this question. It is one of the ele- 

 ments of the case. As this concentration takes place, as you so 

 well know, the relative number of spare hands and the number of 

 repair hands in each factory will be diminished ; thus the general 

 expenses will be reduced. The draft for help will be made upon 

 the whole population, and the work will be subdivided in the way 

 which is most conducive to the very closest economy. 



To what extent weaving will be separated from spinning we 

 have yet to see. I think that separation will go on as the work 

 becomes finer and more dependent upon the changing fashion and 

 fancy of the season than upon its quality for the sale of the prod- 

 uct. That tendency is clearly apparent in the increase of fine 

 spinning-mills in this section, in which no weaving is done. I 

 have called attention to these points before. 



Again, I am inclined to believe that any very rapid develop- 

 ment of Southern cotton manufacture will meet a check from the 

 yet more rapid progress of our Southern brethren in many other 

 apparently minor branches of industry. These minor branches, 



