THE FUTURE OF OUR COTTON MANUFACTURE. 3 i 7 



there were substantially two hands employed in the South against 

 one in New England, and this computation has been sustained by 

 my observation in such mills as I have visited. 



Now, it is well known that the more hands the more waste, the 

 more want of discipline, the more lack of good work. In a recent 

 report on Russian spinning by our friend Mr. Dobson, who spoke 

 to us on carding-engines, he reaches identically the same con- 

 clusion in comparing Russia with Great Britain. 



Doubtless there has been great improvement in Southern 

 methods since 1880; with increased efficiency, the number of hands 

 decreases ; but the wages or earnings rise, and will continue to do 

 so, until they become equal to what we pay. 



I am, therefore, confident that we may hold a long lead, and 

 that we need not yet borrow trouble from any competition in 

 Southern factories after they have learned to keep their deprecia- 

 tion account, and after they cease to run the risk of bankruptcy 

 by working their machinery into their fabrics without charging 

 it off. 



I might here rest my case ; but I will venture to give a few 

 more facts bearing upon this subject. 



There is one development of science which may render the cot- 

 ton-factory entirely independent of climatic conditions. One of 

 the visionary theories which I presented many years ago has 

 not yet been put into practice in any great measure. I sug- 

 gested preparing the atmosphere which is to be used as an in- 

 strument for taking away the moisture from the slashers by 

 carrying it into the sizing-room through a chamber filled with 

 ice. Since that date there has been immense progress in the art 

 of freezing. Frozen carcasses of mutton are now carried from 

 Australia to England. When the trade was first established, the 

 owners of the Victoria Docks in London prepared chambers which 

 were cooled by ammonia machines sufficient to hold 3,200 car- 

 casses. There were four chambers of 12,000 cubic feet each, sup- 

 plied by a ten horse-power engine, delivering 10,000 cubic feet of 

 air below the freezing-point per hour. There are now on the 

 Royal Victoria Docks sixty chambers of 240,000 cubic feet ca- 

 pacity, supplied with 370,000 cubic feet of air below the freezing- 

 point each hour, by a three hundred and twenty horse-power 

 engine. These chambers will hold 80,000 carcasses of mutton at 

 one time. 



I lately put a very commonplace question to the F. W. Wolf 

 Company, of Chicago, manufacturers of freezing machinery. I 

 asked them, as if it were an every-day ordinary matter of busi- 

 ness, at what price they would put down an ammonia plant suit- 

 able for maintaining the temperature of a cotton-mill three hun- 

 dred feet long, one hundred feet wide, twelve-foot post, four stories 



