Mushigs of the South 1 6 1 



going upon the cars at Montgomery to be shipped 

 to England, and wondered why the immense cotton- 

 mill, which is now ready for its roof at the foot of 

 the falls, had not been built there long ago. For 

 fifty or more years the planters have been hauling 

 their heavy bales right by this splendid water-power 

 to be shipped to New England or abroad. By the 

 time the next crop is ready this great mill will be 

 ready for it. It is built of stone, quarried out of 

 its basement. The planters for thirty miles 

 around — an area of three thousand five hundred 

 square miles — will haul their cotton straight to the 

 mill — not a cent of cost for transportation. They 

 will raft it down the Tallahassee from a hundred 

 miles above; the mill will get all its cotton direct 

 from the fields and gins. The market for the 

 product will be, in part, right here. They can float 

 the surplus down the Alabama River to the gulf. 

 How are the New England mills going to compete 

 with such advantages against them? They cannot 

 do it. Some of these Southern rivers are so rapid 

 that they would furnish a mill-site every ten miles. 

 The French Broad falls a thousand feet in a little 

 over a hundred miles. The time is not far off when 

 our cotton states will sell no more raw cotton. 

 They will ship it out in sheetings, prints, ginghams, 

 duck-canvas, and other weaves and fabrics. 



Everybody has heard of Birmingham. The de- 

 velopment of iron manufacture there is only in its 

 beginning. One great source of wealth has been 



