586 MANUFACTITRES. 



tliis is quite simple, in tlie great increase in the nunilx'r of hands em- 

 ployed, drawn almost entirely from the immediate neighborhood of the 

 new mills, many inexperienced ones have been brought in, and are being 

 taught. Nevertheless, South Carolina shows forty spindles to the hand, 

 while in Germany there are only thirty -nine, in France twenty-four, and 

 in Russia, nineteen. Great Britain boasts, it is true, of eighty-three spin- 

 dles to the operative, and in this respect she is further ahead of the United 

 States than the latter is of South Carolina. 



At all times Sovith Carolina exhibits a marked superiority in the num- 

 ber of pounds of raw material manufactured per hand, while the cheaper 

 products of her mills do not compare with the more delicate and costly 

 fabrics of England and the North, they are suited to a far wider market, 

 and, therefore, furnish a safer and more stable basis of operations. This 

 view gathers force when it is observed that tlie gross value of the pro- 

 ducts per hand in Carolina is greater than elsewhere, even than it is in 

 Great Britain, where it is only $1,169 per hand. (See Cotton Goods Trade 

 of the World, Government printing press, Washington, D. C, 1881.) It 

 will be strengthened also by noting that the value of the net products 

 per hand, that is of the products less the cost of materials and wages, is 

 greater in Carolina ; and further, that these products, both gross and net, 

 give a larger percentage on the capital employed in Carolina than in the 

 country at large. 



The most striking advantage exhibited by the census in the manufac- 

 turing operations of Carolina over those of the country at large is in the 

 much lower cost here of materials, a difierence in favor of the Carolina 

 manufactures of from eight and nine-tenths cents per pound of cotton 

 consumed in 1870, to two and one-tenth cents per pound, according to the 

 carefully prepared statements of ^Ir. Edward Atkinson, of Boston, in 1880. 

 Computed from the data furnished by the report of the Cotton Goods 

 Trade, above referred to, each pound of cotton consumed by the English 

 manufacturers in 1880, cost 14.8 cents, or 3.2 cents per pound more than 

 in Carolina. These differences in the cost of raw material between the 

 Carolina cotton fields and other places may need some qualifications in 

 view of the fact that manufactured material, as yarns, more costly than 

 raw cotton, may be included among the materials consumed in other 

 places. For England, at least, such corrections must be very small, as 

 the total value of the yarns imported in 1880 only exceeded by a small 

 fraction one per cent, of the cost of the imports of raw cotton, and are 

 probably more than offset by the cheaper, though poorer materials ob- 

 tained from India. It is not easy to form even an approximate estimate 

 of the actual difference between the cost of raw cotton to the manufac- 

 turer in Carolina and to the manufacturer in Europe. The rates of 



