MANUFACTURES. 



589 



January 12th, 1881 : " Out of 125 cotton spinning and manufacturing 

 companies, mentioned in the Oldham CJtronide, one paid a dividend for 

 the last quarter of 2 per cent., one of 2| per cent., two of 4 per cent., six 

 of five per cent , one of 5| per cent., two of 8 per cent., five of 10 per cent., 

 while 104 paid no dividends, and, in a great majority of cases, made 

 losses, more or less serious." If these 104 mills were removed to the 

 healthy hills of granite along the Catawba, the Broad, and the Saluda 

 rivers and their tributaries in this State, they would escape the close com- 

 petition which threatens their destruction. Such an increase of numbers 

 here M^ould facilitate manufacturing operations, and it would be long 

 years hence, if ever, before their productions would reduce their profits 

 in the wide markets of the world. Always there, would rest with them 

 the vantage that first comers hold, which is now held against them. 



COTTON GINNING 



is one of the most important industries in South Carolina, but it has 

 never received separate mention in the returns of the United States 

 Census. Its omission in the list of manufacturing industries, which 

 includes the grinding of wheat and corn into flour and grist, depends 

 rather upon some arbitrary definition of manufactures than upon any 

 essential diflference in the industries themselves. In the absence of a 

 general enumeration of the gin houses of the State, the following estimate, 

 based on partial enumeration, is offered as an approximate statement in 

 regard to this industry : 



Before the subdivision of the large plantations into the numerous small 

 farms of the present day, nearly every cotton planter had a gin house of 

 his own. Now, however, there is not more than one gin house to each 

 thirty-two farms growing cotton. From this it has resulted that cotton 

 ginning has become a business, in a large measure, separate and distinct 

 from cotton srowins. In the reorganization of Southern industries on 



