MANUFACTURES. 601 



present supremacy of the cross-road grocery would be transferred to it. 

 The cotton seed, now little better than a waste of the farm, would be trans- 

 formed into staple articles of food for man and beast, to which all the 

 markets of the world are open. The growing deterioration in the prepa- 

 ration of the great staple of the country for market would be arrested, 

 and it would be furnished to the manufacturer in its cleanest and best 

 form. The various qualities'of cotton could be kept separate bv the sub- 

 stitution of small, compact packages for the present unwieldly bales, 

 such packages might be carried on the shoulder instead of being pulled 

 through the mud with hooks, as at present. There would be a vast sav- 

 ing in tlie labor of transportation to the farmer, and in the reduction of 

 freight to the manufacturer. Such establishments would, while infusing 

 fresh strength into agricultural pursuits by rendering its entire product 

 available and valuable at the least cost, form a connecting link between 

 the field laborer and the manufacturer, cleaning up the enormous waste 

 and -changes that now cumber the space between them. Here is the 

 point where a reorganization and renewal of the agricultural and manu- 

 facturing industries of the South may join hands and take a new de- 

 parture. 



AVhile this paper is passing through the press three new cotton seed 

 oil mills are being erected in the State. In giving the aggregate for the 



FERTILIZER FACTORIES 



in South Carolina, only those establishments have been considered which 

 employed machinery in preparing their products ; the changes effected 

 in the materials by merel}'^ mixing by hand the different constituents of 

 a fertilizer not being considered of sufficient importance to entitle the 

 parties engaged in it to be regarded as manufacturers. But even if all 

 these latter were included, it is not apparent how twenty-five fertilizer 

 factories ever employed 2,(379 hands, as stated in the compendium of the 

 Tenth U. S. Census. It is probable that the number of hands emploved 

 during tlie short shipping season in sacking and handling the pho.'^phate 

 Avas taken in the census returns, in place of the average of the force cUi- 

 nually employed. The lattei' is here given from returns made by each 

 company. The material used b}^ these companies consists chiefly of the 

 phosphate rock mined in the vicinit3\ This is ground and used in this 

 state, or treated with sulphuric acid and sold as a soluble superphos- 

 phate, to which other materials, containing nitrogen and potash, or both, 

 are sometimes added. The ground rock is reduced to extreme fineness, 

 known in commerce as " floats," and it is thought that the subdivision of 

 the particles is sufficient to enable the roots of plants to appropriate the 

 39 



