SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 89 



$1,500 will set up a carding and cloth-dressing factory, which, with 

 three good hands, will turn off 50 yards of cloth per diem. By Table I. 

 it appears that in 1839 there were but 114 of these factories south of the 

 Potomac aud west of the Mississippi, doing an annual business of $320,- 

 938, while in the single State of New- York there were 323 factories, doing 

 an annual business of $3,537,337 ! Of the 114 Southern factories 66 were 

 in the States of Kentucky and Tennessee; 41 in Virginia; 3 in each o. 

 the Carolinas ; 1 in Georgia, and in the remaining four, none ! 



The number is decreasing in New-York, as manufactories of the com- 

 mon fabrics, worn by farmers and other laboring men, are increasing in 

 every direction many of them doing custom-work either at the halves, 

 or at a fixed sum per yard and all of them exchanging cloth for wool. 

 By either of these methods, the cloth can be obtained as cheaply, perhaps 

 cheaper, than to manufacture it in families. But circumstanced as you 

 are at the South, you can, as before asserted, manufacture more cheaply 

 by hand (excepting carding, fulling and dressing), than to import your 

 slave cloths at present prices, if provided with factories to perform theex- 

 cepted processes. Where the institution of slavery exists, and where 

 spinning, weaving, etc., can be done in those intervals of bad weather 

 when the time of laborers would otherwise be entirely thrown away, it is 

 doubtful whether any extension of even the coarse cloth manufactories 

 would, or ought to, in an economical point of view, banish the home-made 

 article. If we count the slave labor thus saved one-half the value of free 

 labor, and dispense with the fulling and dressing* (which we usually dis- 

 pensed with in manufacturing domestic slave cloths, in the interior of the 

 Carolinas, Georgia, etc.), the cloth would cost but 20 cents a yard, and the 

 dyeing might carry it to 22 cents. Let one-half the fabric be made of cot* 

 ton, and the cost would be still farther reduced.f 



Since the above was written, I have received the samples of Welsh 

 plains, Chelmsford plains, and slave blankets forwarded by you. None of 

 these goods exceed in quantity the estimate I have put upon them in my 

 preceding remarks. 



The Welsh plain which you state cost 65 cents per yard by the piece, 

 (32 inches wide,) is about the thickness of rather heavy but not the 

 heaviest sheep's gray. It is not, however, by many shades, so close and 

 firm a cloth, for the w r ant of equal fulling ; and perhaps even this would 

 not give it equal firmness, by reason of the loose twist of the yarn. The 

 yarn is considerably coarser, (larger in diameter,) than that ordinarily em- 

 ployed in sheep's gray but it derives no inconsiderable portion of its 

 bulk (which gives the cloth its thickness) from the loose and imperfect man 

 ner in which it was twisted in spinning. This is particularly the case 

 with the filling, which you can scarcely detach from even so open a web, 

 without its breaking in pieces. Accordingly, the cloth tears very easily 

 lengthwise, for that presenting such an apparent amount of stock. 



With a sufficient amount of fulling, dyeing, (it is white,) and a little 

 gigging and shearing or simply brushing it would become identical in 



* But still you want carding-machines, to card the wool ; for, by hand, It Is a slow and expensive process. 



f I was shown a new article of satinets a day or two since. It was double or broadcloth width, black. 

 nd the cotton warp dyed black, and could only be distinguished from a very fair piece of black broad* 

 cloth by examining the cut edge. The manufacturer stated that the cotton warp weighed but 3 oz. per 

 yard ; but I do not credit the assertion. One is strongly inclined to suspect that a cloth of this character 

 could not have been "got up" for any very legitimate purpose, but that it belongs in the wooden-nutmeji 

 nd horn-flint category ! 



The ordinary satinet, when well made, is a profitable, cheap cloth. 



M 



