134 COTTON CULTURE. 



of the number of bales ginned and pressed at each gin- 

 house, is not over two hundred, and in a great many 

 neighborhoods much less than that; and the average cost 

 of these establishments for ginning and baling the crop 

 may be put at five thousand dollars, many steam-gins 

 costing twenty and thirty thousand, and, on the other 

 hand, many old-fashioned gin-sheds and old style wooden 

 screws not being worth more than five hundred dollars. 

 But, taking five thousand as a reasonable average, there 

 is, in such a community, a hundred and twenty-five thous- 

 and dollars laid out in appliances for ginning and baling. 



Now, the plan here proposed is that, instead of having 

 this hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars distributed 

 over so large an area and invested in gins and the ma- 

 chinery that accompanies them, let the neighborhood unite 

 in putting up a factory that will gin out this whole crop, 

 bale up in a small compact manner, with excellent bagging 

 and strong varnished hoops, over four-fifths of the crop 

 raised, and which shall also have arrangements for spin- 

 ning and weaving sixty thousand yards of Lowells, Osna- 

 burgs, and strong muslins, annually, and twenty thousand 

 yards of Linseys. 



The number of spindles and looms necessary to produce 

 these eighty thousand yards of cloth can easily be esti- 

 mated, and procured without difficulty. The number 

 should be no more than sufficient to produce this amount 

 of cloth in the course of a year. If a larger number were 

 put up, the building might need to be much stronger and 

 higher than would otherwise be required, and there would 

 be no certainty that the extra looms and spindles might 

 not stand idle for a considerable part of the time. 



The subjoined drawing is a ground plan of a cotton 

 factory of this description, designed for the accommoda- 

 tion of a community that produces five thousand bales 

 annually. 



