18 



submit it to Northern manufacturers ; and I want you to criticise it, 

 and to point out to me the errors into which I have fallen. Am I 

 right or wrong? Can }*ou raise cotton and wool off the same field? 

 If not, why not? What will your exhibition show on this point? 

 Cotton and wool, perhaps paper stock from the same field. 



In nry recent communication to u The New York Herald," propos- 

 ing an exhibition devoted to cotton and its products (which proposi- 

 tion you are now considering), it was suggested that a portion or the 

 whole of the hulls of the cotton seed might be devoted to the manu- 

 facture of paper at a low cost. 



As this has been questioned, the writer has since informed himself 

 more fully, and he finds by consultation with an experienced paper- 

 maker, who has worked cotton-seed hulls into paper, that the product 

 of pulp from hulls taken from seed that has not been passed through 

 a linter to remove the very short and fine fibre left by the gin, will be 

 fifty per cent of pulp. . 



The treatment is boiling under pressure with caustic alkali, about 

 twent3~-five pounds soda-ash, twenty-five pounds lime, and four pounds 

 bleaching powders, to one hundred pounds of hulls. The cost of the 

 alkali in Boston would be sixty to seventy cents per one hundred 

 pounds of hulls. 



I have no practical knowledge of this matter ; but, if these state- 

 ments can be accepted, another product of the fifty thousand square 

 miles under consideration hereafter b} T conversion of the least valu- 

 able part of the proposed subsistence of the sheep, to wit, the hulls 

 may be five hundred thousand to seven hundred and fifty thousand 

 tons of excellent pulp ready for use by the paper manufacturer. 

 The hulls are also used to some extent for tanning. I am also 

 informed that they are used for packing railroad axle-boxes, and are 

 much better than cotton waste. The stalk of the cotton plant is also 

 full of fibre, and I have seen some specimens of paper made from the 

 stalks that looked veiy promising. 



The figures of the several products now given are somewhat larger 

 than those first given in "The New York Herald," because it was 

 thought that if the full case was all stated at the beginning it might 

 really be deemed visionary to some persons to whom the facts are 

 new. 



The cliinate of a large portion of the cotton States is well suited 

 to the production of fine clothing or merino wool. This section con- 

 stitutes especially the upland country of Mississippi, Alabama, Geor- 

 gia, South Carolina, and a large part of Texas, a section not as hot 

 as Spain or as the La Plata country, or the pampas of South America, 

 from which latter point comes the fine " mestiza " wool. 



There is one section constituting a part of .Georgia and South 

 Carolina, known there as the " thermal belt," lying south-east of the 

 Blue Ilidge, over which the warm winds from the south-west are 

 deflected b}' the mountains, fending off the sea-breezes and storms that 

 affect the lands nearer the coast. It is a healthy country, well 

 watered by perennial streams flowing from the mountains, which, 



