26 



And now, gentlemen, let me make some practical suggestions in 

 regard to the exhibition. 



What should be aimed at in the exhibition may well be quality 

 rather than quantitj*. Let the greater undertaking grow out of this 

 one now proposed, and be held in New York as the cotton department 

 of the great exhibition of 1883. Let the present one be suggestive, 

 and be devoted more to cotton than to cotton fabrics, although there 

 will doubtless be much machinery offered for the manufacture of the 

 fibre into yarn or cloth. 



Tliis enterprise should be rather with a view to the development of 

 tools and implements for the cultivation and for conversion of the 

 plant into its primary forms of fibre, seed, oil, oil-cake, paper slock, 

 and wool, than with a view to the manufacture of .cotton fabrics. 



For this purpose no excessive or even heavy expenditure will be 

 required, provided the building be itself a part of the exhibition, and 

 be so constructed that it will serve not onjy as a model, but may be 

 taken down and sold in sections for as much or more than it will 

 cost. How this may be accomplished, I will endeavor to show. 



With the increasing use of steam in place of water-power, and the 

 choice of ground which ensues, the construction of cotton factories 

 only one stoiy high is becoming common. Many persons, of whom I 

 am one, are of opinion that a one-story factory may be made safer as 

 to danger of fire ; be less subject to vibration and consequent wear of 

 machinery, more economical in working, and especially in overseeing ; 

 be much lighter, as well as more easy to ventilate and keep uniform 

 in temperature ; while at the same time there is no form in which so 

 large an area of floor surface available for use can be provided at so 

 low a cost per square footT. Some of these points are contested ; but 

 we are prepared to sustain them, and they are incontestable in respect 

 to the building needed for this exhibition. 



1 beg to 'present to 3*011 a picture of a one-stor}^ mill lately con- 

 structed by the Willimantic Thread Company of Connecticut to con- 

 tain fifty thousand cotton spindles, with all necessary machinery for 

 preparing and carding the cotton, all on one floor of three and a half 

 acres in area. 



Here is another picture of a factory covering one acre and an an- 

 nex covering three-fourths of another acre, which cost onl}* fiftj 7 cents 

 a square foot of floor surface, and which is so much lighter than a 

 common mill that the saving in gas pays the interest on the cost of 

 the building. 



Here is another plan that has been adopted in some cases, and 

 which is the one that I suggest to you, because it is almost all, and 

 may be wholly, of timber and glass. 



The mode of construction may be very simple ; the foundation is 

 very light, as the weight of the machinery comes on the frequent 

 piers placed beneath in a basement high enough to carry all the shaft- 

 ing. For your purposes, the foundations may be trestle-work in 

 place of brick or stone, if cheaper, and posts may be used instead of 

 piers. 



