. 10 



Northern manufacturers to come here than it is even for }'ou to go 

 North ; and they will come to this not too distant point when they 

 might not be able to go farther. 



For these reasons, and for many others, this city seems to be the 

 place. It is flanked on all sides by the true cotton country, and it is 

 the place of all others in which the new tools and implements, the 

 new gins and presses, the new oil mills and the like, may be made or 

 distributed. 



But, more than all, it is the railroad as well as the manufacturing 

 centre of a section that may soon be one of the most active and pro- 

 gressive in this broad land. This city is ceasing to be provincial, and 

 is becoming cosmopolitan. It is in a State whose credit is good, in 

 which common schools are actively promoted, and in which even the 

 bluntest of free speech does not abate the welcome that is extended 

 to the citizens of any State. [Laughter and clapping of hands.] 



I shall use this right in the freest manner, because I propose to 

 prove, before I have done, that success in secession would have been 

 the greatest economic misfortune to Georgia and her sister cotton 

 States, and that the first fruits of personal liberty, already gathered, 

 are but the shadow of what is yet to come. 



In respect to the plan for the exhibition, it may also be stated, that, 

 in point of fact, no exhibition is needed to stimulate the rapid devel- 

 opment of machinery for spinning and weaving the fibre of cotton. 

 Improvements in this branch of cotton manufacturing already* proceed 

 with such rapidity, that it is almost impossible to keep one *end of a 

 large cotton mill up to a first-class standard until the other end is 

 finished and started ; and airy manufacturer who neglects to adopt 

 the improvements that almost monthly constitute an advance in some 

 department of the art, will become bankrupt in ten or fifteen years. 



It happened to fall to me to be the treasurer of a mill for whose 

 use the first u slasher," so called, was imported from England in 

 186G. The slasher is a machine for sizing or starching the warp 

 in preparation for weaving it, and it took the place of the so-called 

 "dresser." The dresser was operated in a room at a constant heat 

 of a 100 to 110, and in an atmosphere saturated with the steam 

 given off by sour starch. One machine attended by one man was 

 needed for every forty or fifty looms. The slasher is operated in a 

 cool, well-ventilated room ; and one machine attended by one man, 

 with a boy to aid him, will serve two hundred and fifty to three hun- 

 dred and fifty looms, the number varying with the description of the 

 fabric. This is the most marked single change that has occurred 

 within my experience. Most of the improvements are in the minor 

 details, and their full effect cannot be understood except by a com- 

 parison of one somewhat distant period with another. 



In order that my comparison ma} r be made with accurac} 7 , periods 

 must be chosen in which the money b} T which the cost of manufac- 

 turing is measured has been true inone}'. It is useless to make any 

 comparison of the ante-war period with any date prior to Jan. 1, 

 3879, when the specie standard was restored, because the lawful 



