PART SIXTEENTH.

COTTON MANUFACTURING IN ALABAMA.

By Henry V. Meigs, Macon, Gu.

The census of 1880 makes the following statements in regard to the cotton manufacture of the United States during that year:

Upon these statements I submit the following remarks: Steam and water power used in nearly equal proportions. Loss in weight in manufacture (pounds) . . . . . . ...143,077,740 (N. B.—-This shows about 19 per cent. of loss, which is larger than is generally estimated.)

Average cost of cotton per pound....

53 cents.

11700

3

.31 fo

$19.53

(Mem.-Looms and all other machinery included.)

66

Cotton spun by each spindle during the year (pounds)

57

$8.16

18.00

Increase of value resulting from manufacture....8105,144,386 This increase is 14 cents per pound on 750,343,986 pounds. The total crop of the season of 1879-'80 was 5,835,000 bales. At an average 475 pounds gross, it was, in pounds, 2,771,625,000. If all manufactured at home at the same increase of value, the total increase would have been over $388,000,000.

The increase of value as deducted from the statements of the census was made on all numbers of yarn from eights to sixties, and is only stated to show the vast aggregate; and while it is no guide to the valuation of the lower numbers, it shows a very great increase in the value of the higher numbers.

Messrs. Latham, Alexander & Co., of New York, in their comprehensive work on Cotton Movements and Fluctuations," state the crop of 1889-'90 — ten years later than the - at 7,307,281 bales, of which the American consump tion was 2,396,959 bales and exports 4,910,327 bales.

census

54

100

They report the average weight of the bale for the season at 478 pounds and the average price 11 cents per pound. They report the value of the exports. of cotton in the season 1889-'90 at $250,507,314, and the value of the entire crop $373,161,831, so that according to their estimates the American consumption had a value of $122,654,507.

53

The census estimate of value for 1879-'80 is 115 cents per pound, almost exactly the same as Messrs. L., A. & Co. make it ten years later.

If the increase of value due to manufacture in 1890 is as the census makes' it in 1880, viz., 14 cents per pound, the home manufacture added $160,404,496 to the lint value of last year's crop.

At the same rate, the increase of value due to manufacturing the entire crop at home would have been $489,004,784, and the crop of 1889-'90 in its manufactured state would have had a total valuation of the enormous sum of $862,165,615.

Will the time ever come when the whole crop will be manufactured at home?

The object of the writer in presenting this prodigious and somewhat formidable array of figures, with other remarks to follow, is to arouse attention to the enormous "possibilities" of cotton and its home manufacture.

The census of 1870 reports the number of spindles in that year as 9,539,634 and the census for 1880 as 10,653,435, while Cotton Facts, a valuable annual publication, makes the number in 1890 14,405,000. Mr. Edward Atkinson, the eminent statistician, I think estimates the number at about the same.

The average consumption in 1870 is stated by the census at 56 pounds in the north per spindle, and at 140 pounds in the south per spindle. The northern yarn averaged 28.56 hanks per pound; the southern yarn averaged 12.67 hanks per pound.

Admitting for the purposes of this article, that the crop 1889-190 was 7,307,201 bales, the loss in manufacturing would be, at 14 per cent., 488,997,824 pounds. Suppose the manufacture to have been exclusively at the north, the manufacturers at the north would have paid, at even the low rate of 50 cents per hundred pounds, on this vast quantity of cotton waste, useless and valueless, nearly two and a half million dollars. Suppose this manufacture to have been exclusively at the south, this vast sum would have been saved and kept at home, amounting in ten years to $25,000,000, simply because every ounce of waste would have gone to the waste piles of the southern mills instead of being carried uselessly hundreds of miles to northern and eastern mills.

If manufactured at home (in the south) every ounce of product would have been marketed without any deduction of value due to waste, but it would have cost less per pound to get it to market than the raw cotton of which it was made.

The difference in the rate of freight on lint cotton and manufactured goods is due to the manifest interest in freighters to foster the various enterprises along their various routes. The diminished freight charge is one of the many advantages the south has over its competitors.

The writer has found no statement of the water powers of Alabama; but the number must be very great and to become in the future, of very high value. The State seems to have a regular slope from the northern portion all the way to the

gulf, down which the water plunges, at times with high falls. Some of these are not conveniently located on the existing lines of transportation, but all will be made accessible and useful as time passes.

The writer, in October, 1890, published an article in The Popular Science Monthly, intended to show that of two mills, exact duplicates of each other, one operated by water power at Augusta, Georgia, and the other by steam in Philadelphia, the Augusta mill in twenty years (what is frequently called the lifetime of a mill) would show a clear, undeniable advantage of $240,000. The attempted demonstration has never been refuted, and may stand the test of the most exigent criticism.

Some manufacturers prefer steam to water, as a more steady power, but when the water wheel is adapted to the work it has to do, it must be more steady than steam power. The water wheel has no dead points, as the steam engine has, but every inch of its periphery has precisely the same speed as that of the periphery preceding and following any given point, and the water wheel must afford a very regular power, notwithstanding all that has been said upon the subject.

In regard to the machinery employed, any manufacturer at the south can purchase the very best; so that in this respect the south stands upon the same level as its competitors.

In a section where land can be bought per acre at the same price as is paid for a square foot in some of the larger cities, there seems to be no wisdom in the construction of mills whose upper stories climb the air.

Why not place the mills all on one floor, entirely uninterrupted by partition walls. Let the ceilings be twelve feet from floor to the lower edges of roof timbers, and nothing above, below the roof except one or more gangways of stout plank, so as to give access to the shafting for oiling, and at the same time to allow ample ventilation.

There need be no elevators to carry fire from one to three or four other floors; no staircases, to weary the operatives; not even a belt hole in the floor, which may be four inches thick, so that the entire floor can be flooded in case of incipient fire.

Let ample arrangements be made for heating and lighting,

and the windows so arranged that the foremen can readily temper the air in the room to suit not only the comfort and health of the employes, but also the degrees of humidity so important in some branches of the work.

The picking or blowing room is by far the most liable to sudden fire. It should be distant at least twenty-five feet from the main building, with blank walls contiguous. It should be built of brick or stone, with a cement floor four inches, at least, thick, to endure the falling of the cotton bales. It should be lighted abundantly, and when operated at night should have the lamps (unless electrical) placed in a close box outside of the picker room, so as to have the sash as a shield to prevent the loose lint cotton from being accidentally ignited.

The ceiling of this dangerous room should be as high (twelve feet) as that of the main building.

There will still be unavoidable danger of ignition of the loose cotton, which burns like a flash of powder, from some extraneous matter passing through the rapidly revolving beaters; but with a good system of sprinklers overhead to be set in action simply from the heat below, and with a large hose connected with an ample reservoir outside, the danger and the insurance will be reduced to a minimum.

In such a mill the manager can see the entire work going on, and moreover can be seen by all the operatives. When one reflects upon the physical labor saved in relieving hundreds of hands from climbing three or four staircases several times daily, and that for years, the one floor system shows a great advantage.

The cotton may be arranged so as to enter the picker or blowing room at the far end; thence into the carding department, and so through the various machines to the opposite end of the main building, so that it will pass regularly onward and not be carried back again to interfere with the oncoming work.

With ceilings twelve feet high, there need be no lack of head room in passing under the driving belts, and they may with a little ingenuity be placed in very regular lines, not to interrupt the view, while at the same time they do not compel stooping to pass under them.

Of course an ample fire apparatus will be provided, in