MANUFACTURES AND MISCREANTS. 365
of Natchez. The mill works 5,000 bales of cotton annually and
manufactures the best standard quality of brown shirtings and sheet-
ings and drills, turning out 5,000,000 yards of these goods per year,' *
A close corporation—stock held at £5,000 per share, but none in the
market.
The changes in the Mississippi Biver are great and strange, yet
were to be expected; but I was not expecting to live to see Natchez
and these other river towns become manufacturing strongholds and
railway centres.
Speaking of manufactures reminds me of a talk upon that topic
which I heard—which I overheard—on board the Cincinnati boat* I
awoke out of a fretted sleep, with a dull confusion of voices in my
ears. I listened—two men were talking; subject, apparently, the
great inundation. I looked out through the open transom. The two
men were eating a late breakfast; sitting opposite each other; nobody
else around* They closed up the inundation with a few words—
having used it, evidently, as a mere ice-breaker and acquaintanceahip-
breeder—then they dropped into business. It soon transpired that
they were drummers—one belonging in Cincinnati, the other in Hew
Orleans. Brisk men, energetic of movement and speech; the dollar
their god, how to get it their religion,
* How as to this article,* said Cincinnati, slashing into the osten
sible butter and holding forward a slab of it on his knife-blade,' it's
from our house ; look at it—smell of it—taste it. Put any test on
it you want to. Take your own time—no hurry—make it thorough,
There now—what do you say 1 butter, ain't it ? Hot by a thundering
sight—itfs oleomargarine I Yes, sir, that's what it is—oleomargarine.
You can't tell it from butter; by George, an expert can't. It's from
our house. We supply most of the boats in the West \ there's hardly
a pound of butter on one of them. We are crawling right along—
jumping right along is the word. We are going to have that entire
trade. Yes, and the hotel trade, too. You are going to see the day,
pretty soon, when you can't find an ounce of butter to bless yourself
with, in any hotel in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, outside of the
biggest cities. Why, we are turning out oleomargarine woto by the
thousands of tons. And we can sell it so dirt-cheap that the whole
1 Jttsm Qrleeuu Timet-Pemocrfst* Aug. 26,1882,