UC-NRLF

SB

249
A87
1881
MAIN

W tf

ADBRESS

OF

EDWAED ATKINSON

II

OF BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS,

GIVEN IN ATLANTA, GEOBGIA,

IN OCTOBER, 1880,

FOR THE PROMOTION OF AN INTERNATIONAL COTTON
EXHIBITION.

BOSTON :
A. WILLIAMS AND COMPANY,

No. 283 WASHINGTON STREET.
1881.

The organization of this association, comprising the most intelligent and
progressive men in the cotton trade, was greeted with enthusiasm throughout
the country. It became apparent at once that the project would be pushed
vigorously, and would redound to the vast benefit of our leading national
industry. Following the plan laid down by Mr. Atkinson, the exhibition is
intended to represent every thing that concerns the growth of the plant, the
fertilization and treatment of the crop, the handling of the staple in every
shape, and the commercial disposal of raw cotton ; and also its manufacture
in every form, the kind of mills and machinery for such purposes, and all
that the most recent invention may afford for the improvement of these pro-
cesses. Machinery of all the classes demanded in cultivation first, and next
in ginning, baling, packing, and compressing raw cotton, belongs to the first
division of machinery exhibits. The machinery requisite for the manu-
facture of cotton, with the best form of mills, the most economical applica-
tions of power, and all the details of subsequent manufacture, constitute a
great department in which there is a world of interest. The cotton plants
and fibres of all countries, and the whole line of cotton fabrics, with com-
parisons of primitive methods and present improved processes, will form a
feature of great interest and value. Intelligence of the utmost consequence
upon all these subjects will be imparted. The prospectus will shortly be
issued, setting forth minutely all desirable information.

Many letters have already been received from nearly every part of the world,
and the only doubt that now remains is about the probability of having
space enough to properly represent all that will be sent to exhibit.

Such an exhibition cannot fail to do a great service. It will impress forci-
bly upon the minds of the world that the South has a great future before it,
which, with proper aid and encouragement, it has the enterprise and good
judgment to cultivate in a broad and liberal manner. The exposition which
Mr. Atkinson has proposed will be an immeasurable blessing to the South ;
and it will doubtless stretch its hands out in the liberal course now open to
it, becoming prosperous in its own right through a liberal development of its
own resources.

JOHN W. RYCKMAN,
Secretary International Cotton Exposition Association.

The writer may be permitted to submit a few words more upon one
branch of the subject of his address, about which there has been con-
siderable misconception; viz., his views upon the establishment of
the cotton manufacture in the cotton States. His Southern friends
appear to have been somewhat disappointed because he will hot
commit himself to a recommendation of Southern cotton factories as
an investment for Northern capital.

He would have preferred .to omit all reference to this matter, either
in the address or at the present time, had it not been in a measure
forced upon him. The editor of a paper in New Orleans desired
him to write an article upon cotton manufactures in the South, which
he declined to do ; adding that he could not conscientiously recom-
mend the investment of capital in Southern cotton mills. This note
was not intended for publication, but was published, and caused a
good deal of discussion ; the writer's position as special agent of the
census on cotton manufactures giving it an undue prominence.

The proposed exhibition could not have a more urgent reason than
but to determine this question. The manufacture of cotton is a unit ;

it consists of three distinct departments : to wit, 1st, the preparation
of the cotton for the spinner ; 2d, spinning ; 3d, weaving and finishing.

The preparation of the cotton must be conducted near the place
where the cotton is grown : it must therefore be diffused over a wide
area. It offers a vast field for invention, improvement, and for profit.
On the other hand, the spinning and weaving of cotton in factories
tends, iix all countries, to concentration in special places. Climatic
conditions may have much to do with the first beginnings ; but after
a time the whole training and habit of the people are directed to the
work, — all the subsidiary empk>3Tments are established, a market
exists for the waste, and the subdivision of labor is carried to the
point of utmost economy. All this is necessary in a business that is
so close, that the profit or loss in the larger part of the work turns
on a quarter of a cent a yard.

The special districts in which the cotton manufacture has become
established are those in which the mean temperature gives the stimu-
lus needed for the continuous work of the factory, and where in-door
work is more consistent with comfort than out-door labor.

It is true that, many years since, the daughters of the farmers of
New England constituted the most numerous 'class in the cotton fac-
tories, but they have long since gone into easier and better paid
occupations ; and the factories would now be unable to compete, even
in the relatively dense population of the North, were it not for the
constant supply of French-Canadian operatives.

If this difficulty obtains in the North because of the competition
for labor in the vast diversity of the less conspicuous branches of
work, how much greater may it not be in the South ? The Southern
friends of the writer may not be averse to accepting an opinion that
the South has a vast field of wprk in the manufacturing and mechanic
arts that promises a much greater profit than the manufacture of
cotton fabrics can offer for many years to come.

Let us consider some of these, first admitting fully that the cli-
matic conditions of Atlanta and throughout the Piedmont district may
be favorable to the cotton manufacture. There ai?e many other rea-
sons why many other branches of industry should precede the textile
factory.

Ought not capital to be first used in the undertakings that will give
employment to the largest number of persons at the highest wages ?

For instance, the largest tannery in the United States is now situ-
ated at Chattanooga, Tenn. Why should the six hundred hides that
are daily sent there from New York, to reach the supply of oak-bark,
furnished by the woods of Tennessee, be sent back to the North to be
made into boots and shoes ? It requires an investment of eight hun-
dred to twelve hundred dollars for each operative employed in the cot-
ton factory, less than four hundred dollars in a boot or shoe factory.

A few comparisons may be useful to make this point clear. Tho
industrial census of Massachusetts of 1875 was very accurately
taken. The number of cotton spindles then existing was somewhat
less than now ; but the data will serve as well for comparison as any
that could now be compiled.

The capital then invested in cotton mills was, in round figures,

The persons employed

Average capital to each operative . .

Average earnings of each operative per year .

Value of product

$64,000,000

60,176

$1,060

$334

$78,000,000

BOOTS AND SHOES.

Capital invested

Persons employed

Average capital to each person .

Average earnings to each operative

Value of product

$18,700,000

48,090

$390

$455

$89,400,000

LEATHER.

Capital invested ......

Persons employed

Average capital to each person ....
Average earnings to each .....
Value of product

METALS, METALLIC GOODS, MACHINES,

Capital invested

Persons employed

Average capital to each person

Average earnings to each person

Value of products ......

. % . $8,400,000

6,620

$1,310

$580

. $23,700,000

AND MACHINERY.

. $35,800,000
27,124
$1,320

$44,300,000

But it is in the lesser arts that a small capital serves for the em-
plo}Tment of a large number of persons at full wages.

In 1865 we had the following averages and numbers in Massachu-
setts : —

Agricultural implements .
Artisans' tools ....
Carriages and wagons
Clocks and watches ....
Clothing (in special establishments)

Furniture

Musical instruments

Miscellaneous

Employed. Earnings.

1,176
1,132
3,003
1,106

13,702
5,800
2,095

18,676

$680
646
622
707
446
570
866
426

These are but a portion. Outside of this list may be found the
thirt}r thousand blacksmiths, carpenters, tinsmiths, coopers, harness-
makers, plumbers, roofers, and other artisans, employing but a small
capital, and each earning, on the average, five hundred and eighty
dollars per year.

Since 1875 the specie standard has been restored, prosperity has
returned, and all these earnings must be increased by ten to twenty-
live per cent ; in some branches even more.

It is these lesser occupations, requiring but small capital, managed
by individual owners, and paying high wages, that build up States
and create towns and cities.

Iron is now made at Chattanooga at a less cost than in Pennsylva-
nia ; and both there and in Atlanta the use of iron is rapidly increas-
ing. Where are to be the shops in which the tools of the new South
are to be made?

Where are to be the Southern manufactories of clothing, a branch
of work that gives employment to vast numbers of Northern women
in their own homes, besides thousands who are employed in the cities?
Skilful sewing women earn much higher wages than factory opera-
tives, and the only "poor sewing women " are those who don't know
how to sew. There were thirty-one thousand women employed in
their own homes in Massachusetts, in 1875, in the manufacture of
clothing, straw goods, whips, &c.

The deposits in the savings banks of Massachusetts, mostly be-
longing to her working people, amount to $220,000,000 at the pres-
ent time.

With the extension of the common school, and the rapid increase
of an industrious and thrifty body of citizens in the South engaged
in these necessary pursuits, capital will be rapidly absorbed, and
there will be no sure supply of operatives for cotton mills on any
large scale, because other pursuits, offering conditions of life more
consistent with the conditions of a climate in which out-door work,
or pursuits that do not require^ continuous labor ten to twelve hours
a day and three hundred days in a year, will be open to all.

On the other hand, the most important branch of the cotton manu-
facture — that of ginning, packing, and preparing cotton for the use of
the factory — must continue to be done in the South, and every mil-
lion dollars spent in the right manner in this department will produce
more wealth and do more to build up the cotton States than any ten
million expended in cotton factories. In this connection, the com-
munication to be found in the Appendix, lately made by the under-
signed to " The Planter's Journal" of Vicksburg, Miss., will not be
without interest.

It is in order that these opportunities for immediate profit ma}r be
made apparent that the cotton exhibition should be held.

There are two corporations in New England that operate forty per
cent more cotton spindles and looms than all the fifty cotton factories
of Georgia combined ; and each of these is adding more spindles to
its present capacity, relying in part for its market upon the greater
purchasing power of its Southern consumers, as they engage in the
diversified occupations now open to them since the curse of slavery
was removed from their section. There are four Northern estab-
lishments operating more spindles and looms than are contained in
all the cotton mills south of Maryland. Northern manufacturers do
not fear Southern competition, but will promote the extension of
cotton manufacturing as much as good judgment will permit. It
would be greatly to their advantage to have a solid body of men in

8

the South interested like themselves in promoting better ginning,
baling, and handling cotton as it comes from the field.

In another generation or two the time may have come for numerous
and large textile factories in the Piedmont district ; but for the pres-
ent no increase of cotton spindles in the cotton States is likety to
keep pace with the increasing demand for cotton fabrics of the same
section.

Let the citizens of the Southern States visit the North, and exam-
ine its methods of industry, and it will soon become apparent to
them in which direction their attention should be turned, and that,
although no one can undervalue the importance of the cotton manu-
facture as it is now established in the North, it is yet a relatively un-
important factor in the vast field of her manufactures ; the value
of its product even in Massachusetts, where forty-five per cent of all
the cotton spindles of the country are to be found, being less than
one-sixth the value of the manufactures of that State, and giving
employment to a less proportion of its population of working age.

The greatest need of the present time is, that the citizens of the
two sections that have been so widely parted until recent times,
should visit each other, learn the respective methods and opportuni-
ties of each State, and become convinced that in their mutual or
inter-dependence is the foundation of their true union.

It is in order to promote such intercourse that the undersigned feels
most solicitous that the cotton exhibition shall be held.

The Southern farmers are as little informed about the cotton manu-
facture of the North as the operatives, and even some of the em-
ployers of the North, are in regard to the production of the cotton
fibre.

Let each class learn where it can most profitably excel. The rail-
road has almost eliminated distance ; and each section that serves
the other best, serves itself also. In teaching this lesson, the cotton
exhibition will be a great schoolhouse full of instruction.

Slaveiy repelled where liberty unites. In the time that now seems
so distant, no Southern man could learn the open secret of the North,
or, if he learned it, he could not appty it in a section where skill and
education were forbidden, and where it was a felony to teach the
laborer to read ; no Northern man could cariy his rights as a citizen
of the country into any slave State, or attempt to assert them there
without danger to his life, nor could he study the sj'stem of labor as
a mere question of econom3T without the risk of being hanged as a spy.

All these malignant conditions have passed away. The active Miul
vigorous men born of the new South refuse to be controlled am
longer by the Bourbons of that section ; and the " stalwarts " of the
North, who dare not trust the principle of liberty to work its just
results, are being themselves classed as Bourbons incapable of guid-
ing or directing the true union that now exists in this Nation.

EDWARD ATKINSON.

BBOOKLINE, MASS., Jan. 13, 1881.

ADDRESS AT ATLANTA.

(Reprinted from " The Atlanta Constitution,")

GENTLEMEN, — It gives me great pleasure to assent to the request
of some of your number, and to address }TOU on the subject of the
proposed exhibtition to be devoted to cotton.

When I planned this trip it was intended merel}7 for a change and
recreation : but I received a telegram from Mr. Kimball, informing
me I might be called upon to speak to }Tou ; and I therefore prepared
this address in the short time left me, incorporating with it a state-
ment previously written, which I intended to verify on this visit to
the South. In the short time permitted me, I had no time to prune
it or to smooth its rough points and expressions ; and I am, on the
whole, glad of this. When you challenge a Northern man to speak
to you, it is better that you have his first thought.

The kingdom of cotton has been long divided ; and, as it has been
said that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand, I have re-
ferred to some of the causes of its former division, believing that a
thorough union can onty be promoted by a full discussion of the facts
and methods of the past, the changes and the prosperity of the
future.

If I have been somewhat sharp in the points I have made, bear
with them, remembering that I only speak as an economist, and not as
a party politician. When we who are business men take a firm hold
upon political questions, and try men and measures by their effect on
industry and commerce, a great advance in the true science of politics
will have been made. This is what I have attempted in this address.

It happens to have fallen to me to suggest that such an exhibition
devoted to cotton should be held ; and , so far as I am entitled to give
an opinion as to the best place to hold it, I now give it in favor of the
cit}* of Atlanta. [Loud applause.] At first I thought the necessary
combinations could be made, and the more needful contributions of
money could be most readily obtained, if New York were selected ;
but I am now satisfied that, even though the exhibition may not be on
as grand a scale in respect to cotton machinery, if the exhibition is
held here, it will be more complete and more useful in all that relates
to the cultivation of the plant and to the preparation of the seed and
fibre, if so held here.

This is the main point, and it is also more important for our

. 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

11

money in use during that time was a lie. It purported to be a dollar,
but was nothing but a deferred and depreciated promise of a dollar ;
and any comparison of wages, prices, or conditions of a paper-money
period with a period in which true money is in use, will cheat and
mislead the man who makes it, just as such money cheats the man or
nation that uses it. You cannot even get at true data by converting
the currency into gold for the purpose of comparison, because the use
of a vicious currency perverts all transactions, steals from the laborer
a part of the fruits of his labor, and conveys it to one who has done
nothing to earn it.

In the words of one of the great patriots of the Revolution, — in-
convertible paper money worked then as it has worked with us, —
* * it perverted the morals of the people ; it destro}*ed respect for the
courts ; it ruined the fortunes of those who trusted most in it ; it
enervated the manufactures, mechanic arts, and agriculture of the
county." And of all the mighty monsters born of war it has been
the most difficult to overcome.

Let us then compare the periods of 1840, 1860, and 1880 in re-
spect to the conditions of spinning and weaving the coarse and
medium cotton fabrics that constitute by far the largest consumption
of cotton, that are the most useful, and that are the easiest to make.
In each of these 3*ears true money in gold coin has been our only
standard of value.

Since 1860 the following progress has been made in one branch of
cotton manufacture, from which a rule ina}r be deduced, although the
changes would vary in respect to different classes of fabrics, as they
may be coarse, medium, or fine.

From 1860 to 1878, at which latter date we were nearly on a specie
basis, the following changes occurred in a large mill : —

The number of operatives per thousand spindles decreased from.
twent3*-six and one-half to fifteen, or fort}*- three per cent.

The cost of manufacturing — i.e., preparing, carding, spinning,
and weaving — decreased twent3*-one per cent.

The wages of women increased twenty-five per cent.

Since 1878 the specie standard has been restored, and there has
been a large advance in wages, owing to the restored confidence and
prosperitj* ; and in another large establishment on another class of
goods the following changes have taken place between 1860 and
1880: —

Decrease in the proportion of operatives to each one thousand
spindles, twenty-five per cent.

Decrease in the cost of preparing, carding, spinning, and weaving,
fourteen per cent.

Increase in women's earning, fifty per cent.

Women and girls constitute a trifle under three-fourths of the
whole number of persons employed.

Men's wages in these departments that require special skill have
advanced in the same or greater proportion.

Common labor has not greatly changed since 1860.

12

It is the misfortune of unskilled labor in all countries and at all
times to be compelled to work for a bare subsistence.

Since 1840 the change has been even more startling. One opera-
tive, working sixt}r hours per week in 1880, turns off twice the num-
ber of yards of standard sheeting that one operative could produce
in 1840, working seventy-two hours per week.

The one operative of to-day receives ver}r nearly as much wages as
the two did in 1840, and actualty more than the two did then, count-
ing hour for hour, while each gold dollar of the wages of 1 880 will
buy more comfort and luxury than each gold dollar of 1840.

One-half of this progress was made between 1840 and 1860, and
the other half has been made between 1860 and 1880, in spite of the
distress of civil war and the corruption of inconvertible paper money.

Now, gentlemen of the South, I am going to use free speech for a
purpose, and to speak some plain words of truth and soberness to
you. I shall not permit myself to insult you by admitting even into
m}* own mind that I cannot speak my convictions, and ask searching
home questions here with as much independence as I can in my own
little native town in Massachusetts, If any one here objects to free
speech, let him do it now. Thank God, that time has gone by ! I
speak then to you here and now as a Republican of Republicans, as
an Abolitionist of early time, a Free-Soiler of later date, and a Repub-
lican of to-day ; but I also speak, and yet more truly, as a Democrat
of Democrats, because no man can be a true Democrat who does not
maintain the equal rights of every man, without distinction of race,
color, or condition, to speak, act, and vote as he freely chooses, pro-
vided that by such acts he does not oppress his fellow-man, or commit
an}r injustice upon him. [Applause.]

Upon this righteous foundation this nation has been established.
When it shall have been fully comprehended, the terms of North and
South, of East and West, will be but geographical descriptions ; the
terms will make no separate interests or ideas, and no divided alle-
giance.

One in laws, and one in customs ; one in faith, and one in hope ;
one in charity for the mistakes and errors of each and of all ; one in
effort to overcome the prejudices of the past ; one in the determina-
tion to make our whole country a solid nation, " the promised land "
for the oppressed of all climes and of all races of men, — we shall then
march ever onward toward the prize of our high calling among the
nations of the world. [Continued applause.]

But let us not be diverted from our practical purpose. What we
want now are hard facts ; and, if m}* questions seem like hard knocks,
let the sparks that fly light us on our way to just conclusions.

You will observe that half our progress in the North in the art of
cotton spinning and weaving from 1840 to 1880 was made in the first
half of that period ; and, as it has been in cotton manufacturing, so
has it been in every other branch of the manufacturing and the
mechanic arts in the North.

Now, gentlemen, how much progress did you make in your depart-

13

ment of the cotton manufacture, — in the art of raising cotton and
preparing cotton for the spinner from 1840 to 1860? I don't wish to
impute ignorance or incapacity to you ; I know as well as you do
that some of your planters had as much skill and intelligence as any
men engaged in working land in the world ; I know how you in-
creased 3'our crops : but I ask you, What reduction in the cost of rais-
ing cotton did you as a people make in that period ?

How much did 3*011 change and improve your ploughs, your hoes,
and 3*our cultivators ?

What did 3Tou learn about fertilizers ?

What did 3*011 know about phosphates ?

Was each cotton gin better than the last?

Did each little improvement emanate from one of your own skilled
mechanics who worked the cotton gin, and could not help trying to
improve it?

Was each new gin-house safer and better than the last?

Did you apply your power with more economy?

Was each press more powerful ?

Was each year's crop better ginned and handled, better packed
and sent to market, subject to le^s waste than the one previous ?

You may say "yes," and attempt to prove your case by special
examples. I admit them : they only strengthen the rule ; they only
proved how certainly improvements could be made, and by their very
contrast made the general inefficiency of your former methods more
marked.

There can be no general progress where the laborer is not worthy
of his hire ; and that land will always be accursed where the man
who earns his daily bread by the work of his own hands is not honored.

When slaver3T ended, not only were blacks made free from the
bondage imposed by others, but whites as well were redeemed from
the bondage they had imposed upon themselves.

In that dark and distant past, did your cotton land improve in
product every year? or, to quote the words of Henry A. Wise of
Virginia, " Did not your niggers skin the land, and your white men
skin the nigger's ? ' '

To quote again from Dr. Cloud of Alabama: " Didn't 3*011 gully
your hillsides, and blast your prairies? "

Why do I ask you these questions, and, as it were, rub you on the
raw?

Not only because it is the right of every man in the country to use
free speech, but in this case it is necessary.

We are considering a problem in the science of political economy ;
we are contrasting two systems of labor ; we need to base our future
practice on past experience. There is no more room for passion or
feeling in the case than there would be in considering which kind of
land would produce the most cotton.

When you study the past system of slave-labor with the present
system of free labor, irrespective of all personal considerations, you
will be mad down to the soles of your boots to think that you ever

14

tolerated it ; and, when 3-011 have come to this wholesome condition of
mind, 3*011 will wonder how the devil 3*00 could have been so slow in
seeing it. [Laughter.]

Are you not asking Northern men to come here, and do 3-011 not
seek Northern capital? If you suppose either will come here unless
eveiy man can sa3' what he pleases, as I do now, 3*ou are mistaken.

These are not mere haphazard questions. You have j-ourselves
implanted an ingrained distrust of your own people, of 3*our lands,
of the possibility of white men's labor, of 3*our climate, and of 3'our
soil, in the minds of men in other States and in other countries that
it will take a generation to remove. It will be necessaiy for 3*ou to
repl3' to these questions, and to help the removal of these false ideas,
in order to overcome the prejudices that you yourselves have created,
else the tide of immigration will continue to pass b3* you, and your
lands will be sparsely occupied for half a centiny more.

Didn't 3*011 as a people bear your testimony that white men could
not make cotton? Didn't you believe it?

Didn't you make the world almost believe it?

Was not I subjected almost to ridicule in 1SG1, when I predicted
and proved that larger crops of cotton would be made at less cost by
free labor, and by white labor as well as black, than could possibly
be made by slaves, in my pamphlet on -'Cheap Cotton by Free
Labor;" when also I proved from 3*0111' own records that the mean
summer temperature of your upland cotton country was lower than
that of some parts of the cit3* of Philadelphia, and that the average
of the extremes of heat was greater in St. Louis than in New Orleans ?

Who then would have admitted, as I then asserted, that if there
were a variet3* of the cotton plant capable of being grown in the
North or West, producing no lint but onl}* seed, it would be one of
our most valuable crops, as flax seed now is in some parts of the
West, although the flax stalks are all burned.

Is not 3*our whole system of ginning, baling, pressing, and mar-
keting cotton to-da3* about as crude and as bad as ever, — not quite,
but nearty so?

When you get up this exhibition, I want 3*011 to make one part of
it permanent. You should establish a historic museum, before it is
too late, as a landmark by which to measure .your own progress in
the next decade, and in which to save some of the relics of the past.

Begin with a u nigger hoe " and a bull-tongue plough, a model of a
common gin-stand of the old times, a picture of a pile of seed along-
side rotting and wasting ; and with these place the hand loom and
the spinning wheel of 3*our mountain district with some of 3*our home-
spun goods. Put into this museum the best, the medium, and the
common doings, and I venture to predict 3'ou will say to me a few
3*ears hence, about the economic aspect of the case, what one of my
most valued friends in Georgia said to me a few 3*ears since, when
speaking of the moral and political aspect of slavery, " that he looked
back with utter horror, wonder, and amazement upon practices which
were then tolerated and unthought of because they were customary."

15

x

Gentlemen, apply these questions which I have asked in regard to
the period from 1840 to 1860 to the period that has elapsed from 1870
to 1880. Mark the changes and the improvement; mark the first
fruits of liberty, and tell me then if that progress which has been
accomplished in this last decade, great as it is, is more than the
faintest shadow of that which ma}* be in the near future. What do
we Northern men want to see in this exhibition ?

We hear of trash-cleaners that will give a good j'ield of lint in
good condition from the dirtiest boll picked at the end of the sea-
son to save it, — boll and lint together. The Ralston trash-cleaner,
made in Brenham, Tex., is one. The machine made b}* Mr. Clarke
of your own city is another.

We want you to put up 3-0111* best cotton in one hundred and
twenty pound bales, pressed on the farm with the little Dederick
press that compresses it to forty pounds to the cubic foot, — hard as
elm-wood, and as little liable to soak water, — wired on the cotton>
and sent to market in a clean meal-sack.

We want extra stapled cotton for fine spinning to be combed, not
carded ; and such cotton ought to be ginned on the new roller-gins,
now made in England, that are said to beat the saw-gin, not only in
quality, but in quantity.

We want to see all the crude devices proposed to be used in
picking, although we don't much believe in them.

Somebody is wrong about the Clement attachment. Who is it?
The exhibition will show.

We want to see the colored farmers' cotton in competition with the
white farmers'. We want to prove 103*011 that education pays, and
that the more faith 3*011 have in the capncit3* of 3*our own black
laborers, the better cotton will become 3*ear by year.

Do 3*011 know that 3*011 are the most amusingly inconsistent people
on the face of the earth? I have had a very wide correspondence in
your States, and I guess I have asked more questions of you and
about 3*011, by letter, circular, and by word of mouth, than any
Yankee that ever lived ; and now I am going to give you a summary
of 3'our own testimony about the nigger, spelt with two #'s, as 3*01*
spell it.

You will see how conclusive it is, and you will each of 3*ou be able
to add some one or more facts to sustain every point. I wish you
would give them to me ; but I will say one thing, the harshest con-
demnation of the colored men I ever heard has come from Northern
men. Now to our testimony, — positive in all its points, and good
before any jury in the land : —

I find that, having become free, the black women take such poor
care of the babies, that the colored population has increased faster
than the whites have migrated to Texas : therefore the census is
going to show a much larger relative gain of niggers than any one
dreamed of.

I am informed that the nigger is the laziest and best laborer on the
face of the earth ; that he cares no more for comfort and cleanliness

16

than a beast, and has built large suburbs of good houses in every
city, such as I have seen on this journey and my last one through the
Atlantic States spring before last. Many of 'these houses contain an
abundance of good furniture that he doesn't value a rap, but bunks
on the floor. I learn that he breaks tools worse than he ever did, and
makes larger and more varied crops than ever before ; that he is
lapsing into a barbarism in which he astonishes every one by the
rapiditj* with which he learns to read ; and, having turned altogether
to the bad, is bringing up his children so that, if the poor whites do
not take care, there will be man}' counties, as there are now a few, in
which there are more illiterate whites than there are blacks in ratio to
numbers'; that he makes no progress in the accumulation of propert}r,
and has come into the possession of a great deal of land, especially
in Georgia. He is also charged with the conduct of many large farms
or plantations, and is in an indispensable factor in the future of your
industry, who ought to be removed to Africa by the Colonization
Society. Since I wrote this address, I have received a copy of an
address given by an Episcopal clergyman, I believe of Vicksburg, in
which it is held that the Colonization Society ought to be maintained
to deport the colored population* to Africa, because the negro has
shown such an unexpected capacitj7 for education that he is becoming
instructed to a degree be3'ond any position that he can attain in this
country, and that he therefore ought to go to Africa where he may
have a fair chance. [Laughter and applause.]

Such, gentlemen, is the kind of testimony that may be had. You
don't pay your money, but }'ou do take your choice. My own obser-
vations tell me that the progress of the colored people of the Atlantic
States (I have never been be}*ond them) is one of the marvels of
economic history, pregnant with vast influence in the future.

I must refer to one other subject.

We have also been told that the Northern carpet-baggers have
entered your domains, and, united with the Southern scalawag, in-
fested your Legislatures, and by the power of the negro vote have bur-
dened many of the cotton States with enormous debts.

Gentlemen, I have reason to believe that there is not a single State,
or scarcely one, in which this burden of debt was imposed by the so-
called carpet-bag Legislatures, in which the majority of the white men
in such Legislature did not consist of Southern men, — Southern born
and Southern bred. I cannot prove this ; but if you desire good will
and order, if you want Northern men and Northern methods, you
need that the truth or falsehood of the statements on which this
belief is founded shall be determined, and 3-011 need also to welcome,
and not to repel by social ostracism, the true men and women from
the North who have or shall come here to aid you in leading this
colored race out of bondage into liberty and life.

It is a far easier task than we have in Massachusetts, where nearly
one-fourth of our population is foreign-born, and consists of those
who have come to us subject to deeper prejudices and a kind of igno-
rance more difficult to overcome than any thing you have to meet in
dealing with these people.

17

I speak of these things because no exhibition of material resources,
no show of cotton, corn, or wool, will much avail, unless the mental as
well as the material progress of the States and of the Nation are alike
promoted.

I have asked these questions as to your methods of cultivation, —
as to 3'our treatment of "the land, and as to your tools, implements,
gin-houses, and the like, for a purpose.

Maybe 3*011 think this is somewhat of an assumption on my part, a
mere outside observer and theorist ; but I tell you the questions are not
mine. If you want to find the originals, go to De Bow's Review ; to
Dr. N. B. Cloud of Alabama, and other Southern writers ; to any of
your Southern magazines and papers from 1840 to 1860, — and 3'ou
will find these questions all there, together with assertions of the bad
methods referred to, but put with more vigor and more^pertinence or
impertinence, whichever you choose to call it, than can be attributed
to me.

We are members one of another ; and, if you want to "jaw back,"
come up to New England and search out all our weak places, and we
will cure them if we can.

I assume that 3-011 listen to me now as my good old friend Edward
Harris used to when a man came to look over his great woollen mill.
He was one of the most skilful woollen manufacturers we ever had
in New England, and the doors of his mill were open to every man
who applied to him. 'I asked him one day win- he let me and his
other competitors enter. " Oh," said he, u any one ma3* go in ; but
I always want to go with 'em myself. A 113* fool can teach me some-
thing." So, maybe, I can teach you. [Laughter.]

I suppose 3-ou think I speak with more urgency than the present
case will warrant ; but you would comprehend it more fully if you had
bought as much cotton for manufacturing purposes as I have; and I
only echo the present and urgent complaint of Northern manufacturers
against the dirty, wet, muddy bales of cotton fibre, badly ginned,
badly covered, and badly packed, that still constitute the bulk of the
receipts; and it is sometimes enough to make a saint swear to get a
lot of peeler or other type of extra stapled uplands, and find it all
nepped and gin-cut by' the saw-gin, when we have every reason to
believe that Dobson & Barlow of Bolton, and Platt Bros. & Co. of
Oldham, Eng., have perfected the knife roller-gin so, that- it will not
only save the staple and beat the saw-gin in quality, but also in the
quantity that either will turn off per horse-power applied.

We have reason to believe this on the testimony of the most ex-
haustive series of trials of gins ever made, the results of which have
lately been published by the East India Board.

This is but one of the many subjects that would come up in the
proposed exhibition.

Another subject which impresses me as of the greatest importance
is cotton, wool, and perhaps paper from the same field.

In submitting this as a part of my address, I desire to say that it
was written for a different purpose. I intended, and still intend, to

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,

19

being wooded to the top, condense moisture, and deliver it slowly and
regularly.

This is the land of cotton, of the vine, and of the peach. It is
difficult to conceive a climate better for fine-woollccT sheep. In this
section alone can be found an area almost sufficient for what is pro-
posed hereafter.

Mutton raised on the sea islands, where the sheep browse on the
marsh-mallow, is claimed b}' Charleston epicures to be superior to the
best Southdown.

In the mountain valleys flanking this "thermal" region, possess-
ing a rich soil and a dry, health}', and not very cold climate, the long-
woolled sheep may be grown to any extent, and, higher up, the
Angora goat.

In its natural condition the soil of this upland section will yield
from 175 to 250 pounds of cotton lint per acre.

When properly cultivated and manured, the product can be carried
to 500 pounds per acre or more.

Assuming good cultivation and an average product of 400 pounds
lint, there will be from 1,050 to 1,250 pounds of seed to each acre
on the average. After setting aside enough selected seed for plant-
ing, there will be 1,000 pounds left for feeding.

It is the production of seed that exhausts the soil, and not of fibre.
In the four hundred pounds lint there are but four pounds of chemical
elements drawn from the soil ; but in the thousand pounds of seed
there are forty pounds of phosphate of lime and potash.

If this seed is used for a fertilizer as it comes from the gin, it
works slowly and unevenly. The oil injures it as a fertilizer. It
should all be fed to stock in order to give the best results.

It seems to suit sheep well if fed whole ; but, for hogs and cattlej
the more the oil is removed, the better it is.

Here let it be remarked that the removal of oil b}^ hulling, and
then pressing the kernel, is an ineffectual mode. B}T treatment with
naphtha we have lately obtained oil from the hardest and driest
cotton-seed cake to the amount of 15^ per cent of the weight of the
cake. But, as it has been said, sheep appear to thrive on whole seed,
and must therefore thrive on oil-cake and hulls ground or mixed
together.

The area of land from which the late crop of 5,750,000 bales of
cotton was gathered, was 12,600,000 acres, — a trifle over 19,000
square miles. Assuming that 4,600,000 acres of this land was river-
bottom, and we have 8,000,000 acres of upland under cultivation.
The average product of the whole area in cotton was less than half a
bale, or less than 240 pounds to the acre; and the average of the
uplands could not have exceeded, if it reached, 200 pounds to the
acre in this prolific cotton year just ended.

I have the record from m}' friend, Mr. Dunbar, of an old field of
forty acres of sandy upland, near Augusta, Ga., brought up by the
use of stable manure, composted with dead leaves from adjacent
woods, from 150 pounds to over 500 pounds per acre.

20

The problem of sheep and cotton alternated on the same field may
therefore be considered with reference to an area of 8,000,000 acres
of upland, or 12,500 square miles, on which the proposition is to
double the crop of cotton, and to add the wool clip without cost for
the wool except for shearing.

For this purpose of alternation we shall need four times this area
of land, or 50,000 square miles ; in all 32,000,000 acres.

We ma}- as well omit Texas from the consideration, because most
of her cotton land is too rich for sheep. Her sheep-range is also too
big to begin to consider fencing and folding at present.

We will also omit Louisiana and Arkansas, because there is more
reason to expect bottom-land cotton from these States. We will
assume that this work is to be done in the States of Mississippi,
Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee ;
and that it is also all to be done in such parts of these States as are
subject to the conditions of climate that I have named, — in the coun-
try lying on the flanks of the mountains and midway between them
and the low sandy coast-lands on 'the ocean or gulf sides of the States
named (except Tennessee) ; that is to sa%y, in that portion of these
States where it is now claimed that most of the cotton is raised by
white labor. It will require but seventeen per cent of the area of
these respective States to give the 50,000 square miles now being con-
sidered. We will add three per cent for house and garden spots, and
five per cent for roads and the like. We shall then treat twenty-five
per cent only, or one-fourth of the respective areas of these six States.
This will include the " thermal belt."

Now let us see what may be done with this section on the basis of
ascertained facts.

Each 400 acres can be surrounded by a five-row, barbed-wire, dog-
proof fence, and divided into four fields by cross fences at a cost,
including posts and setting, of less than a thousand dollars.

In each 400 acres let one field be devoted to corn, one to cow-
pease, one to cotton, and one to sheep. The seed from a first pro-
duct of 200 pounds of cotton per acre with the grass which follows the
cotton would carry two and a half sheep per acre on the next field
for six months ; and the cow-pease and corn-fodder would serve for the
rest of the 3*ear. The pea-vines and sheep-clung would increase the
crop, and more sheep would be added each }'ear until in the third or
fourth year the average would be 400 pounds cotton per acre on 100
acres, five sheep per acre on 100 acres, a corn crop increased in the same
proportion as the cotton, say from 10 to 15 bushels to an acre to 20
or 30 bushels on the third 100 acres, and the cow-pease to be ploughed
in or Bermuda grass to be cropped by sheep on the fourth 100 acres.

On the 50,000 square miles, or 32,000,000 acres, we should there-
fore have the following results : —

LOT No. 1. — On 8,000,000 acres (being the same area now in
cotton in the States named from which this year only 3,000,000 bales
cotton were gathered), we should have 6,666,000 bales of 480 pounds
each.

21

LOT No. 2. — On 8,000,000 acres at five sheep each, 40,000,000
sheep, yielding at six: and a half pounds per fleece, 250,000,000
pounds of wool.

LOT No. 3. — On 8,000,000 acres of corn, at 25 bushels per
acre, 200,000,000 bushels of corn.

The oil that ought to be removed from the cotton seed before it is
fed would amount tc/over 100,000,t)00 gallons. •

If these figures seem somewhat visionary, let it be considered that
the acres now under cultivation in corn and cotton in these six States
number nearly 19,000,000, and that what is proposed is only to en-
close 13,000,000 acres of adjacent waste land with what is now under
the plough, and then to put less labor on the whole 32,000,000 than
is now devoted to the 19,000,000 acres.

The cow-pea needs only to be planted and ploughed in ; the sheep
need only to be folded, — there would-be about 3,000,000 less acres
requiring qonstant labor than there are now.

If the same intelligence can be applied to one-quarter part of the
land of six of the cotton States that has been applied in some small
portions of them, these results can all be attained. Their realization
is purely a question of common .sense, moderate industry, and suffi-
cient capital. How long will it take? The following report lately
made at the request of the undersigned may be taken in evidence of
the conclusions given in this statement : —

OAKLEY, ARKANSAS COUNTY, ARK., Sept. 7, 1880.

GENTLEMEN, — It has been suggested to me by Mr. Edward Atkinson
that it might be beneficial to sheep husbandry in the South to give my ex-
perience in sheep-raising in Arkansas, and my experience in feeding cotton
seed to sheep during the winter months.

I commenced sheep-raising in 1854 with 300 grade merino ewes crossing
with Cotswold bucks. I wintered entirely with cotton seed and what grass
they could get in the cotton fields. My flock increased to about 1,000 nead,
which was as many as I could handle. They were a smooth, healthy lot of
sheep, and the deaths from disease were so few that I did not note the rate,
but think two per cent would cover it. All of them I lost in 1862 from
casualties of the war.

In the fall of 1878 I purchased a small flock of inferior sheep, most of
them old, and some with symptoms of rot. I wintered them in the winter
of 1878 and 1879 entirely on cotton seed, giving them a handful of seed
morning and night. I had 20 ewes, and raised 29 lambs; 4 of the ewes not
lambing, and 3 of the 4 dying during the winter of old age.

In 1879 I had 31 ewes, which were wintered during last winter entirely
on cotton seed. They dropped 53 lambs, of which I saved 47. I fed these
more seed, as I had plenty, and fed on the ground, which caused a waste of
nearly one-half the seed. Cotton seed can be purchased at the gins at from
three to four dollars per ton of 2,000 pounds. One ton will winter from 10
to 15 sheep when fed on the ground; if fed in troughs, it would winter 20
to 30 sheep.

I suppose the seed must be good feed, as the sheep look well. A neigh-
bor of mine, who was a large sheep-breeder in Ohio, says that one ton to
40 sheep is enough when they have the run of a pasture, and that he can
winter well a sheep at ten cents per head.

22

There are many cotton plantations in the South that are too much worn
to make the cultivation of cotton profitable that c/mld be brought to their
original fertility by feeding sheep with cotton seed on the fields. These
plantations could be divided into four fields, one of which could be set to
Bermuda grass, which will afford grazing for as many sheep as eight or ten
per acre as long as it would be healthy to keep them on it; one field could be
sown with cow-pease, and fed off the ground daring the winter; and, after
the pease and vines were consumed, the sheep could be fed on the field the
balance of the winter on cotton seed, and their droppings, together with
manure from the pea-vine, would double the crop of cotton; and by this
means the planter would enrich his land and himself at the same time.

I find Bermuda grass as good grazing as any I have ever tried; but it is
only a summer grass, and seems to do best during hot dry weather, but re-
quired to be kept closely grazed, as it gets hard when old; but this could be
remedied by keeping cattle and sheep in alternate pastures.

My experience teaches me that sheep can be wintered in the South at a
cost of ten to fifteen cents per head, and, if credit be given them for the
weeds and briers they destroy and the land they manure, the cost is less than
nothing. Another profit could be added to sheep husbandry at the South,
and that is the increased value of worn-out cotton plantations, which might
be computed at ten per cent on the original cost of the land.

I neglected to say that I sow my Bermuda grass pastures with white
clover, which makes good grazing in the spring before the Bermuda grass has
commenced to grow, and again in the fall after the Bermuda has been
killed by frost. Could the cotton planter of the South be induced to raise
sheep, we could soon export wool instead of importing it.

Respectfully,

J. H. MOORE.

It would seem that an experimental farm ought to be established
for the purpose of testing the best method of growing wool and cotton
on the same field ; and, lest the Washburn and Moen dog-proof fence
should not be sufficient, perhaps it would be well to begin in North
Carolina, where, so I have been informed, the supreme court has
lately pronounced dogs to be ferae natures.

Let us assume the conditions and cost on a moderate scale, so that
the undertaking may not seem so visionary as the large figures given
in the preceding pages.

A farm to be purchased consisting of rather poor sandy soil. This
I assume can be had at less than five dollars per acre.

Say 500 acres at $5 $2,500

Fencing and dividing 400 acres with barbed wire fence . . 1,000
Bam and sheds in centre of the quadrangle, including gin-stand

and other appliances 1,000

Tools and implements 500

Total $5,000

Houses according to circumstances, and five hundred sheep at a
price conditioned on their qualit}7.

It may be assumed that ten thousand dollars would be an ample
capital for such a beginning ; but these figures are based on theory,

23

and not on practice. Perhaps a much less sum would serve the pur-
pose. One thing more may be considered in this connection. While
it is doubtless true that sheep thrive on the whole cotton seed with
all the oil in it, yet it appears that there is too much oil. It affects
the milk of the breeding ewes, and also deposits a great excess of
grease in the fleece.

It would be truer economy to extract all the oil that can be removed
by pressure, and then the ground cake and hulls would be in true con-
dition to feed to sheep, cattle, or hogs.

Machines for hulling the seed can now be purchased at moderate
cost ; and we may be very sure that, as soon as a demand for small
presses for farm use is made, the supply will come. The Dederick
hay-press is now being used for packing cotton fibre to a compression
equal to the density of elm-wood, or forty pounds to a cubic foot,
and the inventor of that press seems equal to an}* emergency.

The removal of the oil, like the removal of the fibre, takes almost
nothing from the land devoted to cotton, the mineral element being
about three-fourths in the kernel and one-fourth hull.

It should be remembered in this connection that the work of two
laborers in the cotton field, producing each ten bales of cotton, and
with the aid of their children picking it clear ; one man's work, or its
equivalent in money, to gin, pack, and move the cotton to the factory
in New England ; and the work there of one, or at the utmost two
operatives, — four or five in all, — suffices for the production of eight
thousand pounds of heavy cotton cloth, sufficient to meet the need of
1,GOO Chinese or 3,200 East Indians. The same number, or perhaps
one more, — say, six in all, — will produce and convert the quantity
of raw cotton into the fine fabrics needed by 1,000 inhabitants of the
United States for their annual supply.

It should also be further considered that we as yet produce in the
United States only about one-half of the cotton that is consumed in
the world, possibly a little more, and that a larger number of the in-
habitants of the globe are to-day clothed in cotton fabrics, spun and
woven by hand, than there are clothed in the product of the machinery
of Europe and America combined.

When all the relations and possibilities of the cotton plant are con-
sidered, even the apparently visionary treatment of the hard facts
presented in this paper may be held to be worth}' of consideration.

I submitted the first draft of this address to Hon. G. V. Fox, late
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, who, in addition to his experience as
a naval officer, has had great opportunities for forming a judgment
upon the topics under consideration, having been for many years in
charge of one of the largest woollen factories of New England. In
response to my request he says, —

" This question of rotating wool and cotton has been a study with
you ; and since you presented it to me last winter at Aiken I have, in
the region you spoke of, made such inquiries as to satisfy me that the
physical conditions are such as to render the success of a trial more
than probable. In fact, I find one man shifting about forty sheep

24

from field to field for the purpose indicated in your paper. In the
Piedmont region of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia,
where cotton by the aid of phosphates is grown to the very foot of
the mountains, it cannot be expected that, alone, it will be able to
compete with the rich bottom of Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi,
Alabama, or the rich lands of Texas."

u But the Piedmont region is the seat of future coarse cotton and
yarn manufacturers, and the cotton grown there will all be wanted,
as will the wool, to render useful the enormous water-power now
running to waste. People are moving into this region, and dotting
the great waste with farms. A moderate flock on each one of these
is more practicable than large flocks in unappropriated lands where
the absence of * dog ' and ' fence ' laws render the business preca-
rious."

1 'On all these subjects it would be very presumptuous for me to
offer any criticism to what you have written other than to say that it
commends itself to my common sense, and the rotation advocated has
found within the field of my inquiries on the spot no obstacles but lazi-
ness and want of capital."

In the original draft of this address I had ventured on some
statements in regard to the climatic condition of the section of land
now under special consideration, in which I had named the so-called
" thermal belt," of which I have heard many accounts. Capt. Fox's
account of this section is so much more complete and authoritative
than my own, that I have ventured to substitute it. Capt. Fox says,
"There are, however, on the first page of }rour paper some remarks
upon meteorology and the ' thermal belt ' which are not of your in-
vestigation, and do not conform to my stud}T of the subject. I
should not criticise.it had I not spent years at sea where meteorology
is part of the daily life, and on land it is a great pleasure to continue
an interest in the subject. There is no portion of the United States
where freezing weather does not occur, excepting Key West and the
southern parts of Florida. I was at St. Augustine in December,
1878, and walked on ice ; the thermometer being 27°. At Key
West it was 51° at the same time. There is probably no winter
where the record will not show freezing weather everywhere in the
United States but in Southern Florida."

"There are among the Appalachian Mountains, from Virginia to
Georgia inclusive, belts of land — thermal they might be called —
where frost does not appear ; but the transition is from fall to freezing
weather, without that intermediate state where the frosts destroy
fruits, cotton, and tobacco. One of the most notorious of these
tracts is near Tryon Mountain, coming down from Asheville to
Spartanburg. It is some two thousand feet above the sea, and
perhaps thirty by fifteen miles. I saw a planter who was growing
cotton there. Fruits have, of course, a great advantage in such a
region. The cause is said to be due to the fact that the parallel
ridges of mountains retain the stratum of air, which, being heated
during the day, ascends to a height where its equilibrium is main-

25

tained ; and this relation, due to special configuration, keeps off the
frosts in the fall, but, of course, not freezing weather, which stretches
everywhere when the sun is on the Tropic of Cancer. With regard
to storms, sea-breezes, and the deflection of winds by the Appalachian
Mountains, it ma}' be observed that hurricanes — the designation of
those terrible tropical meteors — do not reach these mountains,
because such storms, and all widely extended ones, are the product
of heat and moisture. They are born in the Antilles, are rotary in
character, and buried in the prevailing winds, — follow their course
as the circular eddies do when an obstacle is placed in a stream.
Their path is where heat and great moisture exist; otherwise their
force is diminished, and the}' are dissipated. Those that strike our
Atlantic coasts and follow the Gulf Stream are fed by the moisture
and heat of that stream, and their greatest violence is on the ocean
and its shore-line. I was in the mountains of North Carolina when
the great cyclone of 1879 passed up the coast, destroying so much
property at Beaufort, Wilmington, Long Branch, &c. It was only
a gale in the mountains. Other meteors steer straight across the
Gulf of Mexico ; but their violence is expended in that inland sea,
and along its shores, Havana, Key West, Galveston, Mobile. When
the storm passes inland it expands, its violence immediately decreases,
and the whole valley of the Mississippi and the Appalachian Moun-
tains receive their needful rain."

"The first observation one makes in these mountains is, that no
violent storms can exist there such as characterizes the White Moun-
tains, because, except on the very highest peaks, lofty and regular
trees and cultivation reach their summits. They do not deflect these
storms : they emasculate them by depriving 4;hem of moisture, and the
vortex of the meteor, where the greatest force is exerted, must seek
a- water-way for its course. The prevailing winds bring great storms
across our country from the Pacific ; but the}' lose their moisture in
crossing the mountains, and would be dissipated if it were not for the
great chain of lakes, the moisture from which rekindles their fury ;
and they exhibit it in all the cities near their path in their way to the
Atlantic, where they frequently meet a cyclone coming up the Gulf
Stream, and the friction of the two are those terrible storms which
one meets between here and England."

"The cotton belt commencing in North Carolina, averaging two
hundred miles in width, excepting where it ascends the Mississippi
four hundred miles from its mouth, and terminating almost in a point
in Southern Texas, has an axis whose mean temperature is 64°, with
extremes from 27° by 30° to 98° by 104°."

" I have already wearied you, and I should exhaust you if I wrote
you any more of my reflections after two years' travelling in this
wonderful belt. I will finish by observing only, that the warm water
of the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic furnishes the moisture
required for the cotton plant, while they both act as conductors to
draw off the force of those cyclones which are let loose in the very
months when the plant, if in their track, would be utterly destroyed."

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}* fiftj7 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.

27

The structure may be in the form of a Greek cross, the engines
being in the centre. The roof beams are eight feet apart, ten by twelve
inches, or less in j'our climate where 3*011 have no dread of heavy
snows ; the rows of posts twenty-four feet apart, and eight feet apart
in the rows. These divisions are convenient for almost any machines.
Each wing of the cross may be sevent}*-two feet wide, and as long as
called for. The end being a movable shield, sections can be built on
as fast as wanted. The roof to be covered with two and a half-inch
plank tongued and splined, and covered outside with cotton duck
painted with slate paint ; the floors of the same structure. For mill
use there would be one-inch top floor ; but for the exhibition this
would not be needed. Monitors or lanterns at every other bay for
light and air.

Where you have pine timber in such abundance, there can be but
little doubt that you can put up this building at a cost of not over
fort}' cents a square foot of floor. It can all be put together with
bolts and nuts in such a way that, after it ceases to be needed for the
exhibition, it can be taken down without injuiy, and put up again in
sections to serve for gin-stands, workshops, oil mills, or any other
purpose. The whole can be protected against fire by automatic
sprinklers, by means of which a fire sounds its own alarm, lets on its
own water, and puts itself out.

I have lately been hauled over the coals a bit in some of your
Southern papers because I said I could not conscientiously recom-
mend the construction of cotton mills in the South.1 I do not sup-
pose you will be convinced by any thing I can say. Do not think we
fear 3*011 r competition. You have such vast fields in other and more
profitable directions, that we may expect the consumption of cotton
goods to increase here faster than the production possibly can. You
will have a hundred small workshops requiring but little capital to
one cotton mill, but promoting wealth and general welfare in a vastly
greater degree. But if 3*011 build cotton mills, concentrate them ;
don't scatter them. Each mill makes the next one easier to run.
The higher paid artisans and mechanics in these lesser arts and
trades will be our best customers. Then, too, the world is wide ; and,
as I have before stated, the foreign demand must greatl}' increase for
the product of our spindles or those of Europe. There is one point,
however, to which attention ma3T well be turned. The world demands
an enormous quantity of coarse and medium cotton yarn. Nearly
or quite one-fourth the value of cotton fabrics exported from Great
Britain has for some years consisted of yarn. The cost of a yarn

i The writer begs to state that he tried to avoid the discussion of this subject.
The editor of a New Orleans paper telegraphed him to write an article upon
Southern cotton manufactures, which he declined to do, only saying that he could
not conscientiously recommend investments in Southern cotton mills. This
reply was somewhat indiscreetly published, and has led to some unfriendly com-
ments, arid also to some absolute misstatements of the case. The writer has
given some reasons for an opinion, which, after all, is but that of a single person.
If he is mistaken, no one will be more glad to acknowledge the error; and he
would ask what method could be better adapted to prove him to be wrong than
the proposed cotton exhibition, with all its discussions ?

28

mill is comparative!}' small, and the product requires relatively few
hands. If any thing more is done, it ought to be in the direction of
spinning yarn for export ; but this, like all branches of the cotton
manufacture, must be developed slowly, as the margin of profit is
very small, and the business will be easily wrecked, not because of
the cost of manufacturing, but because of the absence of the facili-
ties for distribution. A great commerce cannot be improvised, and
high commissions and charges soon eat up small profits on a far dis-
tant traffic.

The true diversity of employment which makes self-sustaining
communities consists of occupations that do not appeal to the im-
agination like the great cotton factory ; but the artisans and mechan-
ics who work in iron and wood, the stove-maker and the like, the
furniture-maker, the tinman, the house wright, the wagon-builder,
the blacksmith, and the whitesmith are the most valuable citizens.
The hundred arts that require but little capital and support many
men are the ones that, next to the farmer, form the bone and sinew
of society. When these are established, the textile factory may well
follow, but ought not to precede in any large degree.

To one other subject let me advert. It is new to us, as well as to
you. If I understand your climate and soil, you can raise fodder
crops to any extent ; but you cannot compete with the West or with
many parts of the North in the production of ripened grain. If the
method of saving green crops, called ''ensilage," proves to be all
that is claimed for it, or even half, and it shall be possible to keep
fodder green and succulent for a year, then the oft-quoted benefactor
who made only two blades of grass grow where one grew before, must
give way to him who will be yet more blessed, — the man who feeds
ten head of cattle where one found but a meagre pasture before.

If to the sheep fed upon the cotton seed you ma}* add great droves
of cattle fed on the corn, oats, rye, or millet saved in its green state,
twenty, forty, even sixty tons to the acre ; each two and a half
tons worth one ton of the best of English ha}' ; good feed for cattle,
sheep, or hogs, — then what? Why, I am afraid we should all become
as lazy as Emerson once said all mankind are, that is as lazy as each
man dares to be ; and down here in the delicious climate of these
mountain valleys, through which I have lately passed feasting my
eyes on scenes of beauty never conceived before, I know how lazy
one man at least would surely be.

I am not sure that you will not charge me with being the prophet
of the millennium of the political economist, a period when moderate
industry and intelligence will assure so comfortable a shelter and so
good a subsistence that it won't pay to be rich.

The millennium I am very sure 3*011 will reach long ere we do who
dwell amid the granite and ice of New England.

But, while we shall rejoice in your welfare and share in it in the
indissoluble bonds of common interests by which this nation is now
held, we shall not envy you.

Our own old Commonwealth of Massachusetts is dearer to her sons

29

than any other land however fair to see ; and under the stimulus of
her harsher climate, with the sharp bite of the east wind between our
teeth, we shall strive with you to see which shall send forth the truest
men. Let me close this address, which touches so many points and
works its devious way through so many channels, by recalling to
your minds the words of one of the oldest English poets : —

" Man is his own star, and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Defies all time, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late ;
His acts his angels are, or, good or ill,
The fateful shadows that walk by him still."

I thank you, gentlemen, for the attention you have accorded me*
May I be permitted to add a few words, not on party politics, but on
the higher questions that make and unmake parties? [Cries of
"Good, good."]

I have claimed to be a Republican of Republicans, because, from
the time I came to man's estate, and even before, I had opposed
slavery, — not only because I thought it morally and politically wrong,
but even more because I considered it the greatest economic blunder
under which a State could suffer.

During one of the last months of the civil war I happened to visit
the camp near Washington, in which the deserters from Petersburg
and Richmond were daily collecting in increasing numbers. I talked
with many of them, and found them to be mostly veteran soldiers
who had fought on the Confederate side from the beginning. At last
I asked a soldier from Louisiana — a vigorous, intelligent-looking
man — why he had surrendered. His black eyes gleamed with sub-
dued passion, as he replied, " I have just found out what we have
been lighting for." — " What was it? " said I. " Fighting for rich
men's niggers, G- — d — 'em ! I won't fight for them any longer."

When I heard these words, gentlemen, I saw before me a vision of
the prosperity on which you have just entered in the land of the sunn}r
South. I knew then that no longer would white and black alike be
kept in the bonds of poverty and ignorance in order that the few
might live in luxury on what they had not earned. It was that man's
insight into the cause of the war that marked its end.

That time of prosperity has come ; and you, gentlemen, are my
witnesses that never has the general welfare of the people of Georgia
been as great as in this last year of abundance, and that never before
has there been open to you such an opportunity to accumulate wealth
as now appears in your near future : but this new wealth will be of
that highest type gained by rightful methods, in which each dollar
that any man passes to his own credit on his business ledger will
mark a dollar's worth of service that he has rendered to his fellow-
men.

I have claimed also to be a Democrat of Democrats upon the
ground that only those are entitled to the name who fully accept th.Q

30

rule that every man, be he rich or poor, black or white, has an equal
stake in righteous government. The rich man has no greater claim
to influence merely because he possesses wealth, than the poor man
because he desires to attain it, except so far as in the attainment of
his property he has gained an honest influence over others. The best
reason that could have been assigned for the change of the govern-
ment of the State of South Carolina when Wade Hampton was chosen
was given me by an old negro whom I met at the Capitol in Columbia
a few months after the change, of which I asked him the reason :
"De reason, boss," said he, " de reason is dat you can't put
ign'ance ober intelligence, and make it stay." [Applause.]

Gentlemen, when you trust fully in the democratic principle that
every man is entitled to one vote, and when no man fears to have
that vote counted, there will be less danger of the continued control
of ignorance over intelligence than there is when resort is had to any
other method ; and only when such is the rule will free institutions be
fully established.

The exhibition that you propose to bring into existence here will
be but an example of the industrial forces that are pervading this
whole land, but, in more marked degree than elsewhere, your own
State and your own section of this land. Here is the place where
poor men can most easily establish themselves on small farms with
least hardship and quicker remuneration ; but, in order that they may
come, there must be free speech, free schools, a free press, and the
right of private judgment without prejudice or social isolation.

In fact, what is needed now, and what is growing fast, is the sense
of national existence. Where is the leader at whose trumpet-call
the great parly of the nation will arise? Look for your analogy
in the very art to which our attention has been devoted. In the
kingdom of cotton there is no solid South, no solid North ; but each
member of the kingdom is dependent upon all the rest. The art begins
with the field-hand who first stirs the soil and plants the seed, and
ends only when the finished goods are placed upon the shelves of
those who distribute them. Each member of the craft depends upon
all ; and the whole structure of societ}7, North and South, is twisted
into the strand and interwoven in the web that constitutes the
product of the cotton field and of the cotton mill.

So also, in the art of government, all interests are harmonious. In
the question of good mone}* ; in that of equal and just taxation,
whether under an excise law or a tariff act ; in assuring integrity and
efficiency in office ; in peace, order, and industry, — there is no North,
no South, no East, no West : but in both existing parties, and in all
sections, there are different minds, different motives, and different
methods proposed to attain these ends. These are the great ques-
tions of the future, on which the welfare of all depends, without dis-
tinction of section, race, or party, as parties now exist.

When the great national party arises in its might, and calls for its

recruits upon all parties and all sections, then will right-minded men

, of every State, North or South, unite in its support; and these great

31

living questions of the present and of the future will take the place
of the dead issues of the past. God grant that day is not far
distant !

It is because I believe this exhibition will greatly promote a closer
political union, and bring into most prominent view the identity of
interests of the different sections of this country, that I feel the
greatest interest in its being undertaken ; and it is for the reason
that I hold this conviction that I have introduced into this address
the allusions to the past and to the political aspects of the present
and the future, which might otherwise be considered out of place.

I have endeavored to treat the great industrial question as one not
in the least degree depending upon our present party divisions or par-
tisan politics. The subjects we are now considering are above politics :
they are the elements of political science which control men and make
parties.

It is one of the plainest facts to one who comes among you simply
as a student of events, and who addresses you with no reference to the
pending election, that your solid South is being rent by forces that will
bring right-minded men of the South into zealous co-operation with
like-minded men of the North ; that your future leaders will be those
whose interests are in the living present ; and that your own dead past
will bury its dead. [Applause.] We can see more clearly than you
can yourselves that the color line is fading away ; that if any city,
county, or State attempts to deny to any man, black or white, the
right to speak, act, and vote as he pleases, that section is becoming
poor. Emigrants shun it, self-respecting white laborers leave it, and
its colored laborers remain only until they can get means to move

We see other sections of your Southern land that are more wise,
where the black man is permitted to have the white man's chance;
where schools are maintained and justice is assured : and these sec-
tions are becoming rich and prosperous. For such examples one need
not go bej'ond Atlanta and Chattanooga. One need only to illustrate
the process to which I have referred by one of man}' cases that I could
>cite where the negro farmer who had migrated from one State where
he was abused to another where he was trusted, and, in the second
year from that time, received from a banker an advance of one thousand
dollars on the cotton crop that he and his children had made, and used
the money to pay for the land that he had, hired.

More potent than prejudice or passion these great forces slowly but
•surely work. The}7 may be retarded, but cannot be stopped. Liberty
and justice shall surely govern this fair land.

Steadfast in truth and right

This Nation still shall be ;

" Good, great, and joyous, beautiful and free:

This is alone life, joy, empire, or victory."

[Warm and continued applause.] Such is always the imperative
law : no man's property is safe, and no man's welfare is assured, where

32

justice is denied to the poor, or where crime goes unpunished ; no State
can prosper, however rich the land or varied the resources, where
human rights are not respected. If States cannot or do not govern
themselves justty, and accord an equal chance to all their citizens,
their influence in the counsels of the nation must be small indeed.
But wherever I have been I find great changes have been made, and
these great forces working, — on all your lines of railroad new enter-
prise, thrift, and energy, towns increasing and cities growing ; and, as
I have said, the color line is fading in these places, whatever may be
the case in the interior. I trust the progress I have noted where I
have been may be but the symbol of other districts and other States.
If it is not, none know the facts as well as you yourselves, and none
can assure the remedy except }Tourselves. By your own acts 3*011 shall
be justified ; and, when the end is reached, what grander chapter in his-
tory will ever have been recorded than that which is being now
written ?

I had read the Scripture where it is written that men should con-
vert their swords into ploughshares arid -their spears into pruning-hooks ;
but in 3'our neighboring city of Chattanooga I also saw the battery
that had belched forth fire and death converted into a fountain of
living water.1

As you convert the darkness of oppression and slavery to liberty
and justice, so shall }rou be judged by men and by Him who created
all the nations of the earth.

At the conclusion of the address, after the hearty applause had sub-
sided, Mr. S. M. Inman offered the following : —

"Resolved, That the cordial thanks of the citizens of Georgia, who are now
assembled in the Capitol, be presented to Mr. Edward Atkinson of Boston,
Mass., for his very able and interesting address on the cultivation and man-
ufacture of cotton, and the influences resulting thereupon."

Mr. Inman supported the resolution in a handsome effort, and it wa&
unanimously adopted.

Mr. H. I. Kimball offered a resolution requesting a copy of the
address for publication, which was unanimously adopted.

Mr. Atkinson stated, that if he had erred in any of his statements
in the address in an}7 way, shape, or form, he would esteem it as a
personal favor if any one would correct it.

Mr. Atkinson was warmly congratulated by Governor Colquitt,
ex-Governor Bullock, Messrs. S. M. and W. P. Inman, H. I.
Kimball, and the audience generally who had enjoyed the address.

1 One of the Confederate forts at Chattanooga now serves as a reservoir to
supply the city with water; another supplies the great iron- works established
since the war at that place by one of the Northern carpet-baggers, " who carried
his trunk and staid," and who was himself a leader in thirteen great battles near
that city by which it was redeemed from the bondage of slavery and opened to-
the great forces of liberty.

APPENDIX.

THE following communication, recently printed in "The Planters'
Journal," Vicksburg, Miss., may add something to the interest of this
pamphlet.

E. A.
To the Editor of the Planters1 Journal, Vicksburg, Miss.

My recent conversation with you upon the subject of the proposed
cotton exhibition and the objects thereof, induces me to present cer-
tain points to the members of the Planters' Association, which do not
appear to be well understood.

It seems to be assumed, that, because cotton is sold at a certain price
per pound for the gross weight of the bale, therefore the bagging,
iron hoops, and sand are sold at the full price of cotton. There could
not be a greater delusion.

When the cotton reaches Europe, the allowance made for tare is a
little more than enough to compensate for the bags and ropes, the lit-
tle more constituting a sort of guaranty or insurance against the risk.

In respect to the cotton used in the United States, a careful account
is kept at every factory of the amount of waste from bagging, hoops,
sand, and heavy waste ; and care is taken not to repeat purchases in
places that appear to be subject to any excessive waste from these
causes.

If a careful computation be made, extending over a series of years,
it will be found that the average price paid in Liverpool for cotton, at
net weight (tare having been allowed for bagging and hoops), is as
much higher than the price in New York for cotton at gross weight,
as will compensate for the tare, the freight, the insurance, and other
charges.

If cotton were sold in New Orleans, with an allowance for tare
equal to the weight of the bags and hoops, the price would be advanced
in just the same proportion, or a little more.

In point of fact, what is paid for is the fibre that is worked into
cloth, and nothing else. If the packing of the fibre is bad, a less price
is paid for the contents of the bale than would be paid for the same
contents properly packed, because all bad packages imply a risk of loss
to the consumer ; and the consumer is, in the long run, perfectly sure
to get such an abatement on the price he would otherwise pay as will
cover the waste, and a little more as a guaranty.

Every consumer will pay a higher net price for an article so packed
as to make him absolutely sure of the quantity and value of the stock
that he receives, than he will for one so packed that he is not certain.

The present barbarous method of packing American cotton costs the
cotton-grower, in my judgment, from one to five per cent on the whole
crop.

34

One per cent is the minimum for the guaranty against an excess of
bags and hoops, and five per cent would not be excessive as a guaran-
ty against the loss on sandy and dusty cotton.

That is to say, if all cotton, middling and above, were packed in
clean sacks, held by light wires, and kept free from dust, rain, and'
mud (tare being allowed for the bags and wires used) , the producer
would receive an additional price equal to the tare, and also from one
to three per cent more mone}' for each bale than he is now receiving ;
and, if all. cotton below middling, thus graded because of leaf, dust,
and sand, were properly treated in the gin-house, the cotton-grower
would net two to five per cent for each bale more than he now gets.

The above estimates are based upon continuing the present mode
of ginning, the present construction of gins and presses, and the pres-
ent method of baling, except a substitution of wire for hoop-iron.
That is to say, the value of the cotton crop to the producers can be
increased two to five per cent without any fundamental changes, but
only by such care and attention to present methods as reasonable
economy would call for.

But there is a very much greater saving within the reach of the
Southern cotton-grower, — one that would add not less than ten percent
to the value of the crop, but not at the cost of the consumer. If that
part of the manufacture which must be done where the cotton is grown,
were done in a skilful and suitable manner, the consumers would savey
in the labor of converting cotton into cloth, all that the producers
gained in the price of cotton.

To state this point in the most incisive way, I will venture the as-
sertion that the greater part of the American cotton crop is deterio-
rated, and its value reduced ten per cent between the time it is picked
in the field, and the time when it is turned out from the compress to be
shipped abroad or to the North.

The smaller portion, ginned in large establishments, carefully man-
aged, under good discipline, is probably as well handled and as free
from deterioration as is consistent with the present mode of ginning
and baling ; but, as compared with the treatment which the cotton re-
ceives after it reaches the factory, the whole crop is badly treated in
the South, and the larger part of the crop very badly.

In order that this point may be fully comprehended, it is necessary
to consider the work that is done in the factory to prepare cotton for
the process of spinning.

The bale of cotton reaches the mill after having been subjected to
excessive compression. This compression does not apparently injure
the fibre ; but it makes it much more difficult to remove dirt, leaf,
motes, and other trash, than if the fibre had been subjected to a suit-
able treatment immediately after leaving the gin, when it was -in the
lightest or most open condition.

In the picker-room of the cotton factory, the bale of cotton is sub-
jected —

First, To the action of an opener to lighten it up and overcome the
effect of compression.

35

Second, It is passed through the breaker lapper or picker, to re-
move seed, sand, and heavy dirt. This machine usually contains two,
sometimes three metal beaters, revolving at a speed of twelve to six-
teen hundred times per minute. The blades of the beaters move four
thousand to six thousand feet per minute.

Third, It is passed through the finisher lapper or picker, con-
taining two, sometimes three beaters, to complete the work of clean-
ing and make a lap suitable for the first card.

In England the method sometimes varies from thisj the cotton being
passed through a succession of three machines, each containing one
beater.

Combined in or with these machines are numerous devices or ap-
paratus to aid in the removal of the dirt, consisting either of mechani-
cal appliances, or long trunks with grates or grids at the bottom,
through which the cotton is blown, the dirt sifting out and passing
through the grids into a trough, from which it is removed.

After the process of preparation, the cotton is usually carded twice
in this country ; in England once, but on a larger card. The true ob-
ject of carding is to lay the fibres parallel, and to remove short or
imperfect fibre. The card is not the machine that ought to be greatly
relied upon for the removal of motes ; but, in point of fact, a large
quantity of motes and leaf pass the most effective systems of opening
and picking, and are partly removed upon the card.

Now, let it be observed that each one of these processes does more
or less injury to the cotton fibre. Every beater weakens the staple.
Every inch of carding beyond what is needed to lay the fibres parallel
ought to be avoided. Let it be further observed, that a single treat-
ment at the right place will remove substantially all the immature
seed that has passed the grids of the cotton gin, all the sand, and all
the heavy waste. Let it be noted that the multiplication of beaters,
and the excess of carding, are for the purpose of removing motes, leaf,
shives, and other light particles of trash that make specky cloth. Then
bear in mind that a very large portion of these motes get into the cot-
ton in the gin-house, or from the dust and dirt that blow about it, or
from the coarse bagging put upon the cotton, or from the mud and
dust to which the bales are exposed. Let all these points be considered,
and my statement will not appear extravagant, that the larger portion
of every cotton crop is depreciated ten per cent for want of skill and
care in the primary treatment, which primaty processes constitute the
most important branch of the cotton manufacture. .

It is often said that cotton well ginned is half carded, and cotton
well carded is half spun.

I have spoken of the possibility of the cotton -growers adding a
cent a pound to the value of the larger part of the cotton crop, and
not at the cost of the consumer, but by the saving of waste.

The advantage to the consumer would be in part only the reduc-
tion in the cost of picking and carding, but mainly in the greater
strength of the yarn, and therefore a greatly increased product in
spinning and weaving.

36

I have stated that the right point to treat cotton for the removal
of all heav}' waste and a large portion of the motes gathered with the
cotton in the field is when the cotton leaves the gin, and before it has
been condensed or compressed in any manner. How this should be
done is a question to be settled by experience. It may be accom-
plished by a slow-moving single beater, by what is called a preparer,
or by blowing the cotton through a trunk furnished with grids.

A large portion of the work will be accomplished by keeping the
motes out of the cotton that now infest it in the gin-house, cotton
press, and yard. *

If these motes, consisting of bits of leaf, boll, and trash from the
field, dust and trash from the gin-house, and dirt fiom the bags, levee,
or 3Tard, were kept out or taken out, there would be no material dif-
ference in the weight of the bale. This is not the stuff that adds
weight, and the labor and treatment of the cotton in the picker and
card room of the factory could be reduced one-half at the very least.

One beater, or its equivalent, applied to the removal of motes as
the cotton is delivered from the gin, before 'compression, would be as
effective as two beaters after compression ; and one carding applied to
clean and well-ginned cotton, carefully baled, and kept clean after
baling, would be as effective as double carding applied to the average
of the cotton as now delivered. By reducing the number of beaters,
and reducing the carding to the simple purpose of straightening fibres,
a larger quantity of stronger yarn would be produced to each spindle,
and every loom could be speeded higher with less imperfect work.

Another very great advantage in the cleaning of the cotton im-
mediately after it has passed the gin, and before compression, would
be the removal of the almost impalpable sand or dust that infests the
cotton grown on many soils, and that causes injury to the machinery
of the cotton factory, especially to the cards.

In this connection, let me again call the attention of planters to
the expediency of investigating the merits of the Ralston trash-cleaner,
and other machinery of like kind, in which very dirty cotton is sub-
jected to the action of beaters before the fibre has been removed from
the seed. The seed with the fibre attached having greater specific
gravity than the dirt, motes, or trash that are mixed with the fibre, is
carried by the action of the beater away from the trash detached by
its action, and the trash falls behind into the receptacles prepared to
catch it. I have never seen the machine, but the theory is unques-
tionably right.

In my previous communications I have said that the cotton manu-
facture is a unit: it begins on the field, and ends in the cloth-room
of the factory. The most important part of this manufacture must
be carried on near the field, and is the process treated in this paper.

If the South desires to enter upon the safest, surest, and most
profitable branch of cotton manufacturing in which the largest re-
sults can be reached with the least expenditure of capital, it will do
well to consider these suggestions.

EDWARD ATKINSON.

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