Recest advices from the Southern States of America say that considerable extension of cotton spinning is going on there. For some years past a good deal of capital has been profitably invested in these States in new mills, while improved machinery has been introduced into old concerns. This has been going on in all the Southern States, and it is said that that in the two Carolinas especial activity has been shown, One
taking the lead, another affirms that report saps, that North Carolina is both North and South Carolina are fast outstripping the other Southern States, while a third says that New! Orleans is destined by its natural advantages to be the cotton spinning centre of the country. As yet, however, there are only two wills in that city, but additions to one of them are in progress and other mills are about to be started. We notice that the Vice President of one mill stated to an interviewer that whereas its warehouses were filled with unsaleable goods a short time ago, the company can now sell six months to one year ahead. It sells, {he said, a good deal in China. This gentleman maintained that New Orleans should be the best field for cotton spinning, as labour is cheap, there is a saving of from $3.50 to $4a bale on every bale of cotton which is bought in New Orleans, on compressing, freight, commissions, insurance and interest on No difficulty is experienced in ing cheap labour, but as yet it has tobe trained. They make no fine goods, only plain brown goods and yarns, and President gave it as his opinion that in time no goods of that kind would be manufactured in the North. This, he said, the Northern mill owners are already preparing for by divesting their mills of the coarse machinery, because they cannot compete with the South in the common descriptions of manufactures. The profits on Southern spinning are very large, according to this account they're from 10 to 30 per cent., while the Northern mill owners are satisfied with 6 per cent.; but in the same number of the Southern paper in which this statement is made we notice that a "very flourishing" South Carolina mill has declared a dividend of only 7 er cent. per annum. A good deal of Northern capital has been put into Southern mills. Probably the conditions of millowning in Georgia, and perhaps also in the newer field in the Carolinas are not less favourable to the interest than New Orleans is said to be. While the owners are prospering, it is pleasant, to see, from the testimony of a northern man who says he visited nearly all the mills in the South last year, that the working people are well cared' for. He admits that wages are lower than in the North, but so is the cost of living, fuel, etc. The people are well housed, are pt in money and not in checks, the liquor traffic is regulated, if not suppressed in some places, education is fostered, the owners frequently paying the whole cost. Almost all the labour is white, negroes being aly employed as lappers, but the working hours are long, few if any mills in the South working less than twelve hours a day.
Statistics of the Southern cotton mills show that there were 288 mills in January of this year with nearly 14 millions of spindles and 34,000 looms, against 179 wills with 713,969 spindles and 15,222 looms at the same time in 1880, so that while the number of mills has only increased about 15 per cent. the productive power has been doubled. Georgia is at the head of the list for pro ductive power, and North Carolina for the number of mills—she is second also for spindles—while, South Carolina is pressing her sister State fast and will soon pass her; Nemessee and Maryland are a progressing, but in Alabama little has been done and in Texas practically nothing in establishing cotton manufacturing. If the tendency to transfer at least the manufacture of the coarser kind of cotton goods from the north to the south is so strong as the Southern newspapers represent it to be, it is only another instance of the effect of the demand of this age for the cheapest. modes of doing business, and providing for the wants of the world. Wherever raw materials and labour are cheap manufactures will sooner or later be established. Among the most striking instances of this in our times are the rapid growth of the Bombay and Japan cotton industries, and it would seem that the Southern States of America are likely to afford another case in point. Political economists tell us that this is all it should be, anyway it is how the world is rapidly tending. Another effect of the establishment of cotton spinning in the South is to dig-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.