Stream and spreading it over the fertile cotton-fields of the United States, has fixed our supremacy in cotton production and probably in the cotton manufacture of the future, until Egypt is more fully redeemed from barbarism, or until the lands bordering upon the Paraguay and Parana Rivers in South America are more fully occupied by a dense and industrious population.
But perhaps the seat of the cotton manufacture of the future may not be wholly where the cotton grows. Cotton is a sun plant. It thrives best and yields the largest product in the hot, dry years when the dryness does not become a drought. The very characteristics of climate which promote the production of the fiber are to some extent inconsistent both with spinning and weaving, which call for a cool, moist atmosphere. The variety of Dacca muslin so fine as to have been called the "woven wind" is spun and woven only in the early morning by weavers who sit upon the ground under the trees where the humidity of the air is greatest. I believe they even dig a hole in the ground, in which they sit, so as to bring the web in front of them close to the ground.
This brings us to the question of prime interest to all of us. Will that Southern cotton land also become the principal site of the cotton manufacture of the United States? Upon this question I will first submit the facts, and I will then give the conclusions which I have myself derived from them.
The number of spinning and weaving mills in the Southern States which I have named, both before the war and subsequently down to 1870, was not sufficient to be considered a factor of any considerable importance. In 1860 the number of Southern spindles was about five per cent of the total number of spindles of the country. They were in by far the greatest proportion devoted to spinning coarse yarns to be woven upon hand looms and converted into Osnaburgs or into jeans, the latter mostly of the so-called "butternut variety"; goods dyed with the butternut dye, which color gave the name to the Confederate uniforms.
There were a few considerable and successful mills devoted to both spinning and weaving; notably at Columbus, under the able supervision of William H. Young and John Hill; other mills at Augusta, the Graniteville Mill, and a very few others.
In 1870 the number of Southern spindles was nearly three hundred and twenty-eight thousand, gradually and slowly increasing, down to 1880, to five hundred and forty-two thousand. In this period looms were being added to many of the spinning mills, and the change was going on from the homespun to the factory-made goods. It is only since 1880 that the additions have been made to the spindles of the South which have attracted so much attention.
