rather than a common print, they will have them and they can now well afford to pay for them.
I was under the impression until I took up this subject that the North had a positive advantage in pure water for bleaching and finishing, for the reason that all the rivers south of the lower margin of the glacial drift, which ended at the mouth of the Delaware River, are muddy or turbid during a large part of the year, and there are no ponds or lakes of clear water; hardly any of any kind in the cotton States. My correspondence with Mr. John Hill has disposed of this superficial doubt by calling my attention to the facility with which very pure and very soft water may be derived either from abundant springs or from artesian wells. There is no point to be made against the South on bleaching and coloring.
Again, so long as the supply of native operatives suffices, there may be a great field hardly yet occupied, in the production of coarse rather than of fine cotton fabrics, without trenching or taking away from us any part of the work which we can do in the best way. I think our Southern friends may develop a very important branch of textile industry in spinning and weaving below No. 20.
It will be observed that this whole problem turns upon an average advantage claimed by the South over the North of about one cent a pound in the price of cotton. This present advantage, whatever it may be, will be reduced whenever the volume of Southern railway traffic becomes greater and freight charges are cut down; but it may always be a considerable point on heavy goods. There is not, however, the full difference of the freight between the North and the South. Very few mills can supply themselves with cotton, even in the South, from the immediate neighborhood; and, when cotton must be baled and put upon cars for transportation, the local rates are apt to be quite heavy for short distances.
The advantages claimed by the South on account of the longer hours of work can not be admitted. In the first place, they will soon be shortened, either from choice or necessity; and, in the second place, I doubt if any very skillful manager now thinks that high speed can be profitably maintained more than ten hours a day.
Again, it is claimed that wages are lower in the South than in New England. This is true. The rate of wages is lower, but I doubt if the cost of labor is any lower, if as low. It may be in a very few of the best managed mills, but in taking the census of 1880 I made a very careful computation of the proportion of hands to spindles and looms, and after making every allowance for difference in yarn, in number, and in quality of mills, I found that
