Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/349

Rh now that she has resumed her normal condition as a rich section well supplied with everything lost during the dark period of twenty years from 1861 to 1881. More and more of the money obtained for this crop will remain in the South, as she is now producing her own food crops and is self-sustaining. A great part of the money heretofore went North and West for manufactured products of iron, for coal and for provisions now produced at home. Statistics have already shown that the strides made in establishing mills for manufacturing in the South are very great.

It is fully understood now that the South has even greater advantages in cotton than in the iron industry for competing with the North. It is not whether she can do this, but whether the North can hold her own with the South. The coarser fabrics are now shipped to the East and sold at a profit at the doors of Northern mills, and the finer fabrics are being rapidly manufactured at cheaper rates. It is only a matter of time when the South, by multiplying her mills, will dictate prices to the world in cotton goods, coarse and fine. She has the advantage of from $4 to $6 start in having the mills in the cotton fields, as it takes that amount for freight, compressing, insurance, etc., necessary in transporting to the New England mills. "The mills of the Southern States possess a decided advantage over the mills of the North and Great Britain, in that they have the raw cotton at their doors, and that this alone represents a money value sufficient to give them control of the coarse goods has been fully demonstrated within the last ten years. This difference can be clearly shown by the following illustration: Let us assume a 40,000-spindle mill is located at any well-situated site in the cotton-growing section of the Southern States. This mill properly equipped with the latest and most approved style of machinery for the manufacture of standard 4.4 sheeting to Nos. 12 and 14 yarns, would cost complete $800,000, and would consume