Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/305

Rh it has always been more like a Western State; that it never had any considerable number of cotton-spindles within its borders, and that its people were never clad in hand-made fabrics to any considerable extent. I include under the name of Southern States Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, including West Virginia.

In 1860 the population of these specific States numbered 9,650,000; in 1870, 10,432,000; in 1880, 13,665,000; and at the present time their population, without question, exceeds 17,000,000.

From the best information which I can obtain, and in the best judgment of old planters, dealers, and manufacturers, nearly the whole population of the middle or mountain section of these States, two to three millions in number—a very large portion of the colored people on the plantations, probably two or three millions more out of four millions—and a very considerable part of the population of country districts aside from these two classes, were clad in homespun or hand-woven fabrics prior to 1860. The average of the estimates which I have received would put more than one half, or about five millions of the population in 1860, of these Southern States into this class.

In 1870 very moderate progress had been made in displacing hand-made fabrics with the products of Southern factories, but the more prosperous people were consuming more Northern goods of finer quality. The average judgment of my correspondents indicates that in 1870 at least forty per cent of the population were clad in hand-spun or hand-woven fabrics. I estimate it at one third, numbering three and a half millions, in my succeeding computations.

At the Atlanta Exposition Mr. F. E. Clark, of the Pemberton Mill, and myself, computed the product of two hand carders, two spinsters, and one hand-loom weaver, who were working on thirty-two-inch Osnaburgs, about thirty-six picks to the inch, at eight yards a day of ten hours. Five operatives in the Pemberton could have turned out eight hundred yards of the same fabric in the same number of hours.

In my computation of the ratio of spindles to population I deduct 4,800,000 in 1860; 3,500,000 in 1870; in 1880 I make no deduction for hand-work, for the reason that the art was then nearly a lost art. A few home spinners and weavers may still be found only in the heart of the mountains of Kentucky and North Carolina. On this basis the cotton-spindles of 1860, numbering 5,235,727, bore the ratio of one spindle to each of 5·05 of the remaining population; 1870, spindles 7,132,415, one spindle to 4·92 of the remaining population; 1880, spindles 10,653,435, one spindle to 4·71 of the total population; 1889, September 1st, spindles estimated