Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/331

Rh there were substantially two hands employed in the South against one in New England, and this computation has been sustained by my observation in such mills as I have visited.

Now, it is well known that the more hands the more waste, the more want of discipline, the more lack of good work. In a recent report on Russian spinning by our friend Mr. Dobson, who spoke to us on carding-engines, he reaches identically the same conclusion in comparing Russia with Great Britain.

Doubtless there has been great improvement in Southern methods since 1880; with increased efficiency, the number of hands decreases; but the wages or earnings rise, and will continue to do so, until they become equal to what we pay.

I am, therefore, confident that we may hold a long lead, and that we need not yet borrow trouble from any competition in Southern factories after they have learned to keep their depreciation account, and after they cease to run the risk of bankruptcy by working their machinery into their fabrics without charging it off.

I might here rest my case; but I will venture to give a few more facts bearing upon this subject.

There is one development of science which may render the cotton -factory entirely independent of climatic conditions. One of the visionary theories which I presented many years ago has not yet been put into practice in any great measure. I suggested preparing the atmosphere which is to be used as an instrument for taking away the moisture from the slashers by carrying it into the sizing-room through a chamber filled with ice. Since that date there has been immense progress in the art of freezing. Frozen carcasses of mutton are now carried from Australia to England. When the trade was first established, the owners of the Victoria Docks in London prepared chambers which were cooled by ammonia machines sufficient to hold 3,200 carcasses. There were four chambers of 12,000 cubic feet each, supplied by a ten horse-power engine, delivering 10,000 cubic feet of air below the freezing-point per hour. There are now on the Royal Victoria Docks sixty chambers of 240,000 cubic feet capacity, supplied with 370,000 cubic feet of air below the freezing-point each hour, by a three hundred and twenty horse-power engine. These chambers will hold 80,000 carcasses of mutton at one time.

I lately put a very commonplace question to the F. W. Wolf Company, of Chicago, manufacturers of freezing machinery. I asked them, as if it were an every-day ordinary matter of business, at what price they would put down an ammonia plant suitable for maintaining the temperature of a cotton-mill three hundred feet long, one hundred feet wide, twelve-foot post, four stories