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THE NORTHROP LOOM IN THE SOUTH plained that she was not allowed to have more looms. I supposed that she was a learner, and asked her how long she had been weaving; to my surprise she replied, 'Three years.'

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Now $1 a day from twenty-four looms means production of nearly half a cut a day-say 60 yards— from each loom; whereas $2 a week from eight looms, or $2.50 from ten looms, means a production of less than one-third of a cut, or, say, 38 yards, per loom per day. It is to be inferred, from the employment of weavers who make such an uneconomical use of their looms as this, that the supply of good weavers at Cooleemee is by no means plentiful, and that no very small part of the apparent saving in wages per cut has to be set off against the charges on capital invested in costly machinery which is not doing as much work as it ought to do. The case of the eight-loom weaver with three years' experience may, perhaps, be set off against a statement made to me in Massachusetts to the effect that the Northrop loom is so easily managed that a totally inexperienced girl learned to run fourteen of these looms within a week.

Another point should be noted the drills made in the Southern mills are not by any means so well woven as those which I have seen made in Maine, and since the difference in the prices paid for weaving, large as it looks, amounts, after all, to only one-sixth of a penny a yard, it may be more than covered by the difference in the prices which the drills will bring in the market.

The price of labour in the other departments of the Cooleemee mill I found to be as follows: The spinners, on twist and weft from 13's to 14's, are paid 10 cents per day per side of 102 spindles, and the spindles, which run at 8,500 revolutions per minute, produce 4 pounds of yarn a week each. The winders receive 6 cents for every 38 pounds of yarn wound; the warpers run six mills each (with the help of a creeler), and get II cents for every 18,000 yards of warp beamed; the slasher-tenters are paid $1 and $1 a day; the drawers-in are paid 17 cents for a sheeting (1,728 ends) and 19 cents for a three-shaft drill (2,040 ends); the tacklers attend to 100 looms each for $10 dollars a week, and unskilled labourers, including a

number of the blowing and card room operatives, have a wage of 70 cents a day. I was shown one of the wagesheets, and noticed that the wages of twenty-seven persons amounted to no more than $90 for one week. It is fair to say, however, that there was a great deal of broken time.'

The superintendent assured me that plenty of 'help' was obtainable from the farms in the surrounding country. In the Piedmont section, he said, the farmers brought up large families for almost nothing; the farms produced their food; the cost of clothing in the South, where men work in a cotton shirt and a pair of cotton trousers for nine months in the year, was very much less than in the North; and fuel, when it was needed, could be had for nothing in the nearest wood. Many of these people hardly ever saw money before the mills started, and now, according to my informant, they hardly know how to spend it. At this mill they were paid in cash every week, and much of what they earned was, he said, 'wasted on tawdry finery.'

'In this district,' he said, 'there are no labour laws, no school laws-in fact, no schools. But most of the mills in North Carolina, by common consent, observe a sixty-sixhour week, and we would rather not employ children under twelve years old.'

Experience seems to have taught the North Carolinian mill managers that it does not pay to work their hands an indefinite number of hours or to employ them indefinitely young, or it may be that by voluntary action they are trying to avert State interference.

Black and White, with the lever trolley, were waiting to take me back to the junction, but before I went the superintendent gave me some particulars of the cost of the mill. It was built there, in the wilderness, he said, because the water-power was there; the boiler whose iron stove-pipe chimney I had noticed was used only for heating and steaming and in connection with the slashing machines. The whole plant, including the water-power, buildings, and machinery, would, when completed, have cost $16 per spindle, which he considered very little, taking into account the fact that the Northrop looms cost so much more than ordinary looms. With ordinary looms, he thought, the cost

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would have been about $13.20. The cost of the buildings themselves had been 60 cents per square foot of flooring, or 22s. 6d. per square yard-a figure which indicated that the cheapness of material had been offset by the scarcity of skilled labour for building. The floors were of 3-inch planks (as compared with the 4-inch planks used in New England), and were covered with two layers of 1-inch. boards. The mill had been stopped by floods in the river for only three days since the beginning of the year, and the superintendent hoped soon to have it running night and day.

But,' said he, as I took my leave, 'we can't do much when we have to pay 10 cents for our cotton.'

I doubt whether he was paying quite so much as that.

CHAPTER VIII

Rapid growth of the cotton industry in the Charlotte districtCharlotte to Columbia-White children at work, black at play -Columbia, South Carolina-A magnificent cotton mill and its cost-Difficulty of obtaining competent labour-Why negroes are not employed in the mills—Wages at Columbia—A country mill in South Carolina-Wood fuel-Day and night shifts— Children 'always falling asleep'-Indirect employment of very young children-The Harriman loom and its cost-A weaver in fifty-six mills-His opinion of the Harriman loom-The chain gang and its counterpart.

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ROM Charlotte in North Carolina to Columbia in South Carolina the way lies still through the Piedmont country. If you described a circle about Charlotte with a radius of 100 miles, you would have within its circumference nearly 300 cotton mills, containing 3,183,350 spindles and 81,404 looms. The estimated number of cotton spindles and looms in the Southern States on January 1, 1902, was 6,250,000 spindles and 130,000 looms; therefore 50 per cent. of all the spindles and 60 per cent. of all the looms in the South are within 100 miles of Charlotte. There is very nearly twice as much cotton textile machinery within this circle to-day as there was six years ago.

Columbia, almost due south of Charlotte, is some fifteen or twenty miles within the circle, but the road between the two lies through a country very different from the districts that we associate with the idea of industrial activity. As one looks out of the windows of the train, one sees the red, red Piedmont soil-soil that looks as if it still bore the stains of the blood so freely spilled upon it in the Civil War, even as the handsome Capitol in the city of Columbia still bears

on its discoloured and shattered masonry the scars of Sherman's shells. Amongst the red ploughed fields are a few of a greyer complexion, and about them are miles of greenwood, chiefly pine and live oak. White honeysuckle and the common British ragweed, or something very like it, flourish on the edges of field and forest, but there are great gaudy butterflies to remind the traveller that England is far away. And whenever the passage of the train brings people and houses into view, the home-like look of things is quickly dispelled. Negro women in sun-bonnets are hoeing in the fields, and ragged children, both black and white, untroubled by any school inspector, are playing in the sunshine all day long. The white children are not always to be seen with their black brothers, for if there is a cotton mill within reach the little white will be at work, and the little black will be playing alone.

The sunshine is everywhere, and the heat, even in May, is so ardent as to bring out the full force and truth of that historic remark addressed by the Governor of North Carolina to the Governor of South Carolina, and to cause the stranger to lament that a climate which adds such zest to the drinking of iced liquids should add also to its penalties. In some of the fields the crops are coming up amongst the charred tree-stumps that have resisted the fire by which the land was cleared for the plough. Dotted about at wide intervals are the wooden cabins of the peasantry. Some of these tiny dwellings are whitewashed, but most of them have never known either paint or whitewash, and never will know them. Very poor and mean-looking they are, but the blaze of roses which you may often see beside the doors and the space and purity around them redeem them from the appearance of squalor. It is in homes and amid surroundings such as these that the population has been bred from which the newer Southern mills are drawing their labour, and the people have that fine physique which one finds in Irishmen bred even in the poorest country cabins. But one cannot see the stunted children in the mills without thinking of the physical degeneration in store for this fine race. Here and there a dark-brick cotton mill one or two stories high, surrounded by a huddle of small cabins, stands for the new order to which the old is giving