a hank for the same number of spindles, and average eighteen hanks a day; whilst the rovers, with as many spindles and a similar output, are paid 6 cents a hank. The pay for spinning is 12 cents per side of 120 spindles, the spinners running from four to eight sides each. For spooling the rate is 5 cents per box-about 56 pounds. There are from forty to seventy-two spindles per side, and the winders have one side each. A good day's run for a 'whole' side is

eighteen boxes.

The warpers run from two to four warping mills each, with the assistance of a creeler-a child-at 60 cents a day; the warper is paid 23 cents per beam of from 460 pounds to 520 pounds, and can easily earn $7 (31s. 3d.) a week with four mills, or with two mills $5 (20s. 10d.) a week. The slasher-tenters, or tapers, receive $1.15 a day, or 28s. 9d. a week; they have one machine each, with a helper at 18s. 9d. a week, or 75 cents a day, and the daily output of each machine is 520 cuts of 65 yards.

At this mill (the King) the size of the looms is from 32 inches to 43 inches reed space; they make sheetings or shirtings and three-shaft drills, and the weavers run from four to eight looms each. All the looms are ordinary looms, without any warp stop-motion, and ring weft is used on a 5-inch bobbin. For 30-inch sheetings, woven with 13's warp and weft, 48 picks per inch, the weaving price is 15 cents per cut of 65 yards, and each loom weaves about five cuts a week. For sheetings of the same description, but from 36 inches to 40 inches wide, the price is 23 cents a cut, and the weavers run as many of the wider looms as of the narrower. The three-shaft drills are 30 inches wide, have 13's warp and weft, with 42 picks to the inch, and are paid for at the rate of 16 cents per cut of 62 yards. The looms each weave six cuts of the drill a week, and the weavers must find the pick and make perfect cloth. They pay,' said my informant, either the full rate or nothing, and there has been lots of trouble over imperfect cloth. They don't notify the weaver or show him the fault, but just dock the wages.' The wages at the King Mill, he said, taking them all round, were 40 per cent. lower than in New England.

The Sibley Mill, where he himself worked, made ginghams

WAGES AT AUGUSTA

87

and fancies, and had dobby looms with as many as twentysix staves. The weavers ran six dobby looms on plain work or four dobby looms on fancy work, or from four to six plain looms with drop-boxes. Their earnings on six drop-box looms would average 31s. 3d. a week, on four drop-box looms 22s. 6d., on four fancy looms 37s. 6d., and about the same on six dobby looms. These would be the earnings of the best weavers, and the wages paid by the Sibley Mill attracted good men.

I had heard the Enterprise Mill at Augusta spoken of as an honourable exception to the Southern rule of employing young children,1 and I was glad before leaving the city to have an opportunity of learning from one of the chief officials of the mill something of its administration. The mill buildings, he said, dated from 1882, but the machinery— 33,000 spindles and 928 looms-had been renewed between 1898 and 1900. Fire insurance with the mutual companies cost $800 a year for $450,000 at risk, or rather more than one-sixth of 1 per cent. Mills insured with the stock companies (first-class risks) paid one-fifth of 1 per cent. The city taxes were 1 per cent., assessed on very nearly the full market value of the plant, including the ground; the State and county taxes were 14 per cent., assessed on threefourths of the value. The cost of coal at the mill was about 13s. 6d. per ton, but the driving was done by water at 235. per horse-power per annum.

The goods made at the mill were grey sheetings, shirtings, and drills, all of 18's and 19's yarn, unless ordered otherwise, and domestics of 4 yards to the pound or lighter; and most of the goods were sent to converters in New England to be bleached and finished or printed. Some other mills in the district, he said, made regular 64-square print-cloth on Northrop looms, paying from 7 cents to 8 cents a cut to the weaver. At the Enterprise Mill they were trying the Harriman loom, twelve to a weaver, with encouraging results so far.

1 Between 500 and 600 children, from five to twelve years of age, are employed in the cotton mills at Augusta. A recent investigation showed that only about 20 per cent. of these could read or write, and they were children who had not gone to work until after they were ten years old.

I told him that the Northrop loom weavers at Lowell were getting 3 or 4 cents a cut more for the 64-square printcloth than the Augusta weavers. He replied that the cost of living was much greater in the North.

'Here,' he said, 'a man works for eight months in the year in his shirt and trousers, he needs less meat, and he lives in a house that is neither plastered nor ceiled. Some of the houses owned by the mills let at 33 cents per room per month.' I think that he must have meant to say per week, for a house agent who has the letting of many of the mill cottages at Augusta told me that the rent of a house with two rooms and a cook-house averaged $41 or $5 a month, and the rent of a four-roomed house $7 or $8.

Good eight-loom weavers in Augusta, said my friend of the Enterprise Mill, could earn about $1 a day; ringspinners (from twelve to sixteen years of age) were paid about II cents a side, and could run from six to eight sides of 108 spindles each; rovers would make about $14 a day; and warpers, running four or five mills with the help of a young creeler, would earn about a dollar a day.

The cotton used by the Augusta mills was, he said, upland cotton, of local growth and short staple-that is to say, from 1 inches downwards; they bought by the Liverpool classification, and the average quality would be Liverpool 'good middling.' The annual receipts of the Augusta cotton market have reached 378,500 bales, of which about 100,000 bales are consumed by the local mills; these buy in their own market from $4 to $5 a bale cheaper than the cost of cotton delivered in New England. The average weight of the bale at Augusta is 485 pounds, so this means an advantage over New England of a cent a pound.

The freight on manufactured goods from Augusta by river to Savannah and thence by sea to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, is 35 cents per 100 pounds, and the rate by rail, on account of the competition by water, is only 41 cents, as compared with 50 cents from the Piedmont district of South Carolina, which is nearer to New York, but has no competing water route. Most of the Augusta goods are sent by the river and sea route.

CHAPTER X

Atlanta and its associations-Up-to-dateness'—A race riot—A prosperous country mill-A mill at Atlanta-Dear power-The Northrop loom for drills-Wages at Atlanta-Cheap cottonAttachment of employés-New Orleans-Louisiana factory laws-Climate of New Orleans-Manufacture of blue denims and cottonades—Liquid fuel-Dyeing lint cotton—Arrangement of carding engines-Piece rates and earnings-Low freight to New York-Workmen's dwellings.

A

TLANTA is a city of beautiful situation in the heart of Georgia, of interesting associations both literary and historic, and of extremely modern pretensions. If you take the trolley-car on its outward journey along Peachtree Avenue, you will see something of the natural charm of the surrounding country, whilst a placard by the wayside telling you that under a particular tree stood the headquarters of General Johnston, afterwards turned over to General Hood, will awaken in your mind memories of the terrible war, which in this part of the United States seems but an affair of yesterday, and will rouse the echoes of that martial chorus which even a world-wide vogue has never vulgarized -surely the most stirring of all marching songs. Atlanta Constitution comes every morning from the press to remind you of Uncle Remus and the little boy who used to steal out nightly to his cabin to be entranced by the old man's tales of the great brotherhood of beasts, Brer B'ar and Brer Wolf you shall look for in vain, and Brer Tarrypin, I fear, is too highly esteemed by the gourmands of New York and Philadelphia to enjoy much of his former freedom. But Brer Tukkey Buzzud is still to be seen in the air or by the waterside; if you are lucky you may meet Brer Rabbit 'lolloping' down the road in the cool of the evening, as

The

spruce and as knowing as ever; and I have no doubt that Brer Fox is somewhere not far away, still studying how to outwit him.

The modern ambition of Atlanta, however, is to be, and to be recognised as, the most up-to-date city in the South. Outward and visible signs of this 'up-to-dateness' are to be found in one or two sky-scrapers, of the real New York pattern, which have lately been built in the business quarter, in the cotton mills established on its borders, and in the general air of bustle which pervades its streets. There is also a new public library-a fine building-upon the front of which one reads, with something of a shock, the following line of great names, all graven in exactly similar lettering upon exactly similar panels of stone, the middle name occupying the place of honour over the doorway: Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Carnegie, Dante, Milton, Poe.

And, to name one other curious trait in the character of Atlanta, there had been a miniature race-war in the streets a day or two before my arrival. A party of armed negroes were besieged in a house by a mob of whites, who, after losing several of their number, had burned the defenders out and shot them down as they ran. Atlanta was congratulating itself upon its extreme moderation and self-control, which were proved by the fact that not more than half a score of people had been killed.

There are eight or nine cotton mills in and near Atlantaabout half of them quite new. Labour is scarce, and for positions of responsibility a good many men have been brought from Massachusetts. But some of the mills have been remarkably successful. One company-a family concern with a capital of $600,000 in stock and $200,000 in 6 per cent. bonds repayable in three years-started eight years ago by buying 4,000 acres of farm land in the country and building there a mill (driven by water) for the manufacture of sheetings and drills. The company farms the land, growing cotton, corn, potatoes, and market produce, and has built on it a town containing two or three churches, a hotel and livery stable, a store which carries' $30,000 worth of stock and to which the country people from ten or fifteen miles round come for their supplies-and a cemetery. The company owns everything-even the cemetery, I believe.