The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1870-05-21
No. 40
COTTON FACTORrEs

The Euf4la (Ala) News says it appears
from reliable estimates, that "a spinning
mill which viii employ eighty-seven operas
tives and consume eight hundred and eighty
seven bales of cotton per annum, viii cost
not exceeding $4,000, and can be made to
return yearly profit of $1,000"
Let us, says the Gainesville Chronicle,
multiply these figures by twenty mills,
which are less than two to each Southern
State, and see what is the amount The
number of operatives required viii be
seventeen hundred and forty; the number
two thousand seven hundred and forty, and
the profits, three hundred and forty thou
sand dollars. Let US suppose the number
of mills to be one hundred, which is less
than eight to each Southern State, then the
figures will be-for operatives, $500; for
bales consumed, $4,000, and for profits
81, 100000
We viii not insult the intelligence of the
country by supposing that there is a single
State in the South which has not the means
to build eight small cotton factories, if it has
the energy to try. So far from wanting
the means to build the supposed number of
mills, the South can, with little cooperative
effort, build them with double the supposed
capacity; and these added to the factories
already in operation or being constructed,
would furnish machinery for the consump-
ton of all the cotton the South ought to
raise, under the existing demand for that
staple.
But referring back to the estimate of one
hundred mills, at cost of $4,000 each, it
will be seen that an outlay of $5,000,00l,
apporportioned among dozen States, will
in this way, return annually, profit of 81,
10000. Who gets that profit now? Echo
answers Radical bondholders and shoddy
aristocrats. But this is not all the South
loses. 1t supports by its present system of
voluntary dependence, the eight thousand
seven hundred yankee operatives who make
this profit for their employers, whilst the
same number in the South, are thrown
back upon the cultivation of the soil And
this again entails additional loss, in the
price of cotton, by unwisely making its
production too nearly commensurate with
the demand. If, under the beneficial effects
of diversity of pursuits, these eight thou
sand seven hundred operatives were fed
and clothed at home, instead of being board
ed at our expense, in New England, they
would, as consumers. add to the wealth Of
farmers, mechanics, professional men and
merchants, besides sharing with us the bur
dens of oppressive taxation. AS it is, they
swell the population and increase the wealth
of the North whilst we gratuitOusly pay all
their expenses.
Though we have confined our remarks to
the manufacture Of cotton, the reader will,
upon reflection, see that they apply, with
equal force, to every department of manu-
factures, from the making of iron to the
spinning of shoe-thread; and thence deduce
the vital truth, that diversity of pursuits is
the life>blood of Southern prosperity. With
out supplying home consumption with home
production, our dependence upon the North
must continue indefinitely, and with that
dependence, our continued subjection to
wrongs and insults, predicated upon weak
ness that results from our own criminal
neglect of the exhaustless sources of wealth
and power with which nature has so bounti-
fully endowed the South. a wealthy South
would be courted and fawned upon by the
North; dependent South will continue to
receive the ieers and kicks which it invites
if it does not merit.