The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1909-04-08
AUGUSTA, GEORGIA.

The Cotton Industry. Inc Future Supply
of Printing Paper. Augusta as Winter
Resort. Political Points. Prohibition. A
Coffee Pot Distillery.
Correspondence of The Journal
AUGUSTA, GA, March q, 1909. This
old city will always have pleasant place
in my memory, as it was here during a
first visit to the South, about thirty years
ago, that was taken in hand by one of
the fine old families of the town and
given taste of true Georgia hospitality.
Following the lapse of nearly third of
a century the older members are long
since dead and the younger portion separ-
ated into many parts. But Augusta has
f1ourshed amazingly meanwhile. The
manufacturing of cotton fabrics, which
was almost an experiment at the time of
the Civil War, has greatly broadened
This city is the second largest inland cot
ton market in the world and has thirteen
cotton mills within its boundaries, with
an annual consumption of 116, 900 bales.
These mills, many of them very large
and making standard grades of cloth,
have $50, 900 spindles, employ nearly 1000
operatives and a capital of about $6,0OO,-
0OO This is actual capital paid in, and
not simply big figures engraved on
these mills alone apparently have sup
porting for Is, 900 or 10000 people, and
many more indirectly. This portion of
the State is given over largely to the
raising of cotton. The annual receipts
at Augusta are not far from BE, 900 bales,
and of the whole South between ten
and twelve million bales. A Southern
planter gets in cash at his home just as
much money for one bale of cotton as
Maine farmer would for fifty bales of
hay. 1t seems to be profitable business,
but we know it has head-faws in the way
of long continued droughts and pestifer-
Gus insects like the bol-weevil.
| was much interested in reading a
recent magazine article by Daniel J..
Sully, the Cotton King" giving very
important facts and figures relating to
the present and future supply Of paper
for printing purposes. We are moving
down the forests at such a destroying
initiation will be complete. Mr.. Sully
states that the edition of metropolitan
newspaper in America consumes every
week day ten acres of forest and fifteen
acres for the Sunday sheet. Annually
in the United States we turn out more
than six thousand books, the editions of
some of which run into the hundred thou
sands. In addition, our magazines call
for paper by incredible tons. So it would
seem that unless some method is advanced
of successfully removing the ink from
old papers and making use of it again
and again, the paper supply of the future
may have to be looked for from a very
different source. Mr.. Sully's remedy for
the emergency that seems to be surely
approaching, is that the Government give
a bounty of fifty dollars per acre to every
farmer who raises a on-producing cot
ton plant, three inches in diameter and
not less than six feet in height The
purpose of this proposed bounty is to
supply the worlds increasing, memorable
demand for paper. AS far back as the
days of the Moors, in Spain, paper was
made from the cotton-stalks. The cotton
rlant hot 10
not to flower, yields material for the
finest paper. So it is possible that the
great paper mills of the future will be in
Georgia and South Carolina instead of in
Maine and Michigan. The Deep alluvial
bottoms on which such cotton can be
grown will then produce an inexhaustible
supply of paper forever; and this coming
cotton forest, which will not take gen
GRAFTON to grow, but which will be har-
vested annually, will defy the boil weevel,
the cotton planters greatest insect pest
We are constantly worrying about the
total failure at some distant day of the
worlds supply of coal, or paper or oil.
But there always seems to be some way
out of it, and it is not unreasonable to
anticipate in the matter of paper that
the supply, by the middle of this century,
will be drawn from an entirely different
fibre than at present utilized
But it is in another direction than the
matter of commercial business that Au-
gusta has gained in the past twenty
years. 1t is as winter and spring tour
list resort that this city has taken the lead
of almost all the winter-homes of the
South. The location of the town is ideal;
/ in a rich valley with the Savannah river
flowing through it and sharp rising heights
on two sides. On these heights have been
built innumerable beautiful homes and
two Of the finest tourist hotels in the en-
tire South-the Bon Air and Hampton
Terrace. These two hotels will accom-
modate nearly one thousand guests and
the cottages adjoining many more, the
latter giving all the privacy and olliet of