El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1917-09-15

months old baby lying in a pile OF
I cotton waste at one side OF the room.
F one Of the girls worked away with an
] almond eyed infant on her knees, and
E another had a baby in a basket beside
7 her That factory was working . Z
T hours. as also were those Of Japan.
B The children were employed by night
as well as by day. and in the Chinese
factory the work went on Sundays
I and week days, all the year through
{ They have several hundred thousand
spindles now making cotton yarn IN
Shanghai, and in one 81 the mills I
found an American light plant with
I 5000 electric lamps burning The
Chinese mills are Increasing in mum
Der. The most of their machinery
comes from England. Japan and
China imported more than a half mill
lion bales Of our raw cotton last year.
EnEIand's Great 8Im District.
The most interesting cotton manu-
featuring district Of the world is Ian
cashire county in England It is the
center OF the spinning Industry and
the place where more than half Of all
the raw cotton we sell is turned into
cloth The product is brought to Liver
pool. and some of ir from the Mersev
up the Snip canal to Manchester. from
where IL Is distributed The cotton dis
trict is only about half AGAIN as large
as Rhode Island. but is so spotted
with mills that IL might be called one
great cotton factory. Not only in the
city Of Manchester. but in the villages
and towns nearby. the spinning, wesv-
ing ana dyeing goes on have stood
IN the town OF Oldham and counted
500 factory chimneys without turn
ing round ] found them still making
cotton al Blackburn where the first
spinning jenny was set up and also
az Bolton. where Crompton invented
the spinning mule. In Manchester 7
visited a cotton factory which was
employing 5000 hands and weaving
svu miles OF cloth every week The
floor space was not as Arge as the
overall mill 7 have described. but it
contained 5000 looms and there we're
10000 spindles flying around.
In that mill most Of the hands were
women and girls Their wages were
from 50 to IS week. and it took a
skilled workman TO get as much as
$40 Nevertheless the wages were
considered good for that time. They
have probably increased greatly be
cause OF the war.
Cotton Ginned in Central AfrIca.
II was at Omdurmau. near Ehar-
tum' almost 1000 miles up the wind
ings Of the Nile, i'm Central Africa
that I saw cotton ginned. spun and
woven much as it was manufactured I
before whitney gave us his gin. ON
durham was town of several hun
dred thousand. made up Of natives. f
The cotton market was i'm the midst f.
Of several thousand acres Of mud huts. /
which stretched out on all sides OF IL 4
The sheds and the streets were filled /
with cotton, which was brought in in {
straw bags and sold as IL was when
picked from the plants. The samples Z
were displayed in flat. round baskets.
each Of which held perhaps a busheL
Near the market 7 visited a factory.
a little establishment consisting Of a 7
half dozen mud huts, shut off from
the street by a mud wall. Inside the
wall was court and I'm this a dozen
black skinned women were sitting on
mats on the ground. Some were GIN
ming, others were spinning and Sveav-
ing was going on In the huts at the
back The sin was somewhat like a
FAMILY clothes Wringer, save that the
rolls were about as big around as the
ordinary candle and the whole gin
so small you could fit il into a peck
measure. One woman turned the ma
chime while another put in the cotton
and picked out the seeds from the Init
IS they were stopped by the rollers
Near the gin sat two women who were
mapping the lint with bow strings to