The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-07-14


 l stream, and now three-fourths of the power used in the mills comes from Fsteam generated bY coal Indeed the
 business depends so much upon coal I that it is a question whether it could
 not have been more advantageously To-
 cated al the seaboard, where the freight
 rates for fuel and raw materials would ] be much cheaper and also those for
 some of the export of it's products. ] It is strange that the cotton mills
 of the world should be located so far
 away from the cotton belt We have a spinning and weaving industry in the south, but twothrds of our cotton is spun in the north, and most of the worlds cotton is woven from 1000 to 5000 miles from where the cotton is grown. vast deal of it is made in
 Great Britain, which has more than
 two-fifths of all the cotton factories
 on earth and eats up more than 20 per , cent of the product. The worlds cot ton mills altogether number something
 like 650O They are scattered through out 8 countries, and consume about
 20,000,000 bales of cotton a year Of
 this more than one-third is woven in
 the United States and two-thirds of the latter amount here in New England. i The Amcskeag company alone has all
 most 7oo,0eo spindles for cotton and worsted. It has more than 24,000
 looms
 The cotton operatives of the world altogether number three or four mil : lions and large number of them are women The great factory here
 employs 16,000 hands. a greater num- Der than we have soldiers in any one our our army divisions in France. About 1000 of these are women, and they re- ceive higher wages, perhaps, than any other cotton workers on earth outside of this section of the country. Of the whole force in the Amoskeag there are only a few score under l6 years of age, and the youngest girls make | SS or $9 a week. Some years ago visited the cotton mills at Manches- ter, England and the managers told
 me they were paying their factory
 women from $4 to $6 per week. The wages have probably been increased since the war. It seems to me that the women there do not compare in ability or efficiency with the girls em- ployed here at Manchester. Here a single girl can manage several looms, and the most complicated machines are in the hands of the women. Many of the machines are automatic and the [ 7 with that of the old mills of England.
 As l went through the British factories it was a wonder to me how hundreds 1 of girls could work together without being able to gossip. I mentioned this to my guide, who replied: Why, bless you, man, these girls are the greatest talk CTS on earth. They were talking l all the while we were in the mill, but the noise is such that they have learned 1 to listen with their eyes and not with ! the ears, They have learned the lip language and can tell what any one says by watching the movement of his 1 iips.'
 1 The factory girls of Manchester. N. H. are better looking and better dressed than those of Manchester, 1 England. Here the girls have no special costumes, The girls of Manches-
 ter, England, wear calico dresses with short sleeves and q short skirt. Below l the skirt show out their stockings
 and clogs. The clogs are a peculiar 1 ity to that class of employment They
 have leather uppers with soles of wood
 on which bonds of iron are tackled This makes a great chatter as they
 move about, reminding one of the noise
 in Japanese railroal station, where
 the passengers run over the platform
 in their wooden shoes Most of the
 English factory girls pay but little att tentlon to their personal apparel while
 at work. l saw hundreds of them who
 had their hair in crimping pins so
 tight that the skins of their .foreheads were stretched like that of tam-
 bourne. 1 was told that they kept their hair in erimping pins all the week and took 1t out only on Sundays
 and holidays.
 But to get back to the shirt of the sol
 der' II you would see the material of
 which 1t is made you must start at that
 part of the factory where the huge cot /, ton naies are opened up and torn into pieces, Pick up handful of the cot
 ton wool and examine the hbers Pull | them apart and spread them out on your hand. They look like white hairs, but they are very much thinner They are
 so thn that thousand of them might De laid side by side and they would not cover an inch. It takes millions to make one spool of thread, and there are several hundred millions in each soldiers snlrt It takes about one hundred mil. lion fibers to make one pound of raw cotton, an amount which can be spun into a single thread 1e0 miles long.
 Now if you will examine the fibers more closely you will see that each has
 little curl or twist to it. and if you will put it under microscope you will
 see that 1t has on its outsides many little scales overlapping each other hke the