Year: 1879

THE CLEMENT ATTACHMENT AGAIN.


Henry W. Grady writes from Atlanta te
the Philadelphia Times:


The unexpected and artificial rise in the
price of cotton has added fully two cents g
pound to the ordinary. price of this staple
This surplus of $40 per bale, which strikes
the farmers as happily as did the fairy god
mothers gift to Cinderella, and which comes
quite as gratuitously, has given everything d
boom. The cotton is being rushed to market
as rapidly as possible. Just upon this boom
comes the discussion of little machine thai
is already famous over the continent and thai
promises the grandest results, the Clement at
tachment. This machine, the invention of s
Memphis mechanic, who died of yellow fever
provides for the spinning of yarns from seed
cotton. At present, the. cotton is picked from
the boil and taken to gin which simply sep
arates the lint from the seed. The lint is then
baled and sent North for manufacturing
With the Clement mill the lint is not only
separated from the seed, but it is spun into
yarn. The difference in'value is enormous
The lint cotton is worth only about eight cents
pound on the plantation the yarn is worth
seventeen cents pound. 1t will be seen
therefore, that every pound of cotton spun is


DOUBLED IN VALUE.


A bale of cotton ginned by the old process
is worth say $50 the same cotton run through
the new process is worth $1OO. Of this added
value fully SIS is clear profit. A crop of B.
600 900 bales spun into warn would, therefore,
leave $5OO0OO,O0O in the South, while it now
leaves only 25O,OOO0O0. OF this surplus Of
S25O,00O,OOO there would be $75,000,00C
profit. The rest would be kept on the farms
in the way of wages, &c. It looks unreason'
able to apply these figures to the whole crop,
and yet it would require no more capital to
spin the crop into yarns by the new process
than it does to gin it by the old. One Glenn.
ent mill will do the work Of three gins and
cost about one third as much. 1t is believed
they will rapidly take the place of gins on
the plantations and that thorough revolu'
ton will be effected. There are six Of these
little mills in operation in Georgia and the
Carolinas. Each of them is visited daily by
crowds of sight-seers and farmers and capital
lists. Letters are received from all parts of
the country, and samples of the yarn have
been sent for by Liverpool capitalists. The
yarns made by this process are superior to any
others and took the premiums at all the fairs.
The little mills could not, all combined, sup
ply fraction of the demand that comes from
Philadelphia alone for the yarns.


One point that commends the Clement mills
to the South is that they will make


AN ESSENTIALLY SOUTHERN INDUSTRY.


The cotton seed cannot be carried away
from the plantations. 1t must be spun there
just as completely as it is now ginned there.
The mills are very simple. 1t is simply the
connection of gin with spindle by means
of carding cylinders. In the old system the
fibre is chopped and torn from the seed by
lightning-like saws and then thrown all tan.
gled and torn, into the lint pile, then packed
into bales, taken to the factories, picked out
and foggled again and then carded into rolls
and spun. In the new process, the gin moves
slower, pulls the fibre from the seed instead OF
tearing or cutting it, transfers it carefully to
carding cylinder, instead of throwing it into
the lint pile, and spins it at once, instead Of
packing it, COMPRISING it and picking it out
again. In the process of converting seed cot
ton into thread no less than four machines
used in the old process are eliminated in the
new process, and profit of nearly two cents
a pound is gained. This is an enormous mar
gin of profit. 1t is proved also, that by the
superior gins used in the Clement mills eight
per cent. more of lint is taken from the seed
than by the old gins. This eight per cent. has
heretofore been wasted. From the lint to the
thread there is another FIVE per cent of vast
age saved.


THE FURoRE OVER THESE MILLS


is wonderful. They drive out all thought OF
politics. 1t is estimated that over one hun
dred will be put to work in Georgia within
the next year. A prominent cotton factory
man predicted to me that the time would come
when the old factories would scatter their
spindles among these plantation mills and
supply their places with looms to weave the
yarns sent in from the farms. The profits Of
these mills are large per centage. The six
mills in operation average from thirty to sixty
per cent A mill that cost $500 has made
81 1863 clear in one year, and it will do better
next year. A double mill that cost $4,000 is
making from So to $40 day, and is safe for
$4,000 year. They are simple, snug little
structures, looking like the ordinary country
grist mills A six-horse power will run one OF
them. Several Northern capitalists have Wis
tied the mills, and several companies are being
formed to put them up. The Southern pa
pers are full of enthusiastic articles concerning
them.