Year: 1866



 The use of machinery in the performance of labor at the South has been very much under rated, for tworeasons. First, from the nature of agricultural pursuits in which most of our people have been engaged, which necessarily require more immediate exercise of manual labor than other pursuits: and second, from the character of the labor employed, which being that of slaves, was unskilled and abun- dant enough for the purpose to which it was | applied A man whose wealth consisted in land and negroes was satisfied with that profit which arose from the increase of his slaves, and the rising value accruing to his lands by this very increase of slaves, whose time was entirely devoted to agriculture.

 But how stands the case now? When laborers must be persuaded and hired, when the land is lying idle for want of sufficient hands 10 cultivate it, every machine that pro mises to diminish the amount of labor required must certainly be advantageous. If, with Q cultivator, one hand can do the work of two if, with a loom, one woman can clothe the entire family--how much better is this than to feed and pay wages for the greater number required under the old system? Every machine used instead ofhuman hands is double saving

 it saves wages aud provisions both. Take for instance the new invention of Mendenhau. Whereas by the old loom all the women in the country would be required Gas we learned in Confederate times,) to clothe the people, with this loom one man may clothe hundred or five hundred. But perhaps the planter replies that he does not now have to clothe his negroes, and consequently does not care how much they must pay for their clothing. Let us suppose this planter to become, to a limited extent, the manufacturer of his own raw material. He buys 8 spinning jimmy, which by one process separates the staple from the seed (which is now done by ginning, ! and also converts 1t into yarn ; he thus saves his five cents per pound on his cotton, to be paid if fexported, or else taken out of his cot ton if sold to the Northern manufacturer; he saves the profit of the manufacturer plus the tariff of twenty or thirty per cent. added as bonus to enable him to compete with foreign fabrics; he saves the cost of transportation to the North and back again: he saves the profit of the factor who sells his cotton, of the broker who buys it, ofthe dry goods merchant who brings 1t back, and thinks he sells his manufactured article for three or four times the worth of the raw material at his own plan tation. And all this is effected by a small investment of few hundred dollars for spinner and loom that can be managed by negro girl or boy.

 Take bale of cotton weighing five hundred pounds, and now worth in New York two nuHufeu uollarS rive Hundfeu- pounuS o1 cotton will make one thousand yards of cloth, worth forty cents per yard, equal to four hun dred dollars. But one of these machines will probably work up ten bales of cotton per annum, equal to ten thousand yards of cloth, or four thousand dollars. All this accom- plished with less labor than was formely bestowed on an ordinary handloom.

 We know how slow planters are to adopt Improvements, but the exceeding simplicity and cheapness of ths investment, together with it's extreme proftableness, it seems to us. would commend it to every man. As people we are governed by our political and commercial enemies To enrich themselves they have destroyed our labor system and taxed our products. Shall we not render ourselves, at lest pecuniarily, independent of them The way to effect this is to become manufacturers of our own goods.-[ Selma Ala.) Messenger.