Georgia, while I make only ten pounds in Philadelphia. Is it not evident that to make my Philadelphia mill equally efficient with the other, it should have ten per cent more opening and carding power, more drawing, slubbing, roving, spinning, and finishing apparatus? Some people say that ten hours make as good an output as eleven; but don't they forget that the product depends upon the spindle revolutions at last? While the spindle revolves at normal speed, the twist must perforce go into the yarn.
A mill has just commenced operation here, in the outskirts of Macon, with English cards of fifty inches diameter and forty inches wire surface, with top flats instead of rollers. They turn off a little more than twenty pounds each per hour—two hundred pounds and more per day. The card-room machinery is of English make and functions admirably. The spinning machinery is of American make and is A No. 1. The product is very large, and the demand for it so great that I was informed recently that the mill was operated until 9 p. m. Most managers prefer American machinery. I do not, for the carding department. The American Robbeth spinning-frame seems to be almost beyond any further improvement. There is no objection to it, as far as I know, except that its cost is so great compared with the English cost of the same machine. I am told that these American spindles cost this Macon Company $3.30 each, while I have among my papers proposals for the same spindle in England at eight shillings (about $1.92 each). Most of the practical and skillful foremen are men of Northern training, and have very strong predilections for the machines they have been accustomed to, and many of them are only operators of mills, not constructors or owners. One gentleman said in my hearing some years ago, "No man can make money in this country with English machinery." I reminded him (it was in 1880) that the English had built forty millions of spindles for their own mills, and probably as many more for the rest of the world, while the United States had then only about ten millions; that some of the brightest intellects of England had been engaged for more than a hundred years in the invention, the construction, the operation, and the improvement of cotton-working machinery, and that they might be supposed to have reached results at least comparable with American results. He said no more.
Is it not ridiculous that people of sense say, after so long "protection," that they can not compete in price with English machinists—especially now, when I see the statement made that American iron can be sold in England from five to six dollars per ton cheaper than the English can make it at home? The manufacturers of the North and East generally seem to be unable to conquer their prejudices in which they have been indoctrinated
