The urgency and the magnitude of the reforms needed in the field and about the gin-house have not deterred the South from aspiring to spin and weave at least the bulk of the cotton crop. Indeed, there is nothing that so appeals to Southern pride as to urge the possibility that in time the manufacture of this crop as well as the crop itself shall be a monopoly of the cotton belt. As the South grows richer and the conditions of competition are nearer equal, there will be a tendency to place new machinery intended for the manufacture of cotton near the field in which the staple is growing; but the extent to which this tendency will control, or the time in which it will become controlling, is beyond the scope of this article. We shall rather deal with things as they are, or are likely to be in the very near future. We note, then, that in the past ten years the South has more than doubled the amount of cotton manufactured within her borders. In 1870, there were used 45,032,866 pounds of cotton; in 1880, 101,937,256 pounds. In 1870, there were 11,602 looms and 416,983 spindles running; in 1880, 15,222 looms and 714,078 spindles. This array of figures hardly indicates fairly the progress that the South will make in the next ten years, for the reason that the factories in which these spindles are turned are experiments in most of the localities in which they are placed. It is the invariable rule that when a factory is built in any city or country it is easier to raise the capital for a subsequent enterprise than for the first one. At Augusta, Georgia, for instance, where the manufacture of cloth has been demonstrated a success, the progress is remarkable. In the past two years two new mills, the Enterprise and Sibly, with 30,000 spindles each, have been established; and a third, the King, has been organized, with a capital of $1,000,000 and 30,000 spindles. The capital for these mills was furnished about one-fourth in Augusta, and the balance in the North. With these mills running, Augusta will have 170,000 spindles, and will have added about 70,000 spindles to the last census returns. In South Carolina the same rapid growth is resulting from the establishment of one or two successful mills; and in Columbus, Georgia, the influence of one successful mill, the Eagle and Phœnix, has raised the local consumption of cotton from 1927 bales in 1870 to 19,000 bales in 1880. In Atlanta, Georgia, the first mill had hardly been finished before the second was started; a third is projected; and two companies have secured charters for the building of a forty-mile canal to furnish water-power and factory fronts to capital in and about the city. These things are mentioned simply to show that the growth of cotton manufacture in the South is sympathetic, and that each factory established is an argument for others. There is no investment that has proved so uniformly successful in the South as that put into cotton factories. An Augusta