A banker of Winston-Salem, which is an industrial community, could not understand how the Southern mills succeeded "as well as they have." When there were mentioned to him several mills which have been consistently profitable, he found special advantages accountable for their favorable showing. In one case it was tidewater freight rates, in another skilful cotton buying by a manager of long experience. It was his belief that the average profits of Southern mills from 1880 to 1914 (omitting, that is, the years since the outbreak of the war) were not as much as 10 per cent.[361] So much for the gains over the whole period. The earnings at several points in the development of the industry show a wider range. A nephew of Mr. Tompkins, quoted above, who has succeeded in considerable measure to his uncle's manufacturing interests, and who is of too practical a turn of mind to be affected by the enchantment of distance, speaking of the success of mills right at the opening of the era, said that some made from 30 to 70 per cent. profit.[362] In a previous chapter, it has been seen how many mills at this juncture increased their plants from earnings. A Utopian tinge may be suspected in an article appearing in The Daily Constitution, Atlanta, in March of 1880, which, in urging upon Southern communities the establishment of spinning mills, stated: "At prevailing prices there is nearly or quite six cents per pound profit over all expenses in spinning No. 14 yarn, or three cents per spindle per day; this would give $9 per spindle per year, and as spinning mills can be built for less than $18 per spindle, no other figures are required to demonstrate the statement that the spinning mills in the South bid fair to realize this year fifty per cent. on the capital invested. Nearly all of these mills are running night and day, and every one of them is realizing handsome profits. These are facts."[363] The goods of the Wesson Cotton Mills, Mississippi, took a premium at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. The company started with one mill and a capital of $300,000. This plant made 30 per cent. profits, so another was built and the stock increased to $1,000,000.[364] A North Carolina newspaper trying to encourage cotton manufacturing in that State, stated in 1880 that upon the $2,288,000 invested in the mills in South Carolina, the profits ranged from 18 to 25 per cent.[365] The Boston Journal of Commerce in 1881 gave the opinion of an Englishman visiting the Eagle and Phoenix Mills, Columbus, Georgia, that the No. 3 Mill, then new, was the best equipped in the world, and said that "The profit of these mills last year was 20 per cent. on a capital of $1,250,000 or $5.76 per spindle."[366]