Saffold Berney, in his Handbook of Alabama, published in 1878, made a rather elaborate computation of the earning capacity of a 4,000-spindle, 125-loom mill, making 6,000 yards of cloth per day.[367] It may not be uninteresting to see how he worked out a considerable rate of profit for a small plant. His calculations are: 3,000 yds. 7-8 shirting at 6 cents $ 180.00 3,000 yds. 4-4 sheeting " 7 " 210.00 -------- Total gross income $ 390.00 Cotton on a basis of 10 1-2 cents, 15 per cent. waste $220.94 Labor and mill expenses 63.44 Office and general expenses 9.62 Coal, gas, oil, starch & supplies 19.00 Insurance 3.11 Charges in selling goods, 2 1/2 per cent 9.75 Wear and tear machinery 5 per cent 13.69 339.55 ------ ------- Leaving a net profit per day of $ 50.45 Or for 300 working days or one year of $15,135.00 Figuring the cost of this mill at $20 per spindle, and leaving aside, as before, money otherwise invested about the business, there is a capital of $80,000, upon which a profit of $15,135.00 is 18.8 per cent. "Profits in the past," says Mr. Thompson, "have been so large that often before the last payment on the stock is due, a sum sufficient to pay all obligations has been accumulated." He cites as a particularly favorable instance, that of a mill which required no further instalments on subscriptions after a little more than one-third of the instalment-payment period had run out.[368] A little incident is interesting as involving two of the most important and picturesque personalities and one of the chief mills connected with the rise of cotton manufacturing in the South, and it bears directly on the topic now being considered. It seems that the founding of the Piedmont Factory by Colonel H. P. Hammett in South Carolina inspired a notice from Mr. Edward Atkinson, of Boston, in which he reasoned that cotton manufacturing in the South could never pay. This came under the eye of Colonel Hammett. To the article he pinned his annual balance sheet, showing a profit of 20 per cent., and sent the two to Mr. Atkinson.[369] In regard to these first years of the large establishment of cotton mills in the South, it is common to hear the opinion that the big profits made attracted the energies of the people to mill building.[370] Going a little further back, the mills in operation just before the textile era, though few in number, showed gains that bore a part in the boom about 1880.[371]