Perhaps some indication of the widespread popularity of cotton mills as an investment from a purely dividend-seeking point of view is contained in a newspaper notice of 1881 setting forth that a large mill at Nashville, Tennessee, had declared a dividend of 14 per cent. and another was built. In 1881 the Enterprise Factory, in Georgia, declared a 10 per cent. dividend, and decided to increase its capacity by 125 per cent. or more--from 13,890 spindles to over 33,000, and from 264 looms to more than 600.[408] Mills as Pulaski, in the same State, were anxious to double their capacity; $50,000 was subscribed for a mill at Jackson, West Tennessee; Dallas, Texas, was starting a $200,000 spindle plant, and the town of Sherman wanted a $75,000 factory.[409] The following year, the same paper printed an item showing further that dividends were being paid to stockholders in factories all over the South: "The cotton mills in Mississippi have proved bonanzas for the owners. The one at Wesson (it has been seen that this company made 30 per cent. profit from the plant) pays 26 per cent. dividends...."[410] The mill established by Mayor Courtenay, of Charleston, at Newry, South Carolina, paid no dividends for the first seven years of its life; this distinction from the earlier mills in regard to dividends, bears out what was said of profits in the period in which this plant was built (1892-3). Over the whole twenty-four years of its history, however, the company has paid an average of 6 per cent. to its shareholders.[411] The building of the Salisbury Mill was completed December 1, 1888. The first cloth was turned out February 9, 1889. The first dividend of 5 per cent. was declared January 11, 1890. The mill has missed only one dividend payment, a quarterly one, since this time.[412] It is true that for the first three or four years of its life, the concern was in an uncertain way, the panic of 1893 proving embarrassing to it, though not as seriously so as in the case of the Newry Mill, just cited. For a long time the investment paid 8 per cent. dividends, then for several years of late 10 per cent. On July 10, 1916, the directors declared an extra dividend of 5 per cent., paid August 1. A part of the profits has for years and years gone back into the business, enabling it now to earn good sums.[413]