himself £5 per week, provided they did not limit him too closely in the amount of size put into the warp returned. I find by my memoranda, that, taking gold at 115, with a piece of cloth 39 inches wide, finished in England, the finished cloth weighed 84 pounds, and the sizing was 1 pounds. It cost 5.96 of a cent a pound to make that cloth, with the cotton in it. The cost of weaving was covered very accurately by the amount of sizing put in, so that the weaving virtually cost nothing. Giving the man the yarn, he will return it to you woven, without charging you anything for weaving it.

Now, gentlemen, you can easily see where a portion of the trouble comes in, in exporting to England a pure printing-cloth, with only just sufficient sizing in it to make it weave properly, and exporting to China a drill made in Lowell under the same circumstances, with just sufficient sizing in it to make it weave, and with no idea of weighting it at all, in competition with the goods of the English manufacturers, which are so heavily weighted with size, china-clay, epsom-salts, sour flour, and I don't know what else.

Now, I know there is no gentleman in this room who would go home with any idea of sizing yarn in any such manner, in order to meet that trade. You, I am sure, would rather look. to American talent, and industry, and improved machinery to accomplish such a purpose, and wait until you can do it honestly. [Applause.]

Mr. Atkinson, in his remarks, I think, said that these English co-operative mills were run in the interest of the stockholders, or the workmen, in England. Now, gentlemen, it may be unpleasant to some of you to know that no man inside of the walls of those establishments gets any pay unless he gives an equivalent for it. I mean that they do not have treasurers, and agents, and superintendents that are not practical men at the work. That is one of the troubles that we have to meet here, in coming in competition with the English system. Wherever the mill is private property, with sufficient capital and modern machinery pitted against England, there are no fears in regard to the result. I don't attempt to say that an American will do any more labor in ten hours than an Englishman. But it cannot be denied that American laborers, with American machinery, which is automatic, as we understand it, or a great deal nearer

automatic than is used largely on the other side, come nearer to producing the value of their labors than do the laborers of England, with their machinery. In that country there is more poor machinery to be torn out and broken up than in the United States. Therefore, in the direction of competing with England, there is machinery and labor saved at every point, which is put into solid foundations, as has been explained by Mr. Atkinson. You do not put up your mills ten stories high where the land is worth two dollars an acre, but you contrive to get the greatest amount out of your resources which they are capable of yielding.

Mr. DRAPER, of Hopedale. I, for one, have been exceedingly interested in Mr. Atkinson's address. I think a large part of it must be very encouraging to owners. What he has said in regard to modes of reducing the cost of manufacturing, etc., it seems to me is particularly applicable to this locality. In regard to what Mr. Atkinson has said about the tariff and escape from taxation, I, for one, dissent from it to a certain extent. We should all, of course, be very glad to escape taxation; but we must remember that we had a very expensive war, and we have got to pay for it; we cannot shift the burden off our own shoulders upon some one else; and the burden must be carried. Englishmen will not pay our taxes for us, nor anybody else. So far as the question of the tariff is concerned, there is certainly a great variety of opinions. But my own opinion about it is, that we can just as well take Englishmen's opinion about what we had better do about stuffing goods as to take their opinion as to what we had better do about free trade. I think we will get just as disinterested advice in one case as in the other.

Now, about the matter of making goods, he has referred to the question of power. The use of steam, water, and other kinds of power in connection, with mechanical industry and ingenuity, is what we have to depend upon largely for the production of material wealth; and it has produced vastly more to-day than was produced fifty years ago. We are producing, in cotton mills, five times as much per person employed as we were when I went into mills about fifty years ago. That is the direction in which we must look for success.

With regard to the number of spindles, I know that the prod

uct per spindle of the spindles in this country is increasing rapidly. That ought not to be left out of account in estimating the production. The amount of power saved by changes in shafting and machinery, is very material. The cost of power in print-goods is not less than half a cent a pound. Now, there is where England is going astern. Their power is costing more. Reckon up the millions of horse-power that they use in their establishments for various purposes, in their manufactures and shipping, and you will see that it is growing to be an immense tax upon them. My own idea, that I would instil into this assembly, is, "Purchase American productions." I would not wear a coat made in England. Why should I set their mechanics at work, and leave our own idle? Yet I sce those to whom we look up for example wearing English coats. We have some merchants, undoubtedly, that would be glad to transport everything that we manufacture abroad, that it may go through their hands, and, on the other hand, to receive everything that we use from abroad. I don't believe that that is economical. The "days' works" of a nation, as the speaker has proclaimed, are the most valuable thing that a nation has. We produce, I believe, fully all that he has stated. But our trouble is that there are too many idle people. When people are at work they will buy.

In the matter of cotton goods, I observed that when cotton was up to ninety cents a pound, and they were buying all the old comfortables and tearing them up for the cotton, the supply of cotton goods got down exceedingly low. There was not much in my house after we got through at that time; and I presume a great many others were in the same condition; and that left us, after the close of the war, in no condition to export goods. We had been stopped by the war from exporting. Why should we go abroad for a market then? We had more demand than we could supply at home. That state of things continued for a long time, but we are getting over it now. Then the large amounts consumed by the fires in Boston and Chicago temporarily kept this matter away. I am one of those who believe most fully that in the improvements that are made in machinery, and in the reduction of the cost of making cotton goods (there are those all around me who know how much cheaper they are making them than they were a few

years ago), we have a great advantage, and this is a great point for us to consider, when looking at the practicability of our being able to compete with people abroad. I believe the fact that we can send our goods right into the markets of England, and rely on them for the distribution of them, is a more encouraging thing than it would be if we could send them to the very places where they are consumed.

I want to refer to the matter of iron and steel. Now, there is a thing that is encouraging. I have paid a good deal of duty on iron and steel, and paid it very cheerfully (notwithstanding that I had iron and steel to sell myself), because I believed that the time would come when we would get it cheaper for so doing. That time is now here. We don't buy anything but American iron now. Five or six years ago we did not buy anything, comparatively, but Scotch iron. And I believe we are going to become the greatest iron-producing nation in the world, and the greatest nation. We are getting into a better position to compete with other nations, and I believe that from the aggregation of value in our mines and our oil wells, and what we shall be able to do in our manufactures, there is to be more increase of wealth produced in this country during the next ten years than in any previous decade.

Mr. ATKINSON. I desire to state very carefully, in order that the record may be made, if this debate is to be published. as usual, that I first endeavored to treat this subject without any reference to the question of taxation, either internally or by means of a tariff. But I found it utterly impossible to treat the subject of exports without reference to that subject; and as the Association is not responsible for anything said or done by any member in the meeting, I felt at liberty to treat the question in a broad way, and not attempt to avoid it; I would not have it considered that I, as a cotton manufacturer, would, for myself or anybody else, avoid an equitable share of the taxation of this country. But the question is not one of amount, but of method of imposing the tax; and it is important in the extreme as a question of method. If any one needing water, living below the foot of one of our falls, proposed to take a supply of water from our river, we should ask him to take it after it had passed through the wheel and exerted its power, and not to take it from the head of the fall. And that represents the

difference between the burden of a tax imposed in one way or in another. We may pay the same tax and never feel it, or we may pay it and be ruined by it. [Applause.]

Mr. A. G. CUMNOCK, of Lowell. Mr. Garsed has very kindly related to us a conversation that he heard between an English weaver and spinner in Manchester, and that he was also invited to go out and see how the sizing was put in. I don't suppose there is a gentleman here who wants to learn the trade. But yet I would like to have Mr. Garsed tell us how it was done, and whether he has ever heard of English goods being treated with size after they have been woven.

Mr. GARSED. I believe I expressed, when I was making my remarks, a desire that the American manufacturers would not attempt this English trick. But as it may be to the interest of gentlemen here to know a part of the business, I will state from memory, as nearly as I can, how the thing was done. They obtained sour flour in the first place, and put it to steep, I think, some three or four months. They then boiled that flour, and during the process of boiling added the weighty materials, mainly china-clay; but in order that the stuff should remain sufficiently mixed during the process of the warp going through the machines, they added epsom-salts, for the purpose, they said, of drawing the moisture to it and keeping it from shedding off under the loom; and, in order to have it remain upon the yarn when put in, they added this stuff in small proportions in the sizing-trough, keeping it violently boiling all the time-putting in a small quantity as required. In that manner they succeeded in getting in any amount of sizing very quickly, and it remained too. I cannot tell the amount of material they put in to accomplish it; but they did accomplish it. There is no doubt of that. And they seem to have improved upon it since then, for I have been told by a gentleman since I sat down, that they can size warp and retain the size, up to 100 per cent. I make the assertion without fear of contradiction, that you can go to Manchester at any time and furnish a weaver with any number of hundred pounds of yarn, and he will be very happy to give you back the same number of pounds of cloth, provided you do not specify the weight.

Mr. W. P. HAINES, of Biddeford. In 1854 our corporation sent over a weaver to England, and he examined among all the