ne story construction was erected in its place. The advantage of
manufacture therein was so great that the owners of the property
changed the remaining old mill into a storehouse; and now, as they
wish to increase their business, it is to be torn down as a cumberer
of the ground, to make room for a building of similar construction to
the new mill.

It is true that such instances pertain more particularly to industries
and lines of manufacture where competition is close and conditions are
exacting. Still they apply in a greater or less degree to nearly every
industrial process in which a considerable portion of the expense of
manufacture consists in the application of organized labor to machines
of a high degree of perfection.

These changes have been solely due to the differences in the
conditions imposed by improvement in the methods of manufacture. The
early mills of this country were driven by water power, and situated
where that could be developed in the easiest manner. They were
therefore placed in the narrow valleys of rapid watercourses. The
method of applying water power in that day being strictly limited to
placing the overshot or breast wheel in the race leading from the
canal to the river, the mill was necessarily placed on a narrow strip
of land between these two bodies of water, with the race-way running
under the mill.

To meet these conditions of location, which was limited to this strip
of land, the mill must be narrow and short, and the requisite floor
area must be obtained by adding to the number of stories. It was
essential that the roof of such a mill should be strong and well
braced in order to sustain the excessive stress brought to bear upon
it. The old factory roof was a curious structure, with eaves springing
out of the edge of hollow cornices, the roof rising sharply until
about six feet above the attic floor, with an upright course of about
three feet, filled with sashes reaching to a second roof, which, at a
more moderate pitch than the first slope, trended to the ridge.

The attic was reduced to an approximately square room, by placing
sheathing between the columns underneath the sashes, and ceiling
underneath the collar beams above; thus forming a cock-loft above and
concealed spaces at the sides which diminished the practically
available floor space in the attic. This cock-loft and these concealed
spaces became receptacles for rubbish and harbors for vermin, both of
which were frequen