The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South

a distinct development, emerged. Thus to begin the story of the rise of the mills with discussion of a period which commences a century in advance, is not unlike the prod

ly presaging but causally related to the main action later. In spite of the present writer's usual disbelieve in the sufficiency of the evidence in these findings, it is

present, however, the conclusions of students who have believed they discerned signs of it in earlier years, it is necessary to include in these preliminary pages much that will not appear

d that much which might carelessly be taken as second-hand information, is really entirely and valuably first-hand. Peculiarly in the case of the economic history of the South, the statements of those who spoke from intimate elbow-touch with and active participation in the events of the various periods are sources in the finest sense. This is particularly true with respect to the work of the late Mr. D. A. Tompkins, which is repeatedly made use of. No document giving a photograph of conditions at one point of time could replace an utterance which sprang from his rich

and in other cases they are almost too studied. Aside from a preparatory instance, designed to show the limits of divergence between the various views, the method here chosen is that of relating the different assertions to all of the pe

eeply interested in the historical setting of the cotton mills, has made the follo

00 it was a struggle of gradually increasing intensity and extension."[1] This is a very positive statement of what may be called the continuity theory. Mr. G

anding at Philadelphia and New Castle, Delaware, settled first in Pennsylvania and moved southward through the Valley and Piedmont of Virginia to the Carolinas. Others landed at Charl

mmigration. As late as 1810 the manufactured products of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia exceeded in variety and value those of the entire New England States. By Whitney's invention, and its improvement by Holmes, cotton planting became so profitable, that for a period of forty years the price remained above twenty-five cents a pound. Factories were abandoned, the owners going into the production of cotton with slave labor. Some of the factory workers ... went into a precarious agriculture. The factory workers and small farmers were largely ... located on the mountain sides, and the development of cotton production with slave labor tended further to separate this democracy from the white race aristocracy of the low country. As cotton

o the Civil War absorption in cotton culture threw manufacturing of all sorts into the discard. This conception may be held to be so generally accepted as to be commonplace and not requiring of proof; to examine in detail, however, the varying statements

ow to

Carolina to go North to learn the trade of machinist and to study engineering I thought I was leaving a country which had never had any important manufactures. Later, when I was in the middle of industrial life in the North, I conce

nt given to the manufacture of cotton specifically. In a list of inventions, copyrights and patents, it appears that March 13, 1789, Hugh Templeton deposited in the office two plans, "a complete draft of a carding machine that will card eighty pounds of cotton per day", and "a complete draft of a spinning machine, with eighty-four spindles, that will spin with one man's attendance ten pounds of good cotton yarn per day."[5] In 1795 the legislature of this State passed an act authorizing commissioners to project a lottery for the benefit

appointed at a former meeting of directors to promote subscriptions for the encouragement of manufactures, informed the committee that the sum of eighty pounds sterling was subscribed by the inhabitants of this county for that laudable purpose." Prizes were offered to encourage the manufacture of woolen and cotton cards and of steel, and proclamation money

usta before and about the year 1810; in Augusta were made some of the earliest attempts in this country to improve the steam engine.[9]

township of Williamsburgh, can have no point except to indicate domestic industry.[11] Remarking the considerable manufacture of cloth in the province prior to and during the Revolutionary period, it is pointed out that "In those days it does not appear to have been popular to organize corporations and the manufacturing was done by individuals-most of the planters being amply able to conduct such operations."[12] Daniel Heyward, a planter, in a

groes to make one hundred and twenty yards of cotton and woolen cloth per week, employing a white woman to instruct in spinning and a

knowledge and instructed in most of the branches of cotton manufactures in Europe, has already fixed, completed and now at work on the high hills of the Santee, near Stateburg, and which go by water, ginning (?) carding and slubbing machines; also spinning machines, with 84 spindles each, and several other useful implements for manufacturing every necessary article in cotton."[16] Detail description

s were thus forced to make their own cloth, and many of them preferred the domestic article to the manufactured,"[18] and Mr. Clark says that "prior to the war of 1812 the advance of Southern manufactures was principally

jenny-spinners. This explains the large number of establishments reported from the South and West. Advertising then to the mills just noticed and to water-driven spindles near Fayetteville, he continues: "Less study had been given to the industrial records of the South than to those of the North, and during the subsequent period of indifference or hostilit

of the domestic character;[21] and Southern States showed instances of power-driven machinery before Samuel Slater built the first Arkwright mill in Rhode Island. The South had planter-manufacturers it is true, but this striking link with agriculture as contrasted with New England is easily explained in the more general fertility of the soil and the effect this of

at the same time the Northern States abolished it, there would have been, long since, and most assuredly at this moment, a

versy is involved. These plants may be denominated in general the "old mills". While the two ideas are closely related, a distinction must be held in mind between the influence of

at slavery was doomed. There is no use in talking about what might not have happened had slavery continued."[24] To uphold this view that the Civil War interrupted a course which was clearly laid down in the years previous, it ought to be capable of demonstration that the old mills had essentially the same character as those of the great period, with only those lacks which were inherent in the industry

few in Gastonia were known. The fact that such goods as 'Alamance' had a name already was an advantage."[26] But the mere fact that the old mills were known is not enough; it is further interesting that he continued to speak of them in close conjunction with the names of the fami

Thomas Sloan and Berry Benson.[28] But this does not mean that many of these, so far from inspiring the later development, were not themselves by its stimulus so greatly changed as to be radically different from their forme

tal newness of the hands to the processes and even the idea of textile manufacture, an opinion that not only did the ante-bellum m

war (Revolution) the manufacturers of Philadelphia extended their enterprises, and even built and run (ran) mills which writers often call factories, but they can hardly be classed under that term. Similar efforts, all preliminary to the establis

rom Philadelphia to Wilmington, North Carolina, up the Cape Fear river to Fayetteville, and then across country by wagon to Greensboro. Machinery for the Hill factory in Spartanburg county, consisting in 1816 or 1817 of seven hundred spindles, had to be brought by wagon from Charleston.[35] Some of the machinery for the Michael Schenck mill, built near Lincolnton, North Carolina, in 1813, was bought in Providence and hauled by wagon from Philadelphia.[36] For this mill a portion of the machinery was built by a brother-in-law of Schenck, and when the dam broke and it beca

t up mills in communities populated by Swiss, Scotch-Irish and Germans. Or like William Bates and probably the Hills, Shenden, Clark, Henry and the Weavers they came from the industrial atmosphere of New England, then particularly stimulated by the encouragements lent to textile manufacturing by the embargo laid on English goods in the War of 1812.[40] Or through collateral business collections or marriage they were drawn into the busin

[41] Cotton factories conjoined with gins and saw mills are not unknown in the South even

e local demand for yarn for homespun weaving-a support they did not entirely dispense with until after the war. Yarn was traded by the mills for homespun linen warp, and woven with that warp into strong cloth for country use. The family weavers who did this work were paid for their labor in cotton yarn."[42] Other evidence hardly supports a belief that the Southern mills of this period took so large a part in supplying the yarn market of the country; on the other hand, local consumption and the link with domestic industry, which even in the quotation above goes side by side with the wider sales, was prevalent. How closely these old mills were joined with the countryside is seen in the fact that into their coarse, homely fabrics went hand-spun linen warp. The domestic character was ingrained. Of the Rocky Mount Mill in North Carolina it is said that "For some years prior to and during the Civil War, the mill was a general supply station for warps which the women of the Sout

o contained a small dyeing and fulling plant for coloring and finishing the cloth woven by the farmers' wives and daughters."[45] A large cotton manufacturer says that he recalls only three mills operating in Spartanburg county before the war; there

current almost like money. The mill marketed it over the mountains in North Carolina and in Tennessee, as far as Russellville, "mountain schooners" with six-mile teams being used for the purpose. The wagons used to bring back whatever they could t

reaction from the war and reconstruction. Before the war there was first the domestic industry proper. Then came such small mills about Winston-Salem as Cedar Falls and Franklinsville. These little mills were themselves, however, hardly more than domestic manufactures. When, after the war, competition came from the North and from the larger Southern mills, the little mills which had operated before and had survived the war lost their advantage, which consisted in the possession of the local field. They had been able to barter for the

inclined to look with pessimism upon the prospect of success for the present plants which have t

counting one plant like another, display the Southern industry at this stage in a feeble light. Some primary descriptive factors are lacking in the earliest reports of the census which are at

2,262 spindles and the plants consumed 17,785 bales of cotton. In 1850 the same

934 spindles.[49] Ten years later this State showed three more establishments, an investment of $

operatives and 16,353 spindles. By the next decade there were 18 establishments, the investme

1850 the number of plants had increased by sixteen, making 35; the investment had risen to $1,736,156; the operatives total

New England States as a whole showed 674 mills, with investment of $34,931,399, operatives numbering 46,834, and 1,497,394 spindles. The Southern States again, in 1850 had 166 plants, $1,256,056 invested, 1

ern State in 1850.[51] Comparison of facts for all the Southern mills with those for the industry of New England pe

mills and of little water-driven yarn factories, in this section before 1850, may have approached the number of

to 1840, held to have been guided by the conjunction of raw cotton, waterwheel and steamboat along the fall line of rivers-at such points as Richmond, Petersburg, Augusta, Columbus, Huntsville, Florence and the vicinity of Montgomery, Mr

e of its own accord.[54] Niles' Register, May 2, 1840, declared: "The South is rapidly becoming independent in almost every branch of manufacture. There are in North Carolina alone, at this day, a greater number of different kinds than ten years ago there were in the w

o thrive down to 1860. In addition to this class were the cotton, wool, and iron manufacturers who now began to appear and who became quite prominent after the building of railroads began."[56] It is, however, questionable whether it may be said truly that "the people of the state became interested"; certainly there was nothing like the sweep of public sentiment that appeared in 1880. Several years earlier the Tarboro, N.C. Free Press had carried this item: "A few days since twenty bales

ears before the war", said Mr. Tompkins, "were beginning to realize the importance of diversified industries.... An industrial crisis was imminent, and the problem would have solved itself by natural agencies within a few more years, had not section differences brought on the war."[58] In connection with this statement, which approaches as nearly to the ascript

ride eleven cotton factories in the State, with other

nce upon manufactures than is commonly supposed, but the presence of the negro through slavery was important." It is noticed that white immigration from Europe, which at this time supplied the most considerable mechanical skill, avoided districts heavily populated with negroes; that plantation self-sufficiency meant isolation with small need for good communicating roads; that the market for middle-grade goods was restricted by the servile character of the colored population; that the credit system, by which factors controlled the directioning of productive capital, rested upon cotton culture by negro labor; that while the corn laws held in England, reciprocity between the Southern States and the mother country tended to discourage manufactures in this section while the conditions of commerce favored manufacture in the North. "These business interests, supported by social traditions and political sectionalism, were strengthened in

development of cotton mills in South Carolina might

was a laggard while slavery claimed the section's capital resources for cotton cultivation. The absence of immigration was as certainly the effect of slavery.[62] While it is true that for long years after emancipation, and continuing to this day, the influence of the presence of the negro in restraining inflow of immigrants, particularly of artizans, it is evident the lessening of this deterrent and the removal of other nearly equal drawbacks could not proceed or commence while slavery existed. It should be clear to anyone that from the point of v

iers to intercourse. The credit system in its hey-day rested in large degree upon supply by the factor of all industrial

ften employed slaves as the exclusive operatives in the factory, either when belonging to the management or hired from their owners; in some cases slaves or free negroes were employed as operatives in the same mills with whites; and finally, and more importantly, through the reconstruction years and at the very outset of the cotton mill era the thought of the establishers of mills nor infrequently groped out in the inclination again to engage negro ha

ers, and more still of lesser consequence of whom we have fewer evidences, were not products of a reaction that showed itself from the lon

richer than ever before. You see it was a ground-hog case. The soil was here, the climate was here, but along with them was a curse, the curse of slavery."[63] Probably not over-induced by bitter animus is Helper's direct charge: "And now to the point. In our opinion, an opinion which has been formed from data obtained by assiduous researches, and comparisons, from laborious investigation, logical reasoning, and earnest reflection, the causes which have impeded the progress and prosperity of the South, which have dwindled our commerce, and other similar pursuits, int

for scientific farming or anything else scientific.... Slavery not only demonstrated that people will not think unless it is necessary, but also that they will not work unless it is necessary.... Within three decades after the invention of the cotton gin, slavery had accomplished its revolution. The people whose minds had been occupied with diversified industries and industrial expansion, were narrowed down to the development and growth of cotton.... The mills and shops lay idle, the abundant natural resources were ignored, and everything staked upon one occupation...."[67] This writer was fond of linking the economic trend of the South in 1800 with that which emerged after Reconstruction, as thus, "In the latter part of the eighteenth century and the early part of the

ton mills: "Dependence upon the negro as a laborer has done infinite injury to the South. In the past it brought about a condition which drove the

e ante-bellum gin, gin-house and screw from 1820 to 1860. "The cotton was packed by hand, carried into the gin-house in baskets by laborers, carried to the gin by laborers, pushed into the lint-rooms, carried to the screw, packed in the box of the screw and bound with ropes, all by hand." But after the war came a

nt of the Morning News of Savannah, setting forth that before the war the planters saw the advantage for little establishments and were only