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THE RISE OF COTTON MILLS IN THE SOUTH
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to the Board of University Studies of The
Johns Hopkins University in Conformity with
the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
by
Broadus Mitchell
Baltimore, Maryland
1918
CONTENTS
Page
Foreword
_Chapter I_: The Background 1-45
_Chapter II_: The Background, continued 45-94
_Chapter III_: Conditions Precedent to the Erection
of the Mills 95-131
_Chapter IV_: Capital 132-181
_Chapter V_: Financing the Mills 181-225
_Chapter VI_: Financing the Mills, continued 226-271
Vita 272
FOREWORD
These pages represent a partial exploitation of materials gathered with a
view to their ultimate use in more extended form. Many phases of the
problem have been left entirely untreated, but the research upon these
subjects has not been without indirect service in the present study. In
the case of two chapters written midway of the investigation, in revision
care has been taken to bring them into consonance with the indications
which developed from subsequent discoveries. It is hoped, therefore, that
their lack is rather as to completeness than as to fidelity of temper.
Unless this presentation is entirely inadequate, in addition to the more
objective economic forces, in the rise of cotton mills in the South, there
will appear the human elements that lie at the core of the development.
For assistance, my first thanks are due to Professor Jacob H. Hollander
and Professor George E. Barnett, of The Johns Hopkins University, who have
contributed in a hundred ways over the whole period of study, and to Dr.
Nathaniel R. Whitney, formerly of The Johns Hopkins University and now of
the Iowa State University, who helped form my original conception of the
problem. In the wider aspects of my study I have drawn upon the experience
and judgment of my father continuously. Acknowledgment is due Miss Ellen
Rothe and Miss Ethel Hubbard, of the library staff of The Johns Hopkins
University; to the authorities of the library of the Peabody Institute of
Baltimore, and to the officers of the reading room of the Library of
Congress.
In two field investigations in the South, many gentlemen connected
directly or indirectly with the cotton manufacturing industry have been
instituting in extending their time and counsel and courtesy. From lack of
space, it is not possible to make individual mention of all of these in
this place; foot-note references to the interviews must be understood each
one as expression of appreciation. For extraordinary assistance, however,
it gives me pleasure here to return thanks to Hon. John Skelton Williams,
Comptroller of the Currency; Mr. George A. Noelting, Jr., of Richmond,
Virginia; Mr. O. D. Davis, of Salisbury; Mr. J. L. Hartsell, of Concord;
Messrs. J. Lee Robinson and S. N. Boyce, of Gastonia; and Miss Anna L.
Twelvetrees, Mr. Sterling Graydon and Mr. Hudson Millar, of Charlotte,
North Carolina; Mr. W. J. Thackston, of Greenville; Mr. August Kohn,
Professor Yates Snowden and Mr. William W. Ball, of Columbia, South
Carolina, and Mr. T. S. Raworth, of Augusta, Ga. Of more intimate sort is
my obligation to Professor K. Roberts Greenfield, of Delaware College, who
by his constructive criticism has helped shape my opinion in a large way
and has at many points improved the text as such.
I cannot fail to acknowledge, finally, my gratitude to Mrs. Charles
Reuter and the members of her family, under whose roof most of these pages
were written.
Broadus Mitchell
Baltimore, February 6, 1918.
THE RISE OF COTTON MILLS IN THE SOUTH
CHAPTER I
_THE BACKGROUND_
This opening chapter undertakes a broad survey in brief compass of the
historical and economic background out of which the cotton manufacturing
industry of the South, as 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 production of a play
hopeful in conception, robust in theme and rapid in action, but in which
the curtain first rises on a stage which remains empty throughout an
entire act.
In viewing the period lying back of the concerted erection of cotton mills
in the South, some observers have said they caught satisfying glimpses of
men and facts not only 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 a primary purpose of
this discussion to give their statements, together with the supporting
testimony that they deliberately and others incidentally have brought
forward.
The total of this study will show that the development, as such, not only
first substantially showed itself, but had its complete genesis, about
the year 1880. It is plain that in order to 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 as fact exhibit, but rather as opinion. And not
simply this, but in seeking to make clear the opposite theory, free
recourse is taken to the findings and statements of others than the
writer.
No apology is made for the incorporation of secondary material. On the
contrary, this is intentioned. Lying, after all, outside of the central
facts to come under view in this essay, exclusively original research in
so extended a period has not seemed justified. In the second place, it has
not appeared necessary for the reason that there has been usually less
dispute as to the facts and the completeness of the data that much study
has uncovered, than as to the right interpretation of material evidences
agreed upon. Besides these considerations, it should be understood 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 association
with the whole fabric of the South's economic life, and which voiced the
result of his long and sensitive responsiveness to stimuli external and
internal. He absorbed influences as a sponge does water, and when pressed
his books and speeches yield observations quick, living, liquid. There is
considerable reason for belief, too, that Mr. Tompkins' concepts, however
correctly or incorrectly interpretative of the past, stood in a causal
relation to the cotton manufacturing development in his active period and
continuing to a less extent even to the present.
While there has perhaps been no previous effort to bring the several
beliefs into parallel presentation, concerning the rise of cotton mills in
the South a little body of theory has grown up. Many of the statements are
not well-informed, 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 periods to which they apply, rather
than attempting to give at once expositions of each in continuity. It is
hoped that in trying to examine the views in detail, the relative weighing
of periods as intended by the writers will not be lost.
One who made his study with empirical purpose, and may believed to have
been not deeply interested in the historical setting of the cotton mills,
has made the following observation for South Carolina, taken by him as
typical of the Southern States:
"The story of the development of the cotton manufacturing industry in
South Carolina is not wanting in impressive elements. From the beginning
in 1790 till 1900 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. Goldsmith's view is in marked contrast with a
representative expression of Mr. Tompkins, like himself a Southerner for
considerable time a resident of the North:
"The settlement of mountainous and middle North Carolina was practically
by the same elements,--Scotch-Irish, Germans, Moravians, and Quakers,--as
came to Pennsylvania. Many emigrants landing 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 Charleston and moved northwestward. In South Carolina even the
names of several of the northern counties are identical with those of
Pennsylvania, as Lancaster, Chester, and York counties.
"These settlers brought with them a large degree of knowledge and skill in
manufacturing. All along the Piedmont and even in the mountains from
Pennsylvania to Georgia, they not only followed agriculture, but developed
varied household manufactures in the period between 1750 and 1800.... In
1800 many charcoal blast furnaces making pig iron and many catlin forges
and rolling mills making wrought iron bars, and other products of iron,
indicate that a manufacturing development throughout the Piedmont region
of the South might have continued parallel with that which has taken place
in Pennsylvania, except for the circumstances of the combined influence of
the invention of the cotton gin, the institution of slavery, and the
checking of this immigration. 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 and slavery advanced, the population of free
white work people were driven farther and farther into the mountain
country, and thus many of the white industrial workers of 1800 became the
poor mountain farmers of 1850.... the owners of factories who operated
with free white labor in 1800 had become in 1850 the cotton planters
operating with black slave labor.... when the abolition of slavery removed
one great difficulty of industries and the white people who had formerly
deserted manufacturers for agriculture went back to the pursuits of their
fathers, these mountaineers formed the labor supply.... it was found that
the descendants of the industrial workers of 1800 could, with a little
training, do as good work as their forbears did."[2]
This opinion is not so categorical as that of a close observer of the
South who believes that "from 1810 to 1880 the section was industrially a
desert of Sahara", but it makes clear the view that from a point early in
the century until a date subsequent to 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
that would cast doubt upon this, so far from being a tilting at windmills,
will serve to fix with some conclusiveness the date most nearly according
with the commencement of the industry, and so accomplish the chief object
of this introductory discussion.
And now to begin.
In declaring in 1908 that Spartanburg was regaining the position of a
central point in one of the most forward manufacturing developments in
America, such as the place had been a century earlier, Mr. Tompkins said:
"When I left South 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 conceived the idea of writing an
industrial history of the United States. To my amazement I found that the
agricultural South, from which I had come in a spirit of industrial
despair, was the cradle of manufactures in the United States."[3]
Mr. Thompson has developed carefully the industrial character of what may
roughly be called the Revolutionary period, particularly with reference
to North Carolina: "The domestic industries ... flourished. Though there
were no towns of any size, the number and the skill of the artisans was
such that, in 1800, it seemed probable that the logical development would
be into a frugal manufacturing community, rather than into an agricultural
state."[4] Records in the office of the Secretary of State of South
Carolina show the early encouragement 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 of
William McClure in his effort to establish a cotton manufactory to make
"Manchester wares."[6] The purchase by Southern States of the patent
rights of Whitney's cotton gin is to be interpreted not as a design to
leave off cotton manufacturing, but rather as an evidence of a prevalent
spirit for mechanical improvement. A South Carolina appropriation bill for
1809 has a paragraph advancing to Ephraim McBride $1000. "to enable him to
construct a spinning machine on the principles mentioned in a patent he
holds from the United States."[7]
Much of this may be believed to have been directly in consequence of the
necessity for economic self-sufficiency during the Revolution when the
colonial commerce with England was stopped. Proceedings of the Safety
Committee in Chowan county, North Carolina, for March 4, 1775, show that
"the committee met at the house of Captain James Sumner and the gentlemen
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 to the amount of ten pounds would be given by the chairman of the
committee to the first producer in a certain time of fulled woolen cloth.
The provincial congress the same year took steps to stimulate, by
bounties, the manufacture of gunpowder, rolling and slitting mill
products, cotton cards of wire, merchantable steel, paper, woolen cloth
and pig iron.[8]
Although it is said that their objects were possibly political as well as
industrial, mechanics' societies existed at Charleston and Augusta before
and about the year 1810; in Augusta were made some of the earliest
attempts in this country to improve the steam engine.[9] As early as 1770
there was formed in South Carolina a committee to establish and promote
manufactures, with Henry Laurens as chairman.[10]
Before making an estimate of the character of the textile industry in the
South in this Revolutionary period, it is well to take a glimpse at some
of the individual establishments. The facts brought out by Mr. Kohn's
painstaking research as to South Carolina serve well. Governor Glen's
"Answers to the Lords of Trade", believed to have been written in 1748, in
attributing some manufacture of stuffs like Irish linen to the inhabitants
of the Irish 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 letter in 1777, declared with reference to his
"manufactory" that if cards were to be had "there is not the least doubt
but that we could make six thousand yards of good cloth in the year from
the time we began." And Mr. Kohn comments, "This certainly shows that the
Heywards conducted a considerable plant for the manufacture of cotton
goods", and allows that "no doubt other individual planters made their own
cotton clothes in the same way."[13]
Domestic production is clearly seen in a statement in the same year that a
planter to the northward in three months trained thirty negroes to make
one hundred and twenty yards of cotton and woolen cloth per week,
employing a white woman to instruct in spinning and a white man in
weaving. "He expects to have it in his power not only to cloathe his own
negroes, but soon to supply his neighbors."[14]
This student has satisfied himself, in spite of the admitted fact that no
traces of the plant survive, that "in 1778 Mrs. Ramage, a widow, living on
James Island, Charleston District, established a regular cotton mill,
which was operated by mule power."[15] Another plant which would seem to
have approached a commercial character is seen in the assertion in 1790
that "A gentleman of great mechanical 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 shows, however, that while some long staple cotton for
this establishment was imported from the West Indies, and while a variety
of goods were made, it was conducted as an adjunct to a plantation, parts
of the equipment were later removed to and set up on another plantation,
and much yarn was spun for persons in the vicinity. It is, however,
notable that the machinery was made in North Carolina.[17]
It has been said probably very justly that "It was not until far in the
nineteenth century that manufactured cloth could be bought because of its
scarcity and because of its price, and a vast majority of our
grand-mothers 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 in what were then household arts--those that produced for
the subsistence of the family rather than for an outside market. These
manufactures continued generalized and dispersed rather than specialized
and integrated."[19]
This author is to be accepted in his general dictum that "The official
return of cotton manufactures in 1810 is too inaccurate either to measure
the extent of the industry or to describe its location. Probably many
census agents did not know what a textile mill was; and they classed as
factories, plantation loom houses and the cottages or shops of village
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 hostility to
manufacturing in that section some annals of the earlier interest in those
pursuits were doubtless lost. Small mills may have been started in the
Carolinas and Georgia, and after a brief infancy have vanished and left no
name; but, if so, the fact is curious rather than significant for it had
no relation to the subsequent history of the industry."[20]
While it is thus seen that the textile industry in the South in the latter
part of the eighteenth and earlier part of the nineteenth centuries was
stamped with every hall-mark of domestic production, and while they were
ephemeral in their operation, it is to be remembered that a century and a
half ago the industry in England as well as in America bore more or less
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
course had upon the occupation of the people. Furthermore, the very fact
of this coupling indicates the inclination towards economic balance and
the promise in these years of a rational development.[22] Bearing these
things in mind and viewing the wastage which he conceived to have been
wrought by slavery, Helper was probably within justified bounds when he
declared:
"Had the Southern States, in accordance with the principles enunciated in
the Declaration of Independence, abolished slavery at the same time the
Northern States abolished it, there would have been, long since, and most
assuredly at this moment, a larger, wealthier, wiser, and more powerful
population, south of Mason and Dixon's line, than there now is north of
it."[23]
Sentiment as to the right description of the mills of the Revolutionary
years is clear. Coming now to those of the period later than 1810, a
subject is entered in which some controversy 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 these
factories upon the later great development and the proper character which
is to be ascribed to them as of themselves. Only the latter object is
primary in the present chapter.
A North Carolinian, who, while of post-bellum experience only, has been
closely identified with one of the foremost industrial communities of the
South, told the writer that in his opinion it had been "a clear case of
arrested development; it would have all come sooner, but for the war. It
might be said that had slavery continued, manufacturing would never have
come in the South; but it is also true that 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 of the formative stage. A manufacture which is
forerunner in time is not necessarily antecedent in effect.[25] The South
had small cotton farmers of a prevalent sort before ever Knapp taught
efficient production. If the old mills were of a substantially different
stripe from those of the period of fifteen years after the war, the
genesis of the industry, economically speaking, vests in the later date.
Another North Carolinian asserted that "In the older mills before the war,
the seed had been planted, and cultivation was renewed after the war. The
ante-bellum mills were pretty well known throughout the country. The
woolen mills at Salem, and the cotton mills in Alamance and a 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 families and
manufacturers who owned them--the personal factor stood out in his mind.
It is easy to find a number of undescriminating statements, as that the
mills of Concord were the natural outgrowth of the old McDonald Mill, that
there was a manufacturing tradition in the place.[27]
Not a few plants in the South have been in continuous operation since an
early date. Mr. Kohn believes that the one with the longest record is that
founded at Autun, near Pendleton, South Carolina, in 1838, by F. B. Sloan,
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
former character. In addition to the general neglect accorded the old
mills by public estimation, there is evidence that positive local dislike
fell to one long-established enterprise at a date even as late as the
seventies.[29]
It seems hardly necessary to controvert, in the light of the spirit with
which mills were built about 1880 and the demonstrated total newness of
the hands to the processes and even the idea of textile manufacture, an
opinion that not only did the ante-bellum mills serve as a starting point
for the later great development, but domestic weaving had accustomed the
people of the industry.[30]
A clear distinction, and one too often lacking, was made by Carroll D.
Wright between first establishments and genuine factory development in
reference to the industry of Philadelphia and New England. Using English
spinning inventions, "During the 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 establishment of
the factory system, were made in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1780."[31]
While it is not pretended that the Southern mills of a later period were
of quite as limited a character as is here meant, it is wholesome to bear
this point in mind.
The history of the Southern cotton mills of the period embracing the
thirty years following 1810 is rather hazy.[32] Facts important to this
discussion, however, stand out. In the first place, there seems to have
been a good deal of moving about from this water-power to that, the
machinery being hauled from place to place with apparent convenience.[33]
A founder would sell an enterprise, build another and sell it and build a
third.[34] It was difficult to convey machinery to the factory when
purchased at a distance. That for the Mount Hecla Mills about 1830 was
shipped from 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 became necessary to rebuild further down the creek, a contract was
made with Michael Blom, a local workman, for additional machinery.[37]
Other mills had locally manufactured equipment. Spindles for the original
Bivingsville mill are said to have been made in a blacksmith shop.[38]
"Much machinery for the early cotton mills was made by the local
blacksmiths. They were important men in the community and often grew
prosperous."[39] In those days the blacksmith was a more skillful mechanic
than in these, but the machinery they produced must have been crude even
for that period.
While elaboration of the point falls elsewhere in this study, it is worth
notice here that there is a difference between the old and the later mills
in the character of their promoters and managers. In the earlier period
men came to cotton manufacturing, it would seem, by more normal channels
than at the outset of the subsequent development. Like Michael Schenck
they had foreign industrial habits and traditions back of them, and they
set 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 business. Simply private investment enlisted participation of men
in various callings. A manufacturer would be such as incidental to other
and perhaps diverse interests. It is of course true that these same forces
operated afterwards, but in the earlier time there was no response to a
public enthusiasm or a social demand creating a magnet that drew into the
industry men who otherwise would never have entered it, certainly not as
entrepreneurs.
In connection with the Schenck mill there was operated a plant turning out
iron products.[41] Cotton factories conjoined with gins and saw mills are
not unknown in the South even today, but in whatever instance this occurs
there is indicated a lack of specialization.
The marketing and consumption of the output of the old mills is a matter
of broad interest. The statement which serves, perhaps, to indicate most
nearly a genuinely commercial character in this regard, is that of Mr.
Clark growing out of his reference to the establishment of General David
R. Williams, near Society Hill, Darlington County, South Carolina. It was
on his plantation, and was water-driven. "... in 1828 he was turning his
cotton crop, of 200 bales annually, into what was said to be the best yarn
in the United States. He marketed part of his output in New York and wove
part of it into negro cloth for home use.... Twenty years later the
factory was still shipping yarn to New York, and also making cotton
bagging for the neighboring plantations.... By the middle of the century
their (small Southern mills such as this) product is said to have
controlled the Northern yarn market. This market they were able to enter
because they had been supported through infancy by the 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 South wove into cloth on the old hand looms.
A few of the braver women who were left at home with only the feminine
portion of their families or the sons too young to fight, sometimes made
trips alone many miles through the country to get warps for themselves and
neighboring families." So beneficial did this old habit prove during the
war that a cavalry troop of six hundred federals was sent up from New Bern
in 1863 and burned the mill.[43] Mr. Thompson says of this same mill that
until 1851 slaves and a few free negroes were worked in it. This
distinguishing difference of the old mills from those of the great period,
when the labor of negroes was far from the thoughts of the builders and
managers, will be dwelt upon in another place. Here again is noted the
fact that the mill supplied coarse yarns for neighborhood consumption, and
it is said moreover that making only twelve to fifteen hundred pounds of
4s to 12s daily, the mill could not get a steady market for its
wares.[44]
It is reported of the first independent venture of Francis Fries, at
Salem, North Carolina, in woolen manufacture, that it "was but a small
one, consisting of a set of cards for making rolls from the wool raised by
neighboring farmers. This mill also 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 were
Bivingsville and two very small plants, one of them on the Tyger River
spinning yarns on half a dozen frames, people driving from twenty to
twenty-five miles to the door of the mill to get the product, although it
was sold too in the stores.[46]
The Batesville factory was built with about 1000 spindles. Before the
Columbia and Greenville railroad came to Greenville about 1852, the
product of the mill was 8s to 12s in ten-pound "bunches" covered with blue
paper. The yarn in this form passed 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 to
constitute a return load; usually it was meat, all of that article
consumed about Greenville coming, it is said, from North Carolina.
Sometimes rags were brought back. In this way yarns were sometimes taken
as far as a hundred and fifty miles.[47]
A banker who is intimately connected with the textile industry in one of
the oldest industrial communities in the South and who is a member of a
family to which many writers are quick to point as founders of cotton
manufacture in the South through agency of conspicuous participation in
the business since the early thirties, said: "The mills built after the
war were not the result of pre-bellum mills. This is trying to ascribe one
cause for a condition which probably had many causes. The industrial
awakening in the South was a natural 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 small quantities of local raw cotton which they used. The
standard of exchange, the par, was one yard of three-yard sheeting for a
pound of raw cotton, which was a third of a pound, made into cloth, for a
pound in the raw state. But this was a retail and not strictly a
manufacturing profit.... The old Winston mill, established in 1840,
finished the wool product spun by the country housewives. This mill also
supplied carded wool for domestic manufacture. The ante-bellum
domestic-factory system did not produce the post-bellum mills."[48]
So strongly was he impressed with the essentially local character of the
old mills, that he was inclined to look with pessimism upon the prospect
of success for the present plants which have transcended the small sphere
that in its very restriction protected them in privileged enjoyments.
It must be obvious from the foregoing considerations that a census
enumeration of mills of the period cannot show internal characteristics
which are all-important. But even the census returns, 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 all useful, but taking the four
Southern States which were farthest advanced in the years 1840 and
1850--Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia--the showing
may be summed up thus:
In 1840 Virginia had 22 establishments, $1,299,020 invested, 1816
operatives, 42,262 spindles and the plants consumed 17,785 bales of
cotton. In 1850 the same State had twenty-seven mills, with a capital of
$1,908,900 and 2,963 operatives.
In 1840 North Carolina had 25 establishments, $995,300 invested in these,
1219 operatives and 47,934 spindles.[49] Ten years later this State showed
three more establishments, an investment of $1,058,800, 1619 operatives
employed, 531,903 spindles and the number of bales consumed was 13,617.
South Carolina in 1840 had 15 plants, representing an investment of
$617,450; there were 570 operatives and 16,353 spindles. By the next
decade there were 18 establishments, the investment in them was $857,200,
the operatives numbered 1,119 and the bales of cotton consumed 9,929.
Georgia at the earlier date contained 19 mills with an invested capital of
$573,835,779 operatives and 42,589 spindles. In 1850 the number of plants
had increased by sixteen, making 35; the investment had risen to
$1,736,156; the operatives totalled 2,272; unfortunately the number of
spindles is not contained in the census returns, but the consumption was
20,230 bales.
The Southern States as a whole in 1840 were able to report 248
establishments with a capital of $4,331,078; operatives were 6,642;
spindles (an obviously incomplete summary) were 180,927. The same year the
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, 10,043
operatives; the consumption was reported at 78,140 bales. At the same date
the New England development was measured by 564 plants, capital of
$53,832,430, 61,893 and a consumption of 430,603 bales.[50]
Many single mills in the South today represent more than the extent of
the whole industry in the most forward Southern State in 1850.[51]
Comparison of facts for all the Southern mills with those for the industry
of New England perhaps serves to reflect back some light upon the status
of the former plants specifically, which has been dwelt upon.
Of the plants in the South in this period it has been well observed that
"The number of small carding and fulling mills and of little water-driven
yarn factories, in this section before 1850, may have approached the
number of textile factories in the same region today; ... but few of these
establishments became commercial producers."[52]
Some evidences of industrial activity in the period to 1840, partly
conscious and partly not so, which may be held to presage the later
development are to be noticed. A localizing tendency of the textile
industry in the decade from 1830 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. Clark holds to be
a "slow and unconscious development", during which William Gregg, "a
single pioneer of large industry", made a systematic effort to "awaken the
South to the peculiar advantages it enjoyed for cotton manufacturing."[53]
George Tucker, in his "Progress of the United States in Population and
Wealth in Fifty Years", published in 1843, was the first to show that at
1840 in the older South slavery was displaying signs of decay from
economic causes and that as a system it would finally lapse 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 whole of the Southern States", and
two weeks later the same paper took from the Raleigh, N.C., Register the
assertion that "The enterprise of the citizens of this state is rapidly
enabling it to become independent of the North in almost every branch of
manufacture."[55]
Mr. Pleasants believes that agitation by press and public for a charge in
industrial activities resulted in awakening North Carolina in the early
thirties from the lethargy that had prevailed since 1810, so that "The
people of the state became interested and soon a class of small
manufacturers such as makers of carriages, wagons, and farm implements,
coopers, wheelwrights, distillers, tanners, hatters and makers of boots
and shoes, cabinets and chairs came into prominence and continued to
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 of cotton
yarn were shipped from this place to the New York markets. They were from
a manufactory of Joel Battle at the falls of Tar River.... Should the
tariff bill meet with equal success with that of internal improvements,
necessity will compel the people of the South and of North Carolina to
join in the scuffle for the benefits anticipated from this new American
system, and they will have to bear a portion of its burdens and buffet the
Northern manufacturer with his own weapons."[57]
Influenced by the pre-emption of land into large estates with the
consequent need of the people to find other means of livelihood than small
farming, by the discovery of gold and establishment of the mint, by the
agitation for and construction of railroads and by the improvements in
cotton manufacturing machinery, the people of Mecklenburg county, N.C.,
"Many years 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 ascription of an industrial impulse to the ante-bellum South as any
other by this writer, it is to be noticed that the fact that the war did
come to render it impossible of effects shows the relative weakness of the
spirit at this time. The pre-occupation with intersectional differences
was of greater potency than the intra-sectional change of mind, if such
there were.
A South Carolina newspaper in 1847 reckoned up with pride eleven cotton
factories in the State, with others building on the water powers of the
back-country.[59]
The foregoing paragraphs have been designed to lead up to a very
interesting view expressed by an author often quoted in these pages.
Speaking of the years 1840-1860, Mr. Clark has said: "In the South the
most striking feature of this period was the gradual breaking down of a
traditional antipathy of manufactures. This hostility was opposed to the
obvious interests of a region where idle white labor, abundant raw
materials, and ever-present water-power seemed to unite conditions so
favorable to textile industries. Cotton planting engaged the labor of the
negro and the thought and capital of a directing white class, but the
natural operatives of the South remained unemployed, and the capital of
the North and of Europe was mobile enough to flow to the point of maximum
profit without regard to sectional or national lines, were such a profit
known to be assured by Southern factories. Slavery as a system probably
had less direct influence 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 their opposition to new industries by a wide-spread
popular prejudice against organized manufactures.... Nevertheless the
South chafed continually under the discomfort of an ill-balanced system of
production...." He speaks of the canal at Augusta and of cotton mills at
Charleston, Mobile, Columbus, New Orleans and Memphis directly following
the writings and object lesson of William Gregg in his Graniteville
factory and declares: "Though some large undertakings were wrecked by the
financial crisis of 1857, more from weak banking support than from faults
of operation, modern cotton manufacturing in the South dates from the
founding of Graniteville rather than from the post-bellum period....
However, viewed in comparison with the cotton manufactures of the North,
those of the South were still insignificant.... Nevertheless, the present
attainment of the industry assured its definite future growth, and
ultimate national importance."[60]
And Mr. Kohn has said that "The real and the lasting development of cotton
mills in South Carolina might be started with the Graniteville Cotton
Mill...."[61]
It is difficult for the present writer to see the distinction which Mr.
Clark desires to draw between the effect of the presence of the negro and
the presence of slavery. Well enough to assert that the capital of the
North and of Europe was mobile enough to flow across the Atlantic and
across Mason and Dixon's line were a profit in manufacture in the South
known to be assured, but the fact is that capital did not flow in for
industrial purposes because bright manufacturing prospects had not been
proved out, and this largely because home enterprise 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 view of the independent white workman the presence
of the negro in slavery held as a far more forcible objection than the
presence of the negro in freedom. His killing economic competition and his
radiated social poison were beyond any dispute and beyond prospect of
remedy until he was made at least a free producer. There could not, in
the second place, be development of schools and roads, and there could not
be fraternization of work-people, while slavery continued. And the
prospect for immigration for the South has taken its rise from the Civil
War.
It was slavery that made plantation self-sufficiency in primitive needs
universal, that made isolation and physical barriers to intercourse. The
credit system in its hey-day rested in large degree upon supply by the
factor of all industrial products, which needs must be sustained so long
as every local energy was foredoomed for absorption into cotton growing.
It can not rightly be said that the traditional antipathy to manufactures
in the South was "opposed to the obvious interests of a region where idle
white labor, abundant raw materials, and ever-present water-power seemed
to unite conditions so favorable to textile industries", if Southern
consciousness and purpose is meant. This applies particularly to the labor
factor. It will be shown later in this study that in the period before the
war the mills often 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 hands and to induce white operatives to
come from the North and even from England and the Continent--overlooking
the native Anglo-Saxon population as a useful supply of workers as though
it had not been there. Before the war the presence of raw cotton was
certainly looked upon more usually rather as a guarantee of economic
independence than as a stimulus to produce within the section those
products of manufacturing which the staple was potent to purchase.
It is not implied that conspicuous promulgators and exemplars of the need
for a change in economic activity, such as William Gregg and others, and
more still of lesser consequence of whom we have fewer evidences, were not
products of a reaction that showed itself from the long continuance of
slavery, but they stand out, impotent as they are striking, against a dull
and motionless background of prevalent system.
Materials and viewpoint are both too well understood to require here
demonstration of the preventive influence which slavery and cotton had
upon industry in the South. And yet some observations may be brought out
for the special purposes of this study, looking especially through the
eyes of Southern men. Henry Watterson has said: "The South! The South! It
is no problem at all. The story of the South may be summed up in a
sentence; she was rich, she lost her riches; she was poor and in bondage;
she was set free, and she had to go to work; she went to work, and she is
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, into the
most contemptible insignificance; sunk a large majority of our people in
galling poverty and ignorance, rendered a small minority conceited and
tyrannical, and driven the rest away from their homes; entailed upon us a
humiliating dependence on the Free States; disgraced us in the recess of
our own souls, and brought us under reproach in the eyes of all civilized
and enlightened nations--may all be traced to one common source, and there
find solution in the most hateful and horrible word, that was ever
incorporated into the vocabulary of human economy--Slavery!"[64]
Tompkins saw clearly, and in effect said again and again, that "the result
of the introduction and growth of the system of slavery was
revolutionary; it turned the energies of the people almost wholly to the
cultivation of cotton; it practically destroyed all other
industries...."[65] And again, "By the influence of the negro the South
lost its manufactures and largely its commerce, and became practically a
purely agricultural section of the nation."[66] Speaking of the effect of
the cotton gin and the cultivation of the staple by slave labor, he said:
"The shops which had been productive of trading were closed to the public,
and were utilized only for what was needed on the plantation.... There
were no industries requiring skill or thought, and there was no necessity
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
nineteenth there was a well-developed and extensive manufacturing interest
in the South. White mechanics were numerous, and lived well. The growth of
the institution of slavery had nearly destroyed all manufactures ... by
the middle of the nineteenth century.... After the abolition of slavery,
and after a period of disastrous experiment in trying to legislate on
social and political conditions 'without regard to race, color or previous
condition of servitude,' education, intelligence or moral character ...
manufactures were quickly re-established in the South, and the descendants
of the mechanics of former days ceased at once to be 'poor white trash'
and became with marvelous quickness as good carpenters, machinists,
carders, weavers, etc., as their ancestors were."[68]
Something of Tompkins' newspaper published and publicist habit comes out
in this conclusion of his advice against the usefulness of negroes in
cotton 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 white laborer from the South or into enforced idleness. It is
important to re-establish as quickly as possible respectability for white
labor."[69]
Not only is it to be said that "the growth of slavery stifled
manufactures",[70] but it is noteworthy that while this baleful influence
lasted no improvements were made in the methods or appliances for the
preparation of raw cotton for the market. Except in size and superficial
appearance there was no change in the 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 feeder, a
condenser, a hand-press to be used in the lint room, and cotton elevators.
"... the spirit of enterprise, invention and improvement in the people of
the South has not only revived, but the entire method and all the
machinery and appliances for preparing cotton for the market have been
revolutionized."[71]
A propagandist of the early eighties desiring to organize a development of
small cotton mills in the South quoted with approval a correspondent of
the Morning News of Savannah, setting forth that before the war the
planters saw the advantage for little establishments and were only
deterred from manufacturing because "slavery and the factory were declared
to be incompatible institutions. They could not exist together."[72]