_CONDITIONS PRECEDENT TO THE ERECTION OF THE MILLS_
To understand the establishment of cotton mills in the South, it is
necessary to grasp the deeper impulses which actuated every policy
certainly from the year 1880 onward, continuing in only modified degree to
the present. Every phase of the movement for the building of cotton mills
was conditioned by motives at once tender and heroic, universal in their
applicability and too intimate in appeal to admit of more than passing
argument. In a study of the actual erection of factories, the hundreds of
problems that arose and the mass of practical detail attendant upon their
solving constitute, it seems to the writer, a hopeless or at best
profitless puzzle, unless it is clearly understood that these minutiae
point back to something elemental and primal which gave them character. On
the other hand, if this fact is recognized, the circumstances which
accompanied the setting of mills in operation, such as the securing of
capital, the obtaining of adequate labor, the selection of sites for the
location of buildings and the like, from the very coldness of the
subjects, and their unsentimental aspect as commonly thought of, strike
into peculiarly bold relief the purposes that lay behind them. When it
came to money-getting, psychical factors must be crystallized into
something very forceful and admitting of unquestioned faith. It is the aim
of the present paper to be an introduction to the study of the problems
involved in the setting up of cotton mills, by giving the antecedent
action, as it were, and by showing the motive force as it developed,
operated and concentrated.
This responsible cause, catching the phrase from a writer of the day, may
be termed "real reconstruction". The impulse for it came over the South in
1880 like a great ground swell, translating itself into a thousand
activities and ramifications. "Real reconstruction" was spectacularly the
outcome of the defeat of Hancock by Garfield in the presidential election
immediately, but its roots run deeper and have their hold in the slow but
sure recuperation of the South from the devastation of the Civil War
through the troubles of radical rule, assisted by a brief breathing space
from the termination of carpet bag government in 1876, when the lesson of
fifteen terrible years soaked in thoroughly. It is sufficient here to say
that in 1880[137] the South suffered a change of heart, a revulsion of
conscience that was fundamental. The people turned on their heel, and
faced about to find a new future of the largest promise.
A newspaper which before had bent every effort towards the election of
Hancock, the Democratic candidate for the presidency, as securing for the
South political independence and revenge for Northern mistreatment, a week
after his defeat printed an editorial headed "Our Refuge and Our
Strength", with these words:
"... we have been defeated in the national contest. In the administration
of the national government for the next four years we need not concern
ourselves, for as far as possible our councils will be ignored. What,
then, is our duty? It is to go to work earnestly to build up North
Carolina. Nothing is to be gained by regrets and repinings.... It is idle
to talk of home independence so long as we go to the North for everything
from a tooth pick to a President. We may plead in vain for a higher type
of manhood and womanhood among the masses, so long as we allow the
children to grow up in ignorance. We may look in vain for the dawn of an
era of enterprise, progress and development, so long as thousands and
millions of money are deposited in our banks at four per cent. interest
when its judicious investment in manufactures would more than quadruple
that rate, and give profitable employment to thousands of our now idle
women and children.
"Out of our political defeat we must work a glorious material and
industrial triumph. We must have less politics and more work, fewer stump
speakers and more stump pullers, less tinsel and show and boast, and more
hard, earnest work. We must make money--it is a power in this practical
business age. Teach the boys and girls to work and teach them to be proud
of it....
"Demand all legislative encouragement for manufacturing that may be
consistent with free political economy. Work for the material and
educational advancement of North Carolina, and in this and not in
politics, will be found her refuge and her strength."[138]
The uselessness of attempting a political salvation as contrasted with the
logic of giving all energy to the building up of the South materially,
clearly shown in the passage quoted, occurs time and time again.[139]
President C. C. Baldwin, of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, born in
Maryland but for many years resident in New York, and competent to take a
comprehensive view of the South and its problems, said in an interview
with the New York Herald in 1881, after the new program had gotten under
way: "The commercial men of the states fully appreciate the situation....
They now see clearly how very little politics have done for them, and
seriously turn toward the real 'reconstruction' which active trade will
inaugurate. All the war issues are dead and buried except to a few
politicians who misrepresent their constituents and merely use the
language of the past to give them, personally, a passing prominence. True,
we hear a great deal more about the men who stand forth prominently as the
advocates of these dead issues than we do of the thousands of young and
energetic Southern men who are building cotton and woollen mills; who are
opening mines and starting iron, copper and zinc furnaces, or who are
relaying the roads between the Atlantic and the Ohio and the Gulf. These
men don't talk, they don't write books, they don't go to the Legislature
or to Congress. They speak, trumpet toned, in results, however. The people
of the South have suffered--it is not pertinent whether we regard their
sufferings as just or unjust--but they have put aside mourning and are
ready for work."[140]
The Sumter, S.C., Southern voiced the same idea: "The Southern people,
outside of the professional politicians, care very little about Federal
politics. They are endeavoring to develop the resources of the South and
regain the broken-down fortunes left by the desolation of civil war.
"So taking the past and the present as indices for the future, it is plain
to see that a dissolution of the Solid South will cut at the very roots of
all these wrangles between the North and the South[141] in which
sectionalism is involved."[142]
"The people of the South are beginning to learn that the true road to
power is not through the White House, supported by a swarm of federal
officials", said a Tennessee paper in March of 1880. "They are learning
that solid wealth is power, and that wealth is attainable only by working
up their cotton and wool into fabrics and their ores into metals."[143]
The clear-headedness of the following extract from an editorial which
appeared in the Columbia, S.C. Register, at the time the city was putting
forth every energy to realize a desire for cotton mills, is unsurpassed:
"But if we lost the victory, in one sense, we have won it in another. We
have been taught what the South can do for itself if it wills to do it. If
we have lost the victory on the field of fight, we can win it back in the
workshop, in the factory, in an improved agriculture and horticulture, in
our mines and in our schoolhouses.
"There is where our fight lies now, and the only enemies before us are the
prejudices of the past, the instinct of isolation, the brutal indifference
and harmful social infidelity which stands up in our day with the old
slave arguments at its heart and on its lips, 'I object' and 'You can't do
it'."[144]
In the broken and all but disheartened condition of the South after
enduring the war, radical rule and defeat of political hopes, this
conception of another economic future, once it burst upon the
consciousness of the Southern people, amounted to nothing less than a
religion.[145] Every one of the old pangs added devotion to the new
purpose. The whole pride of the South seemed about to go to disruption,
and the imminent danger of this lent a passionate loyalty to the changed
program which appealed to everything that was best and noblest in the
people.
The new spirit was strongest in North and South Carolina and in that
portion of Georgia contiguous to South Carolina. Distance from this region
as a center about marks the intensity of feeling and comprehensiveness of
grasp with which the impulse was voiced. Florida and Mississippi felt it
little, due probably to their position so very far South as to be still
submerged in misery; Virginia was only slightly affected and Maryland
hardly at all in the same sense as the middle South, because of proximity
to the North and difference of character, by reason of the absence of
cotton as the staple. North and South Carolina and the region about
Augusta, Georgia, gave the plan its first conception and its most
whole-hearted support because, it appears, North Carolina is by nature
resourceful and hardy above any Southern State, and South Carolina,
despite every discouragement, would have the heart to try again because
she is thoroughbred in a company of thoroughbreds.[146]
Just as the philosophy varied in intensity territorially, so it varied in
degree within the same region. Some wished salvation through material
advance for the sake of the State; this was natural, as growing out of a
well-known loyalty of the citizens of Southern commonwealths.[147]
Others with larger view proclaimed the new gospel for the whole South as a
section, rather adopting an attitude of aloofness toward the North,
wishing the Southern people to work out their great problem without
assistance from those who would be predisposed to meddlesome criticism. It
is true that reorganization for the South was the most national thing
Southerners could turn themselves to at that time, and in the judgment of
many still is, but speakers and writers often failed of just the most
fortunate expression of their purpose in that they did not strike the
national note very consciously.[148]
It is something to have gone through what the South went through and come
out not dispirited utterly, not defiant against fate or enemies, not
forgetful of the past, but, remembering the worst, determined soberly,
quietly, thoroughly to do the fundamental thing and do it nationally. It
was left for Charleston more than all others--noblesse oblige--to speak
this greatest message:
"The Southern people must be national themselves, in their aspirations and
conduct, if they would have the government truly national in spirit", and
have Garfield "President of the whole country, and not of a section, or
party, to have a government of 'the whole country', to be entitled to it,
we must think of the whole country as our own, and demand no more than we
are ready to give. It must come to this. In the near future the successful
leaders, South and North, will be those whose first thought is for the
Republic, men who are national in feeling and purpose; men who understand
that the political and social strength and safety of each State depend not
on isolation and separation, but on combination and union."[149]
By the late fall and winter of 1880 the mind of the South was ripe for
progress and accomplishment. Perhaps the first gropings after procedure
struck upon the consideration that manufactures would add another profit
to the profit of agriculture. The big, general conception was first
grasped without refinements or modifications or drawbacks; it was received
with almost childlike simplicity and faith.[150] But it came to be
ingrained. "The cotton which now comes into Charleston and is sold here
pays commissions to the factors and brokers, and when shipped leaves
behind it the price of the drayage, compressing and storage. Cotton which
comes into Charleston and is manufactured here is doubled in value, and an
amount equal, at least, to the value of the raw cotton when it reached the
city boundary is distributed among the people of Charleston. This is the
simple key to the prosperity which invariably attends the development of
manufactures. Manufacturing gives additional value to raw material, and
this additional value goes into the communities where the manufacturing is
done. At present Charleston does nothing to increase the value of the
cotton which comes here for sale. It leaves us as it finds us. The city
lives on the pickings and scrapings....
"Cotton mills change all this. A bale of raw cotton worth forty dollars is
spun into yarns or cloth worth eighty dollars.... The stockholders and the
working people get the whole difference between the cost of the cotton and
the value of the yarns or cloth, except what little may be expended for
material that cannot be purchased here."[151]
President H. P. Hammett, of the Piedmont Factory, in a remarkable address
before the State Agricultural and Mechanical Society and State Grange, of
South Carolina, to which reference will several times be made, after
describing the earlier absorption of the South in a single pursuit, and
the ills that grew from this, said: "A new condition of things and a
changed sentiment amongst the people prevail at present; with the changed
relations of society and institutions a sentiment favorable to a diversity
of pursuits has developed ... a disposition is manifested to develop the
many resources heretofore lying dormant or hidden.[152] Capital when
needed is furnished, and men of energy, enterprise and ability develop ...
the general sentiment of the people is to utilize all the facilities
within their reach.... Under such circumstances it is natural that the
public mind should be directed to the manufacture of their great
staple."[153]
There were a score of reasons making this course seem plausible.[154] They
were advanced, scrutinized, at the South sometimes accepted with a grain
of salt, at the North not infrequently flatly and stoutly challenged as
absurd; they were patiently explained or difiantly, and not always with
the closest reasoning, flung in the faces of their objectors--but finally
they were proclaimed as gospel, and in this sign the South set out to
conquer. Of these beliefs is to be placed first and foremost the
conviction that, other things aside, manufacturing was most economical and
so logically belonged, at the source of production. Here is the doctrine,
given in all simplicity, and not without the force characteristic of
newspaper correspondences of that day: "Sir, it matters not what anyone
may say to the contrary, common sense tells us that other
things--machinery, skilled labor, motive power and facilities of
shipment--being equal, a cotton factory in the midst of cotton fields must
prove more profitable than the same concern a thousand miles from its base
of supply could possibly be."[155] Other factors there were--cheap labor,
unused water powers, abundance of wood and coal nearby, local market for
the sale of product, longer running time than in the North, a favorable
climate, saving in fuel and light, absence of damage to cotton by
compress, saving in bagging and ties, assistance to be given to women and
children much in need of work--all of them bore their part in focussing
the energies of the South upon that program which was to mean so much in
so many ways--the "cotton mill campaign."[156]
The current passion for building cotton mills--it was nothing short of
this--was stimulated and guided by press[157] and platform in urging,
chronicling and praising advances.
The Columbia, Georgia, Enquirer, after recounting the progress of the city
in spinning--it had 60,000 spindles--said: "These are the weapons peace
gave us, and right trusty ones they are.... The story the spindles tell is
one of joy to all, and show (shows) how rapidly we are climbing the hill
of prosperity."[158] The affectionate tone of this item from the Rock
Hill, S.C. correspondence of The News and Courier is unmistakable: "In
conclusion let me say a few words in regard to the 'pet' of the town, the
Rock Hill Cotton Factory. This factory is owned and controlled by the
citizens of the town, (except $15,000 in stock owned in Charleston). It
has a capital of $100,000, has over 6,000 spindles, with 1,500 more to be
added in a few days."[159] The Marion, S.C. correspondent of the same
paper a year earlier contributed this for his town: "Our wants: A bank, an
academy, a cotton factory, a comfortable room for passengers at the depot,
an iron foundery, and last, but not least, work upon our streets."[160] So
much did cotton mills come to be considered the natural signs of progress
that Raleigh made apology for not having a single mill. "There is not a
cotton factory in Raleigh, but there are not less than five large planing
mills, two foundries, two boiler factories ...", and there follows a list
of everything in the corporate limits, including schools and even
newspapers.[161]
Under its caption, "The Cotton Mill Campaign", the active News and Courier
every few days listed new entries into the field of cotton manufacture.
The issue of February 8, 1881, presented a particularly large number of
items from different towns. The Newberry Herald exhorted the citizens with
reference to Charleston's achievement thus: "Cheer for Charleston--A
Movement all Along the Line. Charleston is in a fair way to have two
large cotton factories in a short while.... Camden is preparing for a
cotton factory. Hodges, Abbeville County, is preparing for a cotton
factory. Rock Hill has a cotton factory. Greenville has several cotton
factories. Newberry, the best location for a cotton factory in the State,
and the place most needing one is not preparing for a cotton factory, and
there is no present likelihood that she ever will." The method followed
here, of citing the advance of other places in mill building as an
incentive, was widely used, and not commonly with the rather complaining
tone of the above from Newberry.[162]
That the spirit was in the air is clearly discernible in a Winnsboro
contribution: "Why does not Fairfield (the county in which the town of
Winnsboro is located) make the experiment? It is said that $15,000 will
set in motion over five hundred spindles, and continual additions can be
made." While recognizing that water power was difficult of access, steam
might be used, for there was plenty of cheap fuel for years to come, and
the Charlotte railroad offered easy communication with the world for a
mill located along its tracks. The Hampton, S.C. Guardian struck the note:
"Factories are springing up all over the State, and our people must not be
found lagging in the race of progress."[163]
How the people were reaching out for cotton mills, with their attendant
profits and advantages, may be seen in this advertisement appearing in
the winter of 1881: "We will give to a Cotton Manufacturing Company, that
will organize and locate at Landsford, S.C., with a capital of $300,000 a
site, 20 acres of land and 3000 horse water power. Apply for particulars
to T. C. Robertson, Allen Jones, Rock Hill, S.C.; Wm. R. Landsford; Edward
McCrady, Jr., Charleston."[164]
A little earlier the cotton mill campaign had extended itself to the point
of interesting class effort, for the most prominent German citizens of
Charleston organized a mill in a short space of time.[165]
The cotton mill campaign had gotten well under way[166] when its further
progress was greatly facilitated and its successful outcome made plain by
the projection of a plan to display the resources of the Southern States
in an exposition at Atlanta. The scheme was first proposed in October of
1860, and the International Cotton Exposition was opened in Atlanta
October 5, 1881. The exposition, in organization, history and influence,
is inseparably bound up with the name of Edward Atkinson, economist,
publicist and manufacturer of Boston. He gave it its inception; in an
unselfish and magnanimous spirit he guided its beginnings and brought it,
by his advocacy and superintendence, to completion. He was "the father of
the Atlanta exposition."[167] In a sincere desire to see the South
extricated from the disorganization of the war and the years that
followed, he planned this method of showing the people what he considered
to be their true interest, namely, concentration upon better methods of
cultivating and preparing cotton for market and for manufacture. With a
fine comprehension of the most fundamental needs of the section in many
directions, he conceived the care of cotton between the field and the
factory to be properly the first concern of the Southern States, not
temporarily, but for all time. The Atlanta exposition he proposed as the
lens through which to focus attention upon this.
But Mr. Atkinson, most singularly for a man of his grasp, penetration and
experience, had not reckoned upon the force of the enthusiasm for
manufacturing cotton, which, as has been shown, came over the Southern
people. That cotton mills were being built he could not but see; that they
were making profits he could not deny--but in the economic wholesomeness
and permanency of the factories he would not believe. In the International
Cotton Exposition he created a Frankenstein to amaze and frighten and
torment him. For once the resources, of the South were displayed in
visible, tangible form in reasonable compass, and once the people were
united upon an effort which should gauge their strength and possibilities,
the invitation, or, as some put it, the duty to manufacture the staple in
the fields where it grew leaped out as a fact more patent than ever. The
people had felt the strength that came from union in a common purpose, and
nothing could deter them from following the light that this brought to
them. Mr. Atkinson, who had acted in the best of faith and with great
ability, was surprised and chagrined; when he found that, while following
his lead in showing the necessity of more careful culture and preparation
of the crop for manufacture, the South, by the agency of the exposition,
was fascinated in going beyond his goal, and building mills to make up the
cotton for itself, he protested earnestly, and went to no end of pains to
turn the people from their course. But the horse had taken the bit in his
mouth, had glimpsed a broader highway open ahead, and the reins that had
directed him once were of no avail to arrest his career.
Conscious of his New England milling and insurance interests, it is likely
that Edward Atkinson felt the South, which he had tried to help,
distrusted him. And though the fact of his connections, coupled with a
manner of addressing himself to the Southern people at times unfortunate
in its seeming superiority, and tendency to become impatient and didactic,
might easily have led the section to regard him with enmity, it is to be
remembered to the credit of the Southerners that they showed as great
charity for his, as they regarded them, short-comings of judgment, as they
held in esteem his friendship and constructive co-operation. The vision
which the South had caught rose superior, in almost all cases, to any
pleasure to be found in taunting those who differed in view, especially
when so much was owing to a man as belonged to Mr. Atkinson. His position
is one of the most important in the whole history of cotton manufacturing,
not only in the South, but in this country, and it is the most dramatic
and pathetic. He stood virtually alone after the exposition had run a few
months, protesting impotently against a new state of things, every
development of which seemed to cry the lie to his objections. His very
antagonism lent impetus to the current setting toward cotton mills for the
cotton estates. And, to make the sting even more poignant, instead of
looking upon his opposition to Southern cotton manufacturing as
representing a class of jealous industrialists at the North--and many
things there were to lend color to such a belief--the South was appealing
over his head to New England capitalists to come down and help erect
factories.[168]
How Southern sentiment had grown beyond Mr. Atkinson's purposes for the
exposition is to be seen in the words of A. O. Bacon, speaker of the
Georgia House of Representatives, in welcoming a party of South Carolina
legislators and their friends to the Exposition three months after its
opening: "This exposition--marks an important epoch in the industrial
history of the country. It has aroused the South to the value of new
enterprises and of new methods of labor; it has awakened the North to a
realization of the boundless resources and enormous industrial capacities
of the South. It comes at a most propitious moment, for the South, in
sympathy with the quickening energies which excite the continent, is even
now trembling in the initial throes of the mighty industrial revolution
that surely awaits her. A great change is about to come upon us. 'In the
fabric of thought and of habit' which we have woven for a century we are
no longer to dwell, and a new era of progressive enterprise opens before
us."[169]
The place of the Cotton Exposition in furthering the cotton mill campaign,
already attained to a healthy start, is seen in this from Clifton, S.C.:
"It is to be hoped the Atlanta Exposition will not take all the enthusiasm
out of our capitalists and enterprising men,[170] but that it will only
tend to a greater and more steady development of our resources. There are
new families coming in constantly (to the Clifton Mill) and the cottages
as far as completed are occupied, and still they come."[171] And again: "A
good work has been done, the benefits of which will be felt in every part
of the country. The New South takes a fresh start at the Atlantic
Exposition."[172] Here also is evidence of the very fortunate juncture at
which the exposition happened to fall. The show did much for the South
irrespective of its exhibits; indeed, before a shovelful of earth was
turned, a real service was rendered. It proved to the people that they
could organize and exert a force in common; the South was less individual
from that day. It demonstrated besides that the South had resources and
possibilities worth presenting to the world. Once the exposition was
opened, three distinct influences were brought to bear in carrying forward
the work already begun. The people of the South were shown for the first
time as a whole the implements of cotton manufacture, capitalists in
general were introduced to the opportunities of cotton milling in the
section, and, in visualizing and making more than ever evident the
industrial future, less effective reflex from the ultimate proposals of
Edward Atkinson and others of his belief was afforded once for all.
The very day of opening, the exposition greeted crowds of visitors with
these words from Daniel W. Vorhees, of Indiana; "There is a far higher
remuneration than has ever been given by cotton yet in store for the
laborer, the manufacturer, the South and the entire country. In the midst
of the cotton plantations themselves there is a career for manufacturing
development such as the world has not yet seen. With coal, iron and timber
in perfection and inexhaustible, and water power everywhere, by what rule
of political economy should the Southern people send their cotton, at an
expense always deducted from its price, to distant sections and foreign
countries to be spun and woven? If the manufacturer in Great Britain,
transporting his cotton from India and the United States, can realize
substantial profits, why may they not be realized here...? We have seen
the manufacturer of New England, at a long distance from a productive base
of supplies, turn a sterile country into the seat of culture, refinement
and wealth. Why shall not the South put forth its energies and reap the
same and a far greater reward? Here the cotton grows up to the doorsteps
of your mills, and supply and demand clasp hands together. The average
exportation during the last ten years, from these wonderful fields to
England and other European ports, has been over 3,000,000 of bales per
annum; while to the mills of New England and other Northern states another
million have (has) been annually carried away from your midst, and from
the best manufacturing region on the globe."[173]
So, even from the opening of the exposition, matters had taken a decided
turn toward cotton manufacturing for the South. After the fair had been in
progress three weeks, Mr. Atkinson and a committee from the New England
Cotton Manufacturers' Association came down for their initial visit. From
Mr. Hemphill's letter to The News and Courier[174] it is clear that the
New Englanders appreciated most those parts of the exhibit which had to do
with "ginning and preparing." Still considering all cotton manufacturing
to belong to the North, just as all cotton growing belonged to the South,
the verdict of the party on this first inspection was: "Nothing ever
happened in the history of the country to prove so adequately the identity
of the interests of the cotton grower and cotton manufacturer as this
exhibition." Thus were visitors coaxed to examine into the increased
efficiency and profit which lay in sending clean Southern cotton to
Northern manufacturers.
Soon the situation demanded more drastic handling. Edward Atkinson, in a
set speech on the exposition grounds, stated his position clearly: "You
have depreciated every crop of cotton you have made at least 12 per cent.
by want of care and attention in ginning, baling, pressing and caring for
the cotton between the field and the factory. You can save half your labor
and add 10 per cent. to the value of your crop if you will use the new
tools and machinery here on exhibition and heed the words which I now
speak.
"The Southern planter and farmer has no knowledge, as yet, outside of the
sea island district, of the merits of a true roller gin. Clark's cleaner
has just been introduced and is only known within narrow limits.... Now, I
am going to touch a tender subject--cotton manufacturing.... I have never
taken the ground that there were any climatic difficulties in many parts
of the South. The real difficulty is that the margin of profit is very
small on a very large capital, and unless you can work, in the long run,
on a very small margin you cannot succeed. These times are no
criterion.... May I say that the true preparation for success in cotton
manufacturing must be in knowing how to save the fraction of a cent....
You cannot spin cotton when you do not know the difference between a cent
and a nickel."[175]
The reception with which Mr. Atkinson's theory met is seen in an editorial
comment on his December address: "The future of the South is described
with great power in the ... speech of Mr. Edward Atkinson at the Atlanta
Exposition.... Mr. Atkinson is misleading only when invincible prejudice
keeps him from seeing clearly, and even Northern newspapers admit[176]
that he is wrong in his belief that cotton manufacturing, on a large
scale, will not pay in the South. The speech otherwise is suggestive and
instructive."[177] In a review of an article by Mr. Atkinson on "The Solid
South", appearing in the International Review for March, 1881, William E.
Boggs, of Atlanta, wrote: "If one so sincere as Mr. Atkinson in the desire
that the South shall flourish can so misunderstand the Southern people,
what must be the mental condition of those who have prejudice without
good-will? Mr. Atkinson is the father of the Atlanta Exposition, and is,
in his way, a true friend of the South."[178]
There was one more condition precedent to the erection of cotton mills in
the South. The people of the section might come to a determination to set
up schools, run telegraph and telephone lines, construct railroads, stop
political quibbling and back-biting, and, above all, institute
manufactures as the surest release from a condition calling for the
strongest action; they might turn themselves wholeheartedly to the
building of cotton mills, calling forth every native resource and
ingenuity, enterprise and sacrifice, and these would avail much. But the
task was so huge in its proportions that sooner or later it must cease to
be a sectional matter, and not only was this necessary, but it was proper
that it should be the case. The North must be called upon for help. If
there are two facts in the building of cotton mills in the South which
stand out head and shoulders above all the rest, they are that the
Southern people, impelled by inner forces, undertook the work, and that
when it became apparent that outside capital and advice were needed and
could be had, these were welcomed gratefully.[179]
There were certain forces which made for a national mind in the
South--certain external influences aside from the reasonings of the
choicer spirits. These bound the North and South together, and helped to
make possible the augmenting of Southern energy and resources by Northern
capital and experience.
Just as the International Cotton Exposition at Atlanta lent impetus to the
sectional furtherance of the cotton mill campaign, so the shooting of
President Garfield, his lingering illness through three months, and his
death, occurring at approximately the same stage as the exposition, may be
thought to have done much in preparing the way for receiving Northern,
and, indirectly, European capital into the South.
"This (the South) is a region where manliness is held in superlative
honor", said the Charleston paper so often quoted, "and assassination is
loathed for its cowardliness even more than it is abhorred as an offence
against law and society.... There could be no doubt then that Guiteau's
dastardly act would be heartily denounced--and there was reason to look
for some special indignation on account of the exalted official position
which Gen. Garfield holds. It could not have been foreseen, however, that
the outburst of sympathy and condemnation would have been universal in its
manifestation, affectionate in tone and National in spirit. South Carolina
does more than reprobate assassination. The people of the State, the whole
people, resent the deed because the victim is the President of the United
States, the Chief Magistrate of our country.... The process of reunion has
gone on with a rapidity which few appreciated. All the elements of cordial
friendship and of national good-will were there. It needed only the threat
of a common misfortune to give shape and voice to the recreate but sturdy
love of the Republic."[180]
The following appeared with the announcement of President Garfield's
death. "In the history of the United States, President Garfield will be
remembered as he whose nomination by the National Republican Convention
strangled imperialism in its cradle, and as he whose assassination was
quickly followed by an outburst of sorrow and sympathy which manifested to
the North the true nature of the South, and do more than the arguments,
the prayers and the common intercourse of thrice five years to bring
together the peoples whom war had made separate. By the shedding of blood
the North and South were sundered; and through the shedding of blood they
are united.... In his wounding unto death passed away the alienation, the
estrangement which prevented this country from being truly one, although
men and millions had made it in appearance indivisible."[181]
Railroads, both because they allowed sentiment to become solidified in the
South, and afforded great currents of intercourse with the North, were of
first importance. And in the railroads, with the encouragement they gave
to manufactures, and the stability they lent to trade in furnishing a
strong commercial backbone,[182] appear early hints of the unifying force
of Northern capital itself. A railroad, in which Northern men chiefly were
interested, which proposed running up the James River Valley to Clifton
Forge, was hailed by Richmond as bringing new prosperity. "We welcome the
Northern gentlemen who are to co this invaluable work for Virginia, and we
trust and believe that they may never have cause to regret the investment
of their capital here. Every such investment is a new band around the
States of the Union binding them more closely together."[183]