The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South
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Title: The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South
Author: Broadus Mitchell
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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]
CHAPTER II
_THE BACKGROUND (Continued)_
So far from proclaiming cotton as king, there is evidence that some of the
wisest Southerners saw that it was in many respects a curse. Said William
Gregg in 1845: "Since the discovery that cotton would mature in South
Carolina, she has reaped a golden harvest; but it is feared it has proved
a curse rather than a blessing, and I believe that she would at this day
be in a far better condition, had the discovery never been made. Cotton
has been to South Carolina what the mines of Mexico were to Spain...." The
"day is not far distant, yea, is close at hand, when we shall find that we
can no longer _live_ by that, which has heretofore yielded us ... a
bountiful and sumptuous living.... Let us begin at once, before it is too
late, to bring about a change in our industrial pursuits ...--let croakers
against enterprise be silenced--let the working men of our State who have,
by their industry, accumulated capital, turn out and give a practical
lesson to our political leaders, that are opposed to this scheme. Even Mr.
Calhoun, our great oracle ... is against us in this matter; he will tell
you, that no mechanical enterprise can succeed in South Carolina--that
good mechanics will go where their talents are better rewarded--that to
thrive in cotton spinning, one should go to Rhode Island--that to
undertake it here, would not only lead to loss of capital, but
disappointment and ruin to those who engage in it."[73]
"The invention of the cotton gin", said Tompkins, "... Before 1860 ... was
nearer anything else than a blessing. It was primarily responsible for the
system of slavery.... Cotton ... in its manufacture ... is the life of the
South, but we could probably have done as well without it until we began
to manufacture it."[74]
Not too dogmatic is the opinion expressed that "It seems as clear as day
that ... cotton made the South a free trade section and the North
protective; cotton lured the South back to slavery;[75] cotton drove the
South to an extreme States-rights position ... and cotton at last drove
the South to translate extreme States-rights into the terms of
Secession...."[76] And with regard to internal policy, "Perhaps the most
striking economic change that the new industry (cotton culture) effected
in the South after the reintroduction of slavery was the speedy
abandonment of manufactures ... what was the use of nerve-racking
investment in elaborate and costly machinery when a land-owner could reap
ten per cent net profit from a few negroes and mules and a bushel or two
of the magical cotton seed? and yet the South had unusual manufacturing
facilities ... manufacture soon fell into decay; the Piedmont region being
still dotted with the moldering ruins of iron works and other mills that
bear witness to the overwhelming power of the new agricultural
absorption."[77]
It has been observed that the social difference between North and South
before the war, so often looked upon as something existing as of itself
apart, as a matter of fact may be fully accounted for simply by the
institution of slavery, which arrested development on Southern soil of the
industrial type of American civilization.[78]
Very convincing in his fact findings and often strikingly happy in his
interpretations is Olmsted; his work benefited by being saved from the
passion of Helper and the venom of Sidney Andrews. In accounting in 1856
for the reason for the stagnation in Virginia as compared with the
industrial activity of New England and old England, he wrote, "It is the
old, fettered, barbarian labor-system, in connection with which they
(Virginians) have been brought up, against which all their enterprise must
struggle, and with the chains of which all their ambition must be bound.
This conviction I find to be universal in the minds of strangers, and it
is forced upon one more strongly than it is possible to make you
comprehend by a mere statement of isolated facts. You could as well convey
an idea of the effect of mist on a landscape by enumerating the number of
particles of vapor that obscure it. Give Virginia blood fair play, remove
it from the atmosphere of slavery, and it shows no lack of energy and good
sense."[79] He took to be an average expression of the views "Not of the
majority of the people (of Virginia)--they are not quite so demented as
yet--but of the majority of those whose monopoly of wealth and knowledge
has a governing influence on a majority of the people", the statement of a
paper of the State that it was glad to find its contemporaries willing to
discuss "the true and great question of the day--_The Existence of slavery
as a permanent issue in the South_. Every moment's reflection but
convinces us of the absolute impregnability of the Southern position on
this subject. Facts, which can not be questioned, come thronging in
support of the true doctrine--that slavery is the best condition of the
black race in this country ..."; and from another newspaper in the year
previous (1854): "African slavery ... is a thing that we can not do
without, that is _righteous_, _profitable_, and permanent, and that
belongs to Southern Society as inherently, intricately, as durably as the
white race itself."[80]
Olmsted was at pains to show how the people were duped by Charlatan
guidance of their political leaders; this comes out particularly in his
quotation of and comments upon the famous election speech in Virginia in
the fifties, in which the aspirant declared to his audience that "Commerce
has long ago spread her sails, and sailed away from you ... you have set
no tilt-hammer of Vulcan to strike blows worthy of the gods in your iron
foundries; you have not yet spun more than coarse cotton enough, in the
way of manufacture, to clothe your own slaves. You have had no commerce,
no mining, no manufactures. You have relied alone on the single power of
agriculture--and such agriculture! Your sedge-patches outshine the sun....
Instead of having to feed cattle on a thousand hills, you have had to
chase the stum-tailed steers through the sedge-patches to procure a tough
beef-steak. (Laughter and applause.) ... The landlord has skinned the
tenant, and the tenant has skinned the land, until all have grown poor
together," "and how," asks Olmsted, "does the fiddling Nero propose, it
will be wondered, to remedy this so very amusing stupidity, poverty, and
debility? Very simply and pleasantly. By building railroads and canals,
ships and mills; by establishing manufactories, opening mines, and setting
up smelting-works and foundries. And, 'Hurrah!' shout the tickled
electors; 'that's exactly what we want.'" And then he showed that it was
much like the quack telling the confirmed paralytic to live generously,
take vigorous exercise and grow well; that with the disease of slavery in
its vitals the South could not do else than languish; that in holding out
promise of wholesome measures which contemplated everything but the
attacking of slavery,[81] the politicians were just laughing at the
people.[82]
A reflection just as sorrowful as the confirmed bias of the people,
however, is one that Olmsted did not see in this and myriad other
episodes, namely, the blindness of the leaders that, with no doubt strong
elements of quackery, showed even stronger signs of being themselves duped
by a situation. Not that the crowd was believing, but that the leaders
were so largely sincere, was most melancholy. As to both considerations,
however, a passage of Sir Horace Plunkett in comment upon Irish politics,
is much to the point: "Deeply as I have felt for the past sufferings of
the Irish people and their heritage of disability and distress, I could
not bring myself to believe that, where mis-government had continued so
long, and in such an immense variety of circumstances and conditions, the
governors could have been alone to blame. I envied those leaders of
popular thought whose confidence in themselves and in their followers was
shaken by no such reflections. But the more I listened to them, the more
the conviction was borne in upon me that they were seeking to build an
impossible future upon an imaginary past."[83]
As opposed to the brightening signs which some have seen in the years just
preceding the Civil War, it has been said, "yet with the line around
slavery being drawn more closely ... the cotton South lagged in the
industrial race, and the border States were hampered by the institution
that they felt to be a burden, but which they could see no safe way to
abolish. Compassed as it was by political compromises, slavery must
ultimately have topped through its own overweight; but in 1860 it was so
valuable for the plantation that it was not only not readily converted
into the factory, but was an obstacle in the way of the employment of
capital and of other labor in that direction."[84]
The deterrent effect of slavery upon immigration of white laborers has
been noticed above. In 1860 only 6 per cent of the white population of the
South was foreign-born, but immigrants made up nearly 20 per cent of that
in the North. In the decade from 1850 to 1860 the South's quota of
foreign-born in the whole country dropped from 14 to 13 per cent.[85] The
South was deprived of her share of foreign mechanics, so largely
responsible for the industries in this country in the first half of the
nineteenth century, not only by the fact that independent artizans avoided
competition with slave labor, but because few of them had the means of
acquiring slaves, and disapproved of the institution besides.[86] The
increase in population in North Carolina in the single decade of 1870 to
1880 about equalled that of the four decades preceding. The comprehensive
influence here upon immigration by the abolition of slavery is not greatly
modified by the fact that in the period before 1870 fell the losses from
the Civil War.[87] The tide of immigration to Mecklenburg County in this
State dwindled from the introduction of slavery as a system until 1825,
and thereafter set in the emigration of persons from the county, an even
severer influence and stronger indication of the baleful labor system.[88]
In the fifties it was declared that the most prosperous community in South
Carolina was a settlement of Germans in the western part of the State.
Here had been founded an educational institution, varied manufactures,
farming was conducted with successful enterprise and capital was found to
be invested in a railroad venture. Slavery was not relied upon.[89] Sidney
Andrews in 1865 found the northwestern counties of Georgia, which were
held to be strongly opposed to secession in 1860-61, and which furnished
a good many soldiers to the federal armies, probably better disposed to
the national government than any other part of the State. Slaves had
constituted less than a fourth of the total population, the people were
industrious and hardy; though cruder than those from the lower parts of
the State, the delegates from this section to the constitutional
convention of 1865 were said to have a well-informed outlook for the
Commonwealth. After the war the industry displayed by the white people of
this region was taken as attesting their better traditions of ante-bellum
years.[90]
At a time when the average wages of female operatives in the cotton mills
of Georgia was half that of the same workers in the mills of
Massachusetts, factory girls from New England were induced by high pay to
go to the Southern States to enter newly-established plants, but soon
returned North because their position was unpleasant in the midst of "the
general degradation of the laboring class."[91] It was observed very truly
that competition of the slave was not distantly matched in hurtfulness by
the example of the more prosperous white men, with whom acquisition of
the comforts and dignities of life did not proceed from daily toil.[92]
The dependence of the ante-bellum South upon the North and upon Europe for
the most substantial and the most trivial appurtenances of civilization,
is perhaps less in dispute than any topic here treated. The extent of this
dependence, with the accompanying neglect of provision for production of
the commodities at home, is evidenced by its continuance for years after
the war. It might be said, not only in justification of this practice, but
in apology for the total one-sidedness of the old South, that the section
was animated by a natural and universal law, in responding to and acting
upon the principle of comparative economic advantage. And certainly the
most absolute conception of the territorial division of labor could not
require a more exclusive devotion to the making of cotton and a more
complete reliance upon other less peculiarly favored districts for supply
not only of manufactured goods but of food stuffs and other raw materials,
than the South displayed. But, however, strictly in conformity with the
superficial dictates of this policy from an international and even
national point of view, the program was ruinous to the section, the
country and, in a broad sense, to the deeper economic welfare of the
world. Easy yielding to the principle did not suggest to the great bulk of
the South's statesmanship the reflection that the section after all was in
only partial compliance; that even for the most efficient production of
cotton as such, there needed to be a wholesome admixture of manufacturing
and of other agricultural interests. Accompanying and directly by agency
of the post-bellum activities in industry is seen not a less but a more
economical and larger output of the staple.
Some of the most humorous passages in the literature of the economic
history of the South were called forth by the need of the section to go to
the North for a thousand and one essentials of daily existence, and in
their very humor they serve to show the seriousness of the situation.
William Gregg, too lonely in his advocacy of home industry to treat the
subject in other than its fundamental considerations, declared in 1845 to
his own community, than which there was no greater sinner: "It ought to
make every citizen who feels an interest in his country, ashamed to visit
the clothing stores of Charleston, and see the vast exhibition of
ready-made clothing, manufactured mostly by the women of Philadelphia, New
York, Boston and other Northern cities, to the detriment and starvation of
our own countrywomen, hundreds of who may be found in our own good city in
wretched poverty, unable to procure work by which they would be glad to
earn a decent living."[93] And again: "A change in our habits and
industrial pursuits is a far greater desideratum than any change in the
laws of our Government...."[94] His point of view comes out well in this
passage: "if we continue in our present habits, it would not be
unreasonable to predict, that when the Raleigh Rail-Road is extended to
Columbia, our members of the Legislature will be fed on Yankee baker's
bread. Pardon me for repeating the call on South Carolina to go to work.
God speed the day when her politicians will be exhorting the people to
domestic industry, instead of State resistance; when our Clay Clubs and
Democratic Associations will be turned into societies for the advancement
of scientific agriculture and the promotion of mechanic art; when our
capitalists will be found following the example of Boston and other
Northern cities, in making such investments of their capital as will give
employment to the poor, and make them producers, instead of burthensome
consumers; when our City Council may become so enlightened as to see the
propriety of following the example of every other city in the civilized
world, in removing the restrictions on the use of the Steam Engine, now
indispensable in every department of Manufacturing...."[95]
A decade later Helper reproached a South that had not given heed to Gregg:
"It is a fact well known to every intelligent Southerner that we are
compelled to go to the North for almost every article of utility and
adornment, from matches, shoe-pegs and paintings up to cotton-mills,
steamships and statuary ... this unmanly and unnational dependence, ... is
so glaring that it can not fail to be apparent to even the most careless
and superficial observer. All the world sees, or ought to see, that in a
commercial, mechanical, manufactural, financial, and literary point of
view, we are as helpless as babes...."[96]
Gregg remarked the supply by the North not only of the articles of major
manufacture, but of articles of those makes which should naturally be the
adjuncts of agriculture--axe, hoe and broom handles, pitch-forks, rakes,
and hand-spikes for rolling logs, shingles and pine boards; and even that
"the Charleston market is supplied with fish and wild game by Northern
men, who come out here, as regularly as the winter comes, for this
purpose, and from our own waters and forests often realize, in the course
of one winter, a sufficiency to purchase a small farm in New England."[97]
An orator at the Southern Commercial Convention, New Orleans, 1855,
adapted for the occasion, thought Olmsted, a speech made in the British
Parliament on taxes, familiarized in "Child's First Speaker", and
beginning, in the Southern version, "It is time that we should look about
us, and see in what relation we stand to the North. From the rattle with
which the nurse tickles the ear of the child born in the South, to the
shroud that covers the cold form of the dead, everything comes to us from
the North. We rise from between sheets made in Northern looms, and pillows
of Northern feathers, to wash in basins made in the North ..." and
continuing in the strain that was a favorite one with platform and pen,
and many examples of the employment of which may be found.[98]
A Virginia land-owner wrote to a farm paper regretting the widespread and
intimate dependence upon the North, and stated quite as clearly as was
observed thirty years later that goods which could be bought in the North,
paying a profit to the manufacturer there, then transported to the South
at heavy cost and sold at a profit to the tradesman, might surely be
manufactured in the South in the first place, saving maker's profit to
home industry and obviating charges of carriage altogether.[99]
A newspaper in Richmond chronicled the sale to Northern interests of a
large coal field in the State, and in unconscious irony placed in
juxtaposition to the notice this confident exhortation: "It is plain that
a new and glorious destiny awaits the South, and beckons us onward to a
career of independence. Shall we train and discipline our energies for the
coming crisis, or _shall we continue the tributary and dependent vassals
of Northern brokers and money-changers_? Now is the time for the South to
begin in earnest the work of self-development! Now is the time to break
asunder the fetters of commercial subjection, and to prepare for that more
complete independence that awaits us."[100] But another and wiser paper in
the same State, urging manufacturing development for Virginia towns and
cities, and particularly the textile industry for Richmond, anticipated
with a different mind the event invited in the excerpt above quoted, and
foretold with prophecy all too good, what later was patent to everybody:
"It must be plain to the South that if our relations with the North should
ever be severed--and how soon they may be, none can know (may God avert
it long!)--we would, in all the South, not be able to clothe ourselves. We
could not fell our forests, plow our fields, nor mow our meadows. In fact,
we would be reduced to a state more abject than we are willing to look at,
even prospectively. And yet, with all these things staring us in the face,
we shut our eyes, and go on blindfold."[101]
It is thought well, in summary of the decidedly non-industrial character
of the ante-bellum South, to set forth some material and some observations
of a general character. In spite of its length, it is useful to give in
its setting an episode related by Tompkins. It shows more aptly than
almost in anything in spite of its incidental happening, just the point of
preoccupation with politics to which the Southern mind came, the degree of
trifling with which the most sober proposals were met, the hopelessness of
change from this state of affairs by anything short of a fundamental moral
awakening.
"I heard of an incident, that occurred in a political contest between Mr.
Gregg and Chancellor Carroll, for the place of State Senator from
Edgefield District. It was the habit for candidates to appear together and
speak to the people from the same platform.... On one of these occasions,
Mr. Gregg spoke first. He stated that he solicited votes on the ground
that he had built a factory, which gave work to poor white people. It
enhanced the value of cotton by manufacturing it. He had planted peach
orchards to develop new avenues of profit and advantage to the people,
&c., &c. Whereas, Chancellor Carroll had never made two blades of grass
grow where only one grew before.
"Mr. Carroll flowed Mr. Gregg. He was an accomplished orator, and praised
in eloquent terms, Mr. Gregg's enterprise in building a factory. He
eulogized his plans for fruit culture. He admitted, with humility, all the
delinquencies Mr. Gregg charged against him excepting only one: 'He says I
never made two blades of grass grow where only one grew before. Having
faith in Mr. Gregg's plans and advice about orchards, I planted one, and
if anybody is disposed to believe I never made grass grow, I simply invite
them to go look at that orchard. It is literally run away with grass.' The
crowd laughed, voted for Mr. Carroll and the cause of slavery went forward
while Mr. Gregg staid at home and the cause of civilization
languished."[102]
But Gregg preached his doctrine undaunted; his works are to be taken less
as an indication of anything like general ante-bellum awakening to
suicidal policies than as the bright exception that proves the melancholy
rule.
He showed that even cotton, the great god, drove enterprise from South
Carolina, for, with the returns from its culture under ordinary management
amounting to 3 or 4 and in some instances only 2 per cent., the
inclination for planters to remove with their slave capital to the richer
south-west was strong, thus keeping the population of the State at a
standstill.[103]
Mr. Ingle has stated the case broadly: "The economic history of the South
from the Revolution to the Civil War is a record of the development of one
natural advantage to the neglect of several others. Fitted by nature to
support a large population engaged in a variety of pursuits based upon
agriculture, it had a small population occupied in the production of raw
material that contributed to the maintenance of a dense population in
regions where artifice contended against harsh climate and a stubborn
soil."[104] An "address to the Farmers of Virginia" read at a convention
for the formation of the Virginia State Agricultural Society in 1852,
adopted, reconsidered and readopted with amendments, and finally
reconsidered again and rejected on the ground that it contained
admissions, however true, which would be useful to abolitionists,
contained the words: "... thus we, who once swayed the councils of the
Union, find our power gone, and our influence on the wane, at a time when
both are of vital importance to our prosperity, if not to our safety. As
other states accumulate the means of material greatness, and glide past us
on the road to wealth and empire, we slight the warnings of dull
statistics, and drive lazily along the field of ancient customs, or stop
the _plow_ to speed the _politician_--should we not, in too many cases,
say with more propriety, the _demagogue_!... With a widespread domain,
with a kindly soil, with a climate whose sun radiates fertility, and whose
very dews distill abundance, we find our inheritance so wasted that the
eye aches to behold the prospect."[105]
In addition to the barrier to manufactures formed by cotton cultivation
under slave labor, and the silent opposition which the prevalent system
engendered, were not infrequent outspoken declarations against industry.
William Gregg was one of the few in South Carolina or the whole South, for
that matter, to rise superior to Calhoun's sway, and asserting that there
were some who were better able to speak of the propriety of factories
than even that statesman, faced him squarely but tactfully. "The known
zeal with which this distinguished gentleman has always engaged in every
thing relating to the interest of South Carolina, forbids the idea that he
is not a friend to domestic manufactures, fairly brought about, and,
knowing, as he must know, the influence which he exerts, he should be more
guarded in expressing opinions adverse to so good a cause."[106]
And again, speaking of manufactures, he was regretful of the fact that
"our great men are not to be found in the ranks of those, who are willing
to lend their aid, in promoting this good case. Are we to commence another
ten years' crusade, to prepare the minds of the people of this State for
revolution; thus unhinging every department of industry, and paralyzing
the best efforts to promote the welfare of our country." His footnote to
this passage shows how calmly, in his comprehensive grasp of the whole
situation, Gregg could estimate the bias of his opponents and point out to
them how even their selfish ambitions could only be served by attention to
such reasoning as his: "Those who are disposed to agitate the State and
prepare the minds of the people for resisting the laws of Congress, and
particularly those who look for so direful a calamity as the dissolution
of our Union, should, above all others, be most anxious so to diversify
the industrial pursuits of South Carolina, as to render her independent of
all other countries; for as sure as this greatest of calamities befalls
us, we shall find the same causes that produced it, making enemies of the
nations which are at present, the best customers for our agricultural
productions."[107]
Gregg felt keenly the opposition to cotton manufactures, which took point,
moreover, from the failure of mills in the South, particularly in his own
State. This he combatted by showing that not lack of natural advantages
but gross mismanagement had been responsible for the fate of these
enterprises.[108] He tried to take heart for the South in the reflection
that those who commenced the textile industry in Rhode Island had the
whole country against them and the experience of England closed to them,
whereas his section had the encouragement of New England and access to the
machinery and mechanical skill of the world, and he added, "It will be
remembered, that the wise men of the day predicted the failure of _steam
navigation_, and also of our own railroad; it was said we were deficient
in mechanical skill, and that we could not manage the complicated
machinery of a steam engine, yet these works have succeeded--we have found
men competent to manage them--they grow up amongst us...."[109]
Because of the striking reversal of front of the city at a later date,
which will be of central importance in subsequent chapters of this study,
the estimate which Gregg gave in 1856 of Charleston's attitude toward home
industry is interesting. As a delegate from Edgefield District in the
South Carolina house of representatives he spoke against the grant of aid
by the State to the South Carolina Railroad, stoutly declaring, although
he was a stockholder in the venture and the men in control were his
personal friends, that he believed every dollar the State might put into
the scheme would be lost; he observed that the railroad was purely for the
commercial aggrandizement of Charleston, and that, perhaps, not honestly,
its spokesmen being unwilling themselves to take stock. Instead of
commercial policies selfishly followed by "wealthy gentlemen, some of whom
have ships floating in every sea", he declared "That her (Charleston's)
destiny was fixed and indissoluble with the State of South Carolina, and
that mainly her great investment in Internal Improvements should be made
with a view to developing the resources of the immediate country around
her. That certain and cheap modes of transportation from all quarters of
the State could not fail to re-act on the general prosperity of the city.
That the dormant wealth of Charleston might be so directed as to be felt
in the remotest parts of the State, in stimulating agriculture, draining
our great swamps and putting into renewed culture our worn-out and waste
lands; diversified industry, stimulating the mechanic arts and increasing
the population and wealth of the State."[110] Instead of this just ideal
for leadership and helpfulness, he found it to be the unfortunate fact
that, "There is no city in the Union which has accumulated more wealth, to
its size, than Charleston--none that has shown so little inclination to
put forth her wealth in such a way as to develop the resources of the
State. Her millionaires die in New York. There is scarcely a day that
passes that does not send forth Charleston capital to add to the growth
and wealth of that great city. There is a silent and an imperceptible
drain in that direction; the aggregate of which for twenty years would
more than build a railroad from Charleston to Cincinnati."[111]
The economic thinking of the old South, with its inertia and its
inconsistency, is well illustrated in a statement of Robert N. Gourdin, a
cotton factor of Charleston and representative of the aristocratic type of
its citizenship, made to the correspondent of the New York Herald in
connection with the Atlanta Cotton exposition in 1881. After going over
the old matter of the war, and the South's vanquishment by superior
numbers only, he said: "We (in the South) did not manufacture because
there was no necessity for our doing so. With our wonderfully productive
soil, our marvellous climate, and with plenty of labor to cultivate our
farms, we would accumulate wealth, live comfortably and even luxuriously
without troubling ourselves with diggings for minerals or manufacturing
cloth. We did not object to the inventions and manufactures of the North,
but we did protest against being obliged to pay for them."[112]
The prohibition by city ordinance of the use of the steam engine in
Charleston is an extreme evidence of a frame of mind that was general in
the South. In order to appreciate how completely deflected from industry
the Southern thought and habit had become, it is interesting to observe
the seriousness with which in 1845 Gregg was forced to argue against this
regulation which now seems so absurd that it could not have existed since
the Middle Ages. Its opponent showed that he was linked in his sympathies
with other sections and with later years, not only by his antagonism but
by the humor which he could not fail to find in the situation.[113]
The characteristic inclination toward the individual rather than corporate
form of enterprise which was noticed as showing itself in the textile and
other industries in the South of the Revolutionary period, was still
strong up to the Civil War. In 1845 Gregg inveighed against it,
particularly as crystallized in legislative refusal to grant charters of
incorporation, and, as in others of his pamphlets and speeches, he made
analysis of the conditions that would seem to have been plain enough to
convince the most stolid; he was quick to hold up New England as a
business model to the South; in marked contrast to most men of affairs of
the time, he saw economic institutions in their social perspective.[114]
Those who have sought to magnify to the largest proportions the
industrial activities of the old South have frequently failed to take
account of the differences in organization which distinguished the
ventures from those of post-bellum years. The textile industry could not
be a movement in economic society so long as investment participation
sprang from and ended with individual initiative. Until the widespread
emergence of the joint-stock form, the mills could not embrace the
generality of the community's resources. And in a period when this device
was not largely turned to, it is plain that industrial stirrings were
comparatively feeble.
Not only was there self-satisfaction coupled with dependence upon the
North for manufactured commodities in the low-country of the ante-bellum
South, but the up-country, that frugal population of which was better
disposed for manufacturing development, was so segregated as to be kept
in mean state, or actually dependent itself upon the coastal districts.
Between the Piedmont and the sea was the barrier of plantations; between
the Piedmont and the industrial North were no transportation
facilities.[115] Olmsted was struck with finding at Fayetteville, "the
point of transfer from wagon to boat, being at the head of
navigation",[116] the long wagon trains of highland farmers. He counted
sixty wagons in the main street of the town; this was the method of
bringing produce to market. "Several of the wagons had come from a hundred
miles distant; and one of them from beyond the Blue Ridge, nearly two
hundred miles." The teams made less than a score of miles a day through
the bad roads.[117] This isolation of one district in the South from
another brought lack of concert in political and economic life. "Small
landowners in the highlands could not always sympathize with men of
princely domain in the low country; and misapprehensions were magnified by
separation.... Diffusion of population ... was revealed in the scantiness
of common-school facilities; in the division of capital among several
small factories or mills, instead of its concentration in a few; in
literary, religious, and social life. In 1860, for instance, the South
had proportionately more church buildings than the North; but its 22,655
buildings had an average seating-capacity of 307, and an average value of
$1,777, while the 31,344 of the North would accommodate 388 persons each,
and were $4,183 on an average.... Isolation gave birth to individualism,
as marked upon the mountain-clearing as upon the plantation; and
beginnings of the co-operative spirit were dwarfed by nature and by human
inclination...."[118]
Strong as is the proof of the non-industrial character of the old South as
revealed by scrutiny of internal economic facts, evidence afforded by the
reflection of this condition in aspects which may be called external, is
quite as striking. So much is this the case, that it is believed that an
examination of the social, political, educational and moral institutions,
constituting the shell of the South, is satisfying as to the character of
the egg without looking at the vital cell at the center. The fruits of
the tree are conclusive of the sap.
Of these external phenomena, the political is that which will most readily
occur to everyone. Pervasive economic conditions are shown crystallized in
political pretensions; economic transitions are registered in alterations
of front. The Protective Tariff of 1816 was introduced and defended,
respectively, by two South Carolinians--Lowndes and Calhoun. The signature
of a Virginia president--Madison--made it a law. This tariff was opposed
by New England in the person of Webster. In 1828, in the debate over the
"Tariff of Abominations", the situation was just the reverse--Calhoun
opposed protection, Webster championed it. In spite of Webster's
explanation that New England was acquiescing, against her inclination, in
the expressed will of the country, it is the bottom truth that, as Lodge
declares, "Opinion in New England changed for good and sufficient business
reasons, and Mr. Webster changed with it ... when the weight of interest
in New England shifted from free trade to protection Mr. Webster following
it." And Mr. Scherer has done justice to the underlying forces in saying,
"Calhoun was neither better nor worse. Both of them simply swung true to
the economic interests of their respective constituencies."[119]
Cotton, nearly exclusively in the South, and to a notable degree in New
England, was responsible underneath for the changes which were displayed
in the superficial play of politics. It was the disintegration of
manufactures brought about by the more and more extensive embracing of
cotton cultivation that turned the South from protection to free trade; it
was the growing absorption in industry, especially cotton manufacture, and
the relative relinquishing of commerce, that made New England
protectionist instead of, as before, the champion of free trade.[120]
This is not the place to remark at length how economic interests are
changing the South back, in partial measure, to the first position. Cotton
is again central. Cotton factories are largely responsible for the little
leaven that is working in a large loaf, producing in the heart of the
Solid South Republican adherents and voices for protection. "Slavery has
been abolished. The South has re-established manufactures. Its interests
in free trade and protection are changed from what they were in 1860. We
need not only domestic trade, but foreign markets. We need, apparently,
protection and free trade at the same time.... The South is as much
interested in protection to home markets as New England is. New England is
as much interested in export markets as the South is. In this situation we
ought all to get together. We ought to get together for 'Protection and
Reciprocity.'"[121]
In summary of the ante-bellum years, which have just been under review,
Mr. Clark writes:
"Between 1810 and 1860 three periods of progress marked the factory
development of the cotton states. During our last war with England ...
mill builders from the North migrated to the Southern highlands, and with
local co-operation established small yarn factories at several places in
the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky.... During the decade
ending with 1833, when hostility to the tariff made the Southern people
bitterly resent economic dependence on the North, there was a second
movement towards manufactures, especially in South Carolina and Georgia,
directed mainly towards the erection of larger and more complete
factories. This agitation bore fruit in some corporate enterprises, most
of which had but qualified success. Finally, in the late forties real
factory development began simultaneously at several points, and had not
two financial crises and a war checked its progress, we should probably
date from this time the beginning of the modern epoch of cotton
manufacturing in the South."[122]
Two objections against this passage have pertinence. In the first place,
these three periods of comparative interest in manufactures can hardly be
called "movements" in any social or economic sense. That of the twenties
and running into the thirties may claim more color of this than the other
two.[123] The plants set up by the New Englanders earlier were in
response to individual enterprise, and that enterprise born out of the
boundaries of the South. Co-operation with the newcomers was not of the
sort that marks the considerable interest of a community. To the extent
that mills were built in the forties as an effect of agitation, William
Gregg was almost solely responsible. It has been pointed out above that
Gregg was a voice crying in the wilderness--he was a missionary who spoke
an unaccepted faith. He was not a social exponent. Also, while some real
factories were built, it seems that to speak of these as constituting a
"real factory development" is questionable. In the second place, it is
rather gratuitous to count upon what would have been the case had not the
war broken in upon declared industrial beginnings. The Civil War was not a
fortuitous event. It had to come. It was the disastrous evidence of the
dominance in the South of a system which gave no room to widespread
industrial enterprise, and in which no beginnings could grow and become
permanent. Could the war be regarded simply as an occurrence, an
unfortunate happening, there might be ground for assuming that industrial
enterprise might have been built into and finally changed wholesomely the
economic regime of the Southern States, but facts show that it was a case
where mastery between mutually exclusive plans had to be made on the basis
of comparative strength; the spirit for manufactures had not sufficient
force to avert the war, but only enough life to show, in expiring, that it
had begun to be born.
The foregoing pages have not dwelt, except by chance, upon the decade
1850-1860. These years have been reserved for specific discussion because
of the effort which has been made by two writers to invest them with a
character of industrialism superior to that of the ante-bellum period
generally. Not only is the argument defeated by external evidence, but an
internal examination of Mr. Edmonds' presentation shows his own
consciousness of serious modifications upon the doctrine, and explains in
a very natural light the occasion for the point of view which he sometimes
too dogmatically expresses. The late Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy, in treating
the subject, was heavily influenced in his opinion by Mr. Edmonds' work;
it will be seen that in his discipleship, while he rid Mr. Edmonds'
statement of one outstanding error, he failed to notice some of the major
allowances made by him, and altogether Murphy's pronouncement is more
positive and absolute than that of the source from which he chiefly drew
his beliefs.
Mr. Edmonds is practically on all fours which Tompkins and others quoted
in this study, in recognizing that certainly from early in the nineteenth
century until the fifth decade industry was little attended to in the
South. This he attributes to the high prices to be obtained from cotton,
averaging for the years 1800 to 1839 a fraction over seventeen cents a
pound. Then he declares: "Beginning with 1840 there came a period of
extremely low prices and the cotton States suffered very much from this
decline. In that year the average of New York prices dropped to nine
cents, a decline of four cents from the preceding year, and this was
followed by a continuous decline until 1846, when the average was 5.63
cents.... In 1847 the crop was short and prices advanced sharply, only to
drop back to eight and then to seven and one-fourth cents, making the
average from 1840 to 1849 the lowest ever known in the cotton trade for a
full decade.
"These excessively low prices brought about a revival of public interest
in other pursuits than cotton cultivation, and the natural tendency of the
people to industrial matters, as evidenced by the history of the colonies
prior to the Revolution, but which had long been dormant, was again
aroused, and for some years there was a very active spirit manifested in
the building of railroads and the development of manufactures.
"The decade ending with 1860 witnessed a very marked growth in Southern
railroad and manufacturing interests.... In 1850 the South had 2335 miles
of railroad, and the New England and Middle States 4798 miles; by 1860 the
South had increased its mileage to 9897 miles, a quadrupling of that of
1850, while the New England and Middle States had increased to 9510 miles.
The conditions were reversed by 1860, and the South then led by 387
miles.... While devoting great attention to the building of railroads, the
South also made rapid progress during the decade ending with 1860 in the
development of its diversified manufactures." Flour and meal, sawed and
planed lumber mills are mentioned, with iron founding and the manufacture
of steam engines and machinery. "Cotton manufacturing had commenced to
attract increased attention, and nearly $12,000,000 were invested in
Southern cotton mills. In Georgia especially this industry was thriving,
and between 1850 and 1860 the capital so invested in that State nearly
doubled." Noting that while most of the Southern manufacturing
enterprises were comparatively small, those of New England in the early
stages were of the same character, he says that "In the aggregate,
however, the number of Southern factories swelled to very respectable
proportions, the total number of 1860 having been 24,590, with an
aggregate capital invested of $175,100,000.
"A study of the facts ... should convince anyone that the South in its
early days gave close attention to manufacturing development,[124] and
that while later on the great profits in cultivation caused a contraction
of the capital and energy of that section in farming operations, yet,
after 1850, there came renewed interest in industrial matters, resulting
in an astonishing advance in railroad construction and in
manufactures."[125]
Figures are set up to show the favorable economic condition of the South
in 1860 as compared with the North, and these head up naturally in the
observation that, "Blot out of existence in one night every manufacturing
enterprise in the whole country, with all the capital employed, (he was
writing in 1894) and the loss would not equal that sustained by the South
as a result of the war.... New England and the Middle States, having grown
rich by the war, almost trebled their property (from 1860 to 1870) while
the South drops from the first place to the third. In 1860 it outranked
the Northern section by $750,000,000."[126]
In criticism of these quotations specifically it is to be said that the
early development in industrial pursuits and the thorough lapse before
1840 are properly observed. The present writer believes that Mr. Edmonds
has exaggerated in his own mind both the spirit for manufactures,
particularly in the decade from 1850 to 1860, and the extent of their
establishment. The recital that there were 24,590 plants, with an
investment of $175,100,000, seems at first to be striking, but a simple
division shows that on an average this made the investment in each only
$7,144.37, which is surely not indicative of considerable importance. Many
of the enterprises must have been much smaller than would be represented
by this average, and the few which were a great deal larger were rare
exceptions. The very disparity in size of establishments points away from
any concerted movement toward manufacturing. As to the railroad
construction, much of it was narrow-gauge, and all of the facts tend to
show that railroads were looked upon as facilitating commerce rather than
manufactures; even after the war the pet scheme to build a railroad over
the mountains gathered sentiment in the long-cherished desire to link
Charleston with "the producing interior" typefied in Cincinnati; as rails
were laid, piecemeal, through the Piedmont, advantages afforded by them
for the erection of factories were seldom mentioned, and their utility in
tapping pools of available labor was not considered. The easier transport
of cotton and the development of the South Atlantic ports were the
thoughts uppermost.
To vaunt property figures of the South of 1860 by including, as Mr.
Edmonds has done, the value of slaves, is an obvious error; and especially
because of the failure to note the inclusion of this factor, the spirit of
the other exhibits is cast in doubt. Though legally they were property, in
the social-economic sense the slaves did not constitute capital any more
than their owners represented capital. The question is rather whether this
part of the population, as productive agents under the system of enforced
labor, did not mean a liability and not an asset at all.[127]
Mr. Edmonds is guilty sometimes of careless statement, as when he says,
"The Southern people do not lack in energy or enterprise, nor did they
prior to 1860.... From the settlement of the colonies until 1860 the
business record proves this."[128] Or again, "the energy and enterprise
displayed by the South in the extension of its agricultural interests was
fully as great as the energy displayed in the development of New England's
manufactures or that of the pioneers who opened up the West to
civilization."[129] Such expressions, it will presently be shown, proceed
from a loyalty to the South and a just desire to defend her against
assault respecting her part in post-bellum development, but facts brought
out in these pages show the mistaken zeal in seeking to place the old
South abreast in industry or even agriculture.
Allowing what is perhaps the exciting cause of Mr. Edmonds' argument to
appear from his own context, light is shed in the following sentences:
"... 'The New South', a term which is so popular everywhere except in the
South, is supposed to represent a country of different ideas and different
business methods from those which prevailed in the old ante-bellum
days.... Its use ... as intended to convey the meaning that the South of
late years is something entirely new and foreign to this section,
something which has been brought about by an infusion of outside energy
and money is wholly unjust to the South of the past and present. It needs
but little investigation to show that prior to the war the South was fully
abreast of the times in all business interests, and that the wonderful
industrial growth which has come since 1880 has been due mainly to
Southern men and Southern money. The South heartily welcomes the
investment of outside capital and the immigration of all good people ...
but it insists that it shall receive from the world the measure of credit
to which it is entitled for the accomplishment of its own people." And
then he instances the cotton mills and Birmingham and Atlanta.[130] His
explanation of the inactivity in the South for ten or fifteen years
following the war, in the fact and causes of which he is entirely
correct,[131] bears out the belief, clearly indicated in the passage just
quoted, that it is his real purpose to accord to the ante-bellum South her
deserved praise. However, he overreached in trying to establish anything
like continuity for Southern enterprise over the ante-bellum years. The
interpretation here given of the new South is now a platitude, but it may
not have been a tilting at windmills when he wrote; indeed, its acceptance
now may be due in no small part to Mr. Edmonds.
Altogether, it is best to rest Mr. Edmonds' theory with the following
passage, in which there is no confusion of his own thought and no
controversy with anyone: "Since 1880, although the South is still (1894)
practically without great accumulated wealth, her people have turned to
manufacturing with a facility that not only shows that they are in no way
lacking in capability to compete in manufacturing pursuits, but,
considering the limited capital, this section has exhibited remarkable
gains in developing its resources under adverse conditions. In a little
more than a decade from the time the work of development may be said to
have begun, it is not a question whether Alabama can compete with
Pennsylvania in iron, but rather whether Pennsylvania can compete with
Alabama. Nobody now doubts that the South can compete with New England in
the manufacture of cotton goods, but many do doubt whether New England can
compete with the South.... Since 1880 the growth of manufactures in the
South and their success has been more than astonishing."[132]
Edgar Gardner Murphy in his spiritual interpretation of the South showed
himself discerning and gifted beyond almost any other writer. His
conception of the economic history of the South may be held to have been
secondary in his purpose and so in his thought. However, his position as
an expositor of the section and the emphasis which he places upon his
economic opinions regarding its past, make it incumbent upon the student
to examine his views. In the following quotation the turn which he gave to
the influencing argument of Mr. Edmonds and his personal slant in
interpretation of this, are apparent:
"The present industrial development of the South is not a new creation. It
is chiefly a revival. Because the labor system of the old South was so
largely attended by the economic disadvantages of slavery, and because the
predominant classes of the white population were so largely affected by
social and political interests, it has often been assumed that the old
order was an order without industrial ambitions.
"The assumption is not well founded. Instead of industrial inaction we
find from the beginnings of Southern history an industrial movement,
characteristic and sometimes even provincial in its methods, but
presenting a consistent and creditable development up to the very hour of
the Civil War. The issue of this war meant no mere economic reversal. It
meant economic catastrophe, drastic, desolate, without respect of persons,
classes or localities.... Thus the later story of the industrial South is
but a story of reemergence."[133] There are then outlined the steps of Mr.
Edmonds' argument, except that Murphy failed to make clear the almost
total lapse of industrial activity by 1840.
The incentive to discover an industrial past for the section, which Mr.
Edmonds found in the desire to establish the South as the magician of her
ante-bellum awakening, is matched in Murphy's motive by a more subtle
design. In one place he said: "... the most distinctive element in the
economic movement of this period (1880 to 1900) is the increasingly
dominant position of manufactures as contrasted with agriculture. This
industrial revival is but the reemergence of the tendency which we found
so manifest in the statistics of 1860. It is but one reassertion of the
genius of the old South."[134] Here with his absolute conception of the
ante-bellum South is hinted the purpose which really animated it. That in
speaking of the post-bellum development as "one reassertion of the genius
of the old South" he did not mean, as very easily might be supposed, that
through the earlier history of the section had run a genius for
industrialism, is made clear in the following passage, which, though it
refers particularly to social relationships, is pertinent for the
industrial bearings:
"The old South was the real nucleus of the new nationalism. The old South,
or in a more general sense the South of responsibility, the men of family,
the planter class, the official soldiery, or (if you please) the
aristocracy,--the South that had had power, and to whom power had taught
those truths of life, those dignities and fidelities of temper, which
power always teaches men,--this older South was the true basis of an
enduring peace between the sections and between the races." He regretted
that this old South was not enabled to come into force until after
Reconstruction because "a doubt was put upon its word given at Appomattox.
Its representatives were subjected to disfranchisement. Power was struck
from its hands. Its sense of responsibility was wounded and
confused."[135]
This is a fine statement of a primary and outstanding truth in the
development of the South that began about the year 1880. The old South
did draw breath with the new. The permanent character of the South, the
forces resident in the South of earlier as of later years, were those
which largely made possible a complete change in viewpoint, which carried
through the measures of, if not indeed giving birth to, the potent
consciousness of a reversal of program. But, as Murphy failed to see
clearly, there is a radical distinction between the continuity of this
quality in the South and any continuity of its evidences in industrial
pursuits. The new South did not receive from the old South a heritage of
industrial tradition; what it received was a traditional and ingrained and
living social morality, not marred in its essential characteristics and
presence, and very likely even assisted, by the institution of slavery. As
again Murphy said: "... this sense of responsibility, deepened rather than
destroyed by the burden of slavery, was the noble and fruitful gift of the
old South to the new, a gift brought out of the conditions of an
aristocracy, but responsive and operative under every challenge in the
changing conditions of the later order."[136]
In this apology for Murphy's view is splendidly apparent the best resource
with which to turn from the South that was to the South that is.
CHAPTER III
_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]
CHAPTER IV
_CAPITAL_
In the chapter on the conditions precedent to the erection of cotton mills
in the South the attempt was made to show how the stage was set for the
actual building of factories. The impulse for manufactures, and especially
cotton mills was traced through its several more or less definite periods
of development. The first of these was the recoil from the
Hancock-Garfield election; the failure of the South's determined hopes for
the success of the Democratic candidate, which would mean, it was thought,
freedom from political insult and economic servitude, and an opportunity
to wreak vengeance for the wrongs of radical rule, virtually marked the
death struggle of the old exclusive social philosophy as the animating
force in the South. This had been bred by the ante-bellum regime, called
into concrete trial by the civil war, and intensified in character through
each year of Reconstruction, and through each year proven more untenable.
The questioned election of 1876, when Tilden was thrown out under
circumstances peculiarly galling to the South, set the section as a unit
and unalterable for the next four years in a passionate and dogged
resolution against all odds to make a Democrat president in 1880. When
Hancock was beaten in a fair fight by Garfield, the South was thrown
prostrate; devastated by the war, pillaged and ridden in Reconstruction,
to gather all her forces for a final defiant stand and have her last poor
hope dashed was tragic. But this very extreme of bitterness was the
South's salvation.
The leaders, with remarkable accord and almost simultaneously in all
quarters, after recovery from the first inescapable shock, rallied to the
situation like heroes, and called their less valiant brethren after them
in a new resolution to build up another South founded on democracy and a
purpose to employ every material resource for the building of a foundation
which would bear the weight of the different structure that had to be
erected.
Words unfamiliar in the South were heard on every hand; in this proposal
of "real reconstruction" notions as novel as they were salutary were
involved. Communication between States and parts of the same State, by
railroads, telegraph and telephone; schools, churches, diversification of
crops, deepening of harbors and rivers, municipal pride and civic reform
were urged; it was demanded that politics and political wrangles be
dropped forthwith, and that the section set about the course of material
advancement as the only method of asserting rights against the North, and
the only means of bearing her share of the national burden.
In the canvas of resources which this impulse brought, cotton mills were
pounced upon as affording the readiest and most permanent instruments of
success. It has been seen how platform and press and people concentrated
their interest and attention upon the "cotton mill campaign", every new
factory being hailed as another banner lifted in the fight. Two great
impelling motives were patriotism--either local, state, sectional or
national--and humanitarian considerations. These were held up in the
plainest view of all, and impressed unceasingly. It was as a means to an
end that cotton mills were argued for; their advocacy was grounded in the
most splendidly fundamental beliefs and aspirations.
Descending from these lofty ideals, the practical inducements to the
building of cotton mills as they were brought before the South and the
country at large have been pointed out. It was shown that over and above
all others stood out prominent and unquestioned the fact of the presence
of the raw cotton. Proximity to the material of manufacture was felt to
constitute the chief invitation to go into the textile business in a
systematic way. But there were other arguments used, running out to great
length--of these the leading one was an abundance of cheap and intelligent
if untrained labor crying for employment, and this has been dwelt upon in
its phases. A store of unused water powers, favorable freight rates, low
cost of living, suitable climate, the supply of inexpensive fuel, and the
innumerable gains to the community were made the grounds of advocacy of
cotton mills. Estimates of the expenses of erection, maintenance and
operation of hypothetical factories of all sizes were worked out in
elaborate detail, the saving over manufacture of cotton in New England or
in Old England being remarked at every juncture.
It is a nice problem to determine how far these advantages possessed or
thought to be possessed by the South were aired as a result of deep-lying
motives of patriotism and philanthropy, and to what extent they were
themselves the exciting forces behind the crystallization of these
motives. Did these superiorities of the South come to light mainly because
the South had made up its mind to remake the section, or did the South
enter upon a course of development because it possessed certain
outstanding advantages? To strike a balance here would be an interesting
speculative venture. But, however, this may be, it is reasonably clear, as
has been previously pointed out, that when it came to putting their money
into cotton mills, capitalists, North and South, acted usually upon the
assurance given them in the physical assets obtaining. To the extent that
general impulses placed in public view definite, concrete and tangible
reasons why cotton mills could be made to pay dividends, the undercurrent
was indirectly responsible for the erection of the factories.
It is not the purpose of the present paper to set out in any detail the
unique resources of the South, either as they constituted the magnet for
capital directly, or reacted through the general cotton mill campaign to
swell the tide making toward a new character for the section. They deserve
separate treatment, especially since they occupy so central a position and
have such sensitive contact with the other forces present. Whether,
however, physical advantages existing at the South crystallized out of an
original philosophical impulse, or operated, more or less unconsciously in
the Southern mind, to induce that impulse, it is perfectly clear that the
movement for the building of cotton mills in the South originated with the
South, and that at least contemporary with the attraction of capital, went
an advocacy of the establishment of cotton factories that was consistent,
permanent and practically universal.
From the very nature of the movement, Southern and in most cases strictly
local capital was first appealed to, both by the actual projectors of the
mills and the public organs which interested themselves in the
enterprises, and local capital was the first offered. It might be
questioned whether outside capitalists, perceiving in the Southern
manufacture of cotton a favorable field of investment, did not come in as
a result of the publicity of the cotton mill campaign, without waiting for
either solicitation from the South or proof of the success of the new
plants erecting in that section, but it will be shown that, as a matter of
fact, this was not the case. At the time the South felt herself to be
isolated, cut off from the national life, discriminated against by
Congress and the country at large. In the beginning and in essence
continuing to the end, the building of cotton mills was a sectional
matter. It is not to be said that outside capital was an afterthought with
the promoters of the Southern cotton mills, but every circumstance
surrounding the movement, and every instinct of the hour, argued for the
exhaustion of native resources before help should be sought from without.
The story of how capital was secured for the cotton mills of the South may
be commenced with a sentence from a North Carolina newspaper which strikes
the key-note: "All questions of domestic economy, and especially those
involving the capital of our people, whether in the shape of labor or
dollars, will necessarily be canvassed and scrutinized very closely in
their bearings on our material progress."[184]
The nature of the appeals made to local capital will best appear by
looking at some of them individually.
Patriotism, a consciousness of unity, and appreciation of the dynamic
character of manufactures in the South, appear in a solicitation printed
on the editorial page of the Charleston News and Courier for capital for a
scheme for the development of water power and cotton mills at Columbia.
The enterprise had a peculiarly appealing history, which will be
recounted in considering the response of domestic capital. After a summary
of these facts, the article concludes: "The work--is one of great
magnitude and involves expenditure beyond the ability of this community
(Columbia). Nor is the interest merely local, but reaches out to every
part of the State. We call, therefore, upon all, from the mountains to the
seaboard, to take part in this great central development, involving not
only the prosperity of our capital, but, in its ramifications, affecting
the prosperity of the entire State."[185]
A week earlier, in a Columbia dispatch to the same paper, Charleston was
advised that books of subscription to the stock of the company would soon
be opened there, and the argument for investment was placed on more
practical grounds: "If the recent subscriptions to factories have left any
money in the pockets of the people there (Charleston), it had better be
saved for this purpose--a franchise like this is not obtained every
decade."[186]
Implying that when the South should make a start in cotton manufacture,
outside capital would flow in, but impressing particularly the need for
the entrance of domestic interests into the field, a statement of H. T.
Inman, capitalist, relative to the plan to purchase Oglethorpe Park, the
site of the Atlanta Exposition, from the city authorities and use the
buildings for cotton factories, is striking: "We must demonstrate what we
have been saying, that there is money in manufacturing in the South. If we
wait for others to come here and do it, it will never be done."[187] The
argument that the South had faith in her ability to manufacture cotton
profitably, as proved by putting her money into the projected mills, was
frequently used in soliciting subscriptions at the North, and more
frequently Southerners were urged, as here, to go into the ventures, with
the specific reason that by so doing Northern capital would be induced to
join in.
Money accumulating in bank at low rates of interest was often made the
basis of observations on the great gain from manufactures, and was pounced
upon as evidence of lack of sympathy with the spirit of the time, which
was grounded in the deepest needs of the people. In such cases the cotton
mill campaign and the gathering of capital as a matter of practical
concern usually overlap. An instance quoted in another place is typical:
"But with all its (North Carolina's) varied and splendid capabilities 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 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...."[188] Several months later the same
paper[189] instanced the success of Edward Richardson, of the firm of
Richardson & May, cotton factors of New Orleans, in running, in addition
to ten or twelve plantations producing 15,000 to 18,000 bales of cotton a
year, a nest of factories with 18,000 spindles, 400 looms and 800 hands in
the town of Cresson, which he built. He was said to be worth more than
$15,000,000--"all accumulated in the South, the poor South." The closing
remark is significant: "His ... accumulations are but the results of
forethought, enterprise and nerve. He has no heavy deposits in bank at
four per cent."
This same galling fact of bank deposits lying relatively idle when they
might be used to further the plans held so much at heart was lamented in
cases where it hindered the cotton mill campaign, or the taking of initial
steps toward realizing a desire for a mill; but it was made more galling
where a venture, properly launched, stood still because the moneyed people
held themselves aloof. In distinction to the position of Newberry, South
Carolina, where there were "numbers of people ready to aid in the
enterprise, convinced as they are that it will be a profitable investment,
but ... nobody to take the lead,"[190] was Chester another town in the
same State, of about the same size. In February of 1881, after the cotton
mill campaign had gotten a fair start, the Chester Bulletin commented:
"Just now there is a widespread and deep feeling amongst our people
throughout the State to foster the manufacturing interests of the country.
More than a year has elapsed since our people felt beat a pulse of
enthusiasm for the home industries. (Reference was here had to the
chartering by the Legislature of two mill corporations which attracted
almost no subscriptions.) There is money enough in the county to start the
hum of three thousand spindles. The large amount of personal deposits in
bank indicate too truly the lack of confidence in home industrial
enterprises."[191]
It may be well to consider a typical comprehensive appeal for domestic
capital. For this purpose a leading editorial in The News and Courier
asking support for the Charleston Manufacturing Company is particularly
useful.[192] In the first place, this company marked the entry of
Charleston into the field of regular cotton manufacture, and the
enterprise took firm hold on the interest of the city from this cause.
Also, South Carolina experienced the cotton mill campaign as a movement
more highly conscious than in any other State; Charleston was the center
of the campaign, as spiritual leader no less by reason of her sufferings
than her heroism, and the News and Courier was the mouthpiece of
Charleston.
To begin with, the editorial, headed "Everybody's Opportunity", sets forth
clearly the division of arguments: "The Charleston Manufacturing Company
addresses itself to the citizens of Charleston in a double capacity:
_First_, as a means of making money for the stockholders. _Second_, as a
means of enlarging the common income, stimulating the growth and
increasing the prosperity of the city."
Proceeding under the first of these heads, it is pointed out that the mill
will succeed because the management, in the hands of men known for their
business sagacity and activity, will be both economical and progressive.
There is no doubt that, along with other appeals to local resources,
confidence in the projectors of a cotton mill, as personal acquaintances
and men whose whole lives were familiar knowledge in a small community,
had a powerful influence. Next it is shown that the profits of the South
Carolina mills for the year 1879, probably the last available for
citation, warranted a belief that the Charleston mill would succeed,
having at least as good a chance as county plants. These profits had
ranged from 18 to 25-1/2 per cent. It is explained that steam power will
be used, but that it is used in England, and that the trend of the better
opinion is toward steam power rather than water power, as being more
reliable and capable of better control. The approval of steam by the
superintendent of the Camperdown Mills at Greenville in the same State, on
these grounds and also because he knew that the Northern mills using steam
made larger profits than those using water, is instanced. It is evident
that the necessity of employing steam power, instead of being able to use
the water power of the interior, was a hard obstacle to get over, for
recurrence is several times had to it in the course of the argument, and
the great advantages of coastal location are stressed as a
counterbalancing consideration.
The favorable facts that the Charleston mill will be able to buy cotton
all the year round, and so avoid carrying a heavy stock, that samples and
tops may be utilized, that the rates of insurance will be low and water
freights nominal, and lastly that no cottages or schools or churches will
have to be built, city location avoiding this source of expense to a
provincial establishment are recited, and the prospective stockholders are
reminded that by State law the whole of the capital invested in
manufactures is exempted from taxation for ten years.
On the second account, of increasing the prosperity and welfare of the
community, it is shown how every $228 invested in cotton manufactures in
South Carolina the year before supported one person, and how when people
earn they have something to spend; house rents will go up as a result of
the new demand. Besides, the State at large benefits from a new means of
support for the people. The very potent argument of the addition to value
which manufacturing brings about is next employed. "At a low estimate the
value of cotton is doubled by the conversion into yarns." If the
Charleston Manufacturing Company uses 10,000 bales of 400 pounds a bale,
at 10 cents per pound, $400,000 will be returned to the growers of the raw
cotton. When made into yarns the cotton will be worth $800,000. Every
dollar of this $400,000 difference, except what will be spent for
materials not to be precured locally, will be disbursed in Charleston in
wages and dividends. "It is evident that the building of half-a-dozen
cotton factories could revolutionize Charleston. Two or three million
dollars additional poured annually into the pockets of the shop-keepers
and tradespeople would make them think that the commercial millenium had
come." The appeal concludes: "In a two-fold sense, then, the Charleston
Manufacturing Company is entitled to support. For the stockholders it will
earn money. To the city it will give the life and vigor which nothing
short of manufactures will assure us."[193]
An editorial in the same paper the next spring encouraging subscriptions
to the capital stock of the Columbia and Lexington Water Power Company,
the enterprise already mentioned, which was opening books in Charleston,
urged the two benefits already noticed, profit flowing from physical and
economic advantages, and a social gain resulting from the indirect
bearings of the plant.[194] The value of the franchise, the offer by the
State of more than 146,000 days of convict labor at a low wage, the rebate
of taxation on plant and improvements for ten years, and estimated
earnings of 17 per cent, on a total outlay of $431,607, or running as
high as 25 per cent. on an outlay of $725,000, were held up on the side of
material things; in dealing with the gain expected to result to the State
at large, the influx of immigrants and the employment of thousands of idle
women and girls, already present, for whom it was so hard to find
profitable work, were pointed out.
Not unusually, in place of the larger social sense, local pride as such
furnished the point of departure in the proclamation of an enterpriser to
his fellow-citizens. It is to be feared that sometimes this was made the
means of demegoguery, the appeal to local spirit being linked with a
disparagement of Northern assistance merely for effect. Instances of this
will appear when the attitude toward outside capital is considered.
The case of Mr. Winn's scheme for Sumter illustrates the personal appeal
to local pride. It is to be noticed that he reduced everything to an
individual and immediate basis. He spoke through the paper of the town,
the Sumter Southron:[195] "I am now engaged in getting up a mill of 2,500
spindles at this place. I do not expect to seek a dollar of foreign
subscription, but I want our own citizens throughout the county to be
interested in it and to help me build and operate it." There follows a
description of his findings at several nearby mills which he visited. One
is inclined to believe that he paraded the facts to impress his audience
in a general way, rather than to appeal to strict business sense. He cites
the earnings of the mill at Charlotte, North Carolina, owned by the Oates
Brothers. With running expenses of $60, "we have the neat little profit of
$155 per day". The Sumter mill could save haulage, and use one-third of
its cotton not packed, thus saving in bagging and ties. A concluding
sentence indicates his frame of mind: "Will a mill pay in Sumter? Why
not?"
A statement of the advantages possessed by a mill already in operation as
contrasted with those which would contribute to the success of a proposed
mill was a favorite method of argument. Thus the Kershaw Gazette said:
"Let us realize that what is good for Charleston in this respect is better
for us. (Reference was had to the Charleston Manufacturing Company.) She
has to use steam as a motive power, which, in the form of coal, has to be
brought long distances and at great cost. We have but to harness the
magnificent water-powers which are slipping idly by us, and the thing is
done. In Charleston, it is the investment of capital on hand, seeking
profitable employment. With us, it will be the creation of capital itself;
for we venture the assertion that one hundred thousand dollars invested in
a cotton factory at Camden would develop interests to more than double
that amount." The saving of three-fourths of a cent per pound in the
freight between Camden and Charleston would in itself bring a fair
dividend upon the capital invested, it was said. "And yet Charleston
expects to, and will, make money by what she is about to do. Let the
people of Camden and of Kershaw County be up and doing in this
matter."[196]
These, then, were the grounds upon which domestic and more strictly local
capital were solicited. It is proper now to notice with what success the
appeals were made.
In the most respectable trade summary published by any newspaper in the
South, it was stated in September of 1881: "The industrial feature of the
year is the rapid extension of cotton manufacturing in South Carolina in
common with other Southern States (naming the plants and the capital
invested in or subscribed to each.) A most gratifying feature connected
with the establishment of cotton mills in the South is that the great bulk
of the capital employed in their operation has been furnished by Southern
people. Southern capitalists are putting their shoulders to the wheel....
More than three-fourths of the capital invested in the cotton mills since
the war has been subscribed by our own people...."[197]
The conclusion of Mr. Thompson after a review of the rise of cotton mills
in North Carolina is interesting: He says that capital for almost 200
mills that grew up in twenty years "has come chiefly from a multitude of
small investors within the State"; again, "The development of the cotton
industry in North Carolina is a striking instance of the manner by (in)
which a people in poor or moderate circumstances can establish
manufactures." He gives credence to estimates by those he considers best
informed that 90 per cent. of the capital for mills in North Carolina has
come from residents of the State. "The industry is distinctly a home
enterprise, founded and fostered by natives of the State."[198]
The Rock Hill Cotton Factory was spoken of as the "pet" of the town. Its
$100,000 of capital stock was owned in Rock Hill, with the exception of
$15,000 held in Charleston.[199]
Most of the stock of the Belmont Manufacturing Company, the enterprise
projected by Mr. Winn in Sumter, already noticed, was taken in the town,
and the few thousand dollars needed to increase the capacity above 2,000
spindles would come from Charleston, where President Winn was soliciting
support.[200]
The experience of Yorkville, another little town in South Carolina, is
interesting, especially for the naive way in which it was related.[201]
"... the 'Cotton Mill Campaign' is progressing satisfactorily in
Yorkville. We heard an old citizen remark some days ago that he had never
seen the town so thoroughly aroused and united.... Yorkville to all
appearances is moving forward with a determined purpose to put into
successful operation a cotton mill.... The shares have been placed at $500
each, and up to this writing about $25,000 have been subscribed. I would
state that this amount has been raised within the limits of the town. A
prospectus will be forthcoming this week and the doors will be thrown open
to citizens generally of the county who may be able and disposed to assist
in carrying forward the project."
A similar instance is that of Walhalla, South Carolina, a very small place
indeed. The people began to talk about a cotton manufactory, and at an
informal meeting of a few of those interested nearly $10,000 was
subscribed. "It is believed that as much as $25,000 will be subscribed in
that neighborhood, and if the people of the county will join in the
enterprise as much as $50,000 might be made available."[202]
A typical notice is this one: "The enterprising citizens of the new town
of Gaffney City have subscribed $40,000 towards building a cotton factory
at that place."[203]
Columbus, Georgia, was held up to praise for her loyal support of the
cotton manufacturing industry. Before the war she was a little Lowell, it
was said. The Federal army captured the place in 1865 and burned 60,000
bales of cotton and all the mills. "The very heart of the city was burned
out, but nothing could extinguish its indomitable spirit." In fifteen
years the mills had been rebuilt until they were taking annually nearly
17,000 bales of raw cotton, which was almost trebled in value by
manufacture. "But the proudest boast of Columbus is that she rebuilt her
mills by her own aid and money."[204]
The statement of a railroad man in the New York Herald is valuable: "Mills
for the weaving of the coarser cotton fabrics are now in successful
operation in Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky and several of the Atlantic
Coast States, all of which have been built by native labor, mostly with
local capital and are managed by Southern men."[205]
The Clifton Mill near Spartanburg, furnishes a fair example of the
distribution of holdings of the capital stock of a larger enterprise. The
joint stock company owning the mill operated under a special act of
incorporation of the Legislature, exempting the property from taxation for
a period of years, and relieving the stockholders of personal liability.
The shares were of a par value of $100. and aggregated $500,000 of which
$250,000 was paid in. The stock was held mostly in Spartanburg,
Charleston, Boston and Baltimore. Spartanburg capitalists owned $200,000
worth of the stock, Charlestonians $150,000, and $50,000 was held in
Boston.[206] To make the capital stock $500,000 most of the original
stockholders had doubled their subscriptions.[207]
For a factory near Gaffneys, South Carolina, which would need $500,000
capital stock to the amount of $200,000 would be subscribed for in Chester
County, it was thought, and for the remaining $300,000 the North would be
looked to.[208]
Together with large subscription to the stock of the Atlanta Exposition
from the North and East, went an early subscription of $20,000 in
Atlanta.[209]
While it might be considered under the heading of the cotton mill
campaign, or denominated "Southern enterprise", I believe it will be most
interesting to relate at this point briefly the facts in the Columbia
canal scheme, as illustrating how domestic capital threw itself into the
situation in which the South found herself in 1880, and the years
immediately following. It is especially instructive to notice how Northern
enterprise, while, so far superior to Southern initiative at all times
before, after 1880 failed where in the South sometimes native energy
succeeded.
Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, is located at the falls of the
Congaree River. Today there is a canal of about three miles in length, 60
or 75 feet in breadth, terminating at the lower part of the city. At the
end of the canal is a duck mill. In 1868 the Messrs. Sprague,
manufacturers of Rhode Island, took up a plan of developing this water
power at Columbia, but "in consequence of their misfortunes, failed", and
the whole matter of the canal passed to the hands of the State Canal
Commission. Some prominent Columbians, hoping to revive the project,
contributed money to the employment of one Mr. Holly, a first-rate
hydraulic engineer of Rochester, New York. Mr. Holly was making surveys
and progressing satisfactorily when, after three months, his engagement
was discontinued. The reason for this was that Thompson and Nagle,
engineers of Providence, on a tour of inspection through the South, were
attracted to the water power at Columbia, and Mr. Thompson appealed to the
State for franchises, in which appeal he was supported by the citizens of
Columbia who had helped promote the modest work under Mr. Holly. On
February 10, 1880, the final contract between Thompson and Nagle and the
State Canal Commission was entered into; by its terms the engineers were
to have the use of 200 convicts for three years, and at the expiration of
this time they were to have developed at Gervais Street 15,000 horse power
of water power, and have in operation a cotton mill of at least 16,000
spindles.
Thompson and Nagle thought the necessary capital could be had at the
North. They failed to secure it, and attributed their failure to the
turmoil of the presidential campaign which was raging. Though this was
probably a valid basis for the appeal to the Legislature for an extension
of the rights granted them, the application for extension was denied. At
this juncture, modifying the scope of the plans somewhat, the foremost
citizens of Columbia took up the matter themselves, and organized the
Columbia and Lexington Water Power Company to bring about the
development.[210]
Nightly meetings were held of those interested in the purchase of Mr.
Thompson's charter. In one hour eleven subscribers gave $5,000
each--$55,000--toward the amount.[211] A few days later the subscriptions
in Columbia had reached $117,600, and the expectation was that the sum set
to be raised in Columbia--$125,000--would be exceeded.[212]
Mention has been made several times of the Charleston Manufacturing
Company. At the end of the first day $120,000 of its capital stock had
been taken.[213] A little later the subscriptions to the stock had become
$200,000 and more, mostly "for small amounts, which is what is desired. At
the present rate the whole capital required will soon be subscribed." On
July 6, the News and Courier had these two editorial paragraphs, the
justifiable satisfaction pervading which is not to be mistaken: "We are
authorized and requested to say that the whole of the stock of the
Charleston Manufacturing Company, being half a million dollars, has been
subscribed, and that the books are closed. It is useless, therefore, to
continue to send in subscriptions.
"We believe that more than three-fifths of the whole capital stock are
held in Charleston, so that right here will come the bulk of the direct
profit by the working of the company...."
But before the Charleston Manufacturing Company had completed its
organization another corporation had come into existence. This was a mill
company promoted and most largely subscribed to by the Germans of
Charleston, headed by Captain Tecklenburg. Not much was said about the
concern in the papers, but of its $100,000 of capital stock, $75,000 were
subscribed between January and May of 1881. This Palmetto Manufacturing
Company, as it was called, was apparently, the most restricted in its
stockholders of any mill that had been projected in the South to this
time.
Little towns, villages almost, did not fail of local enthusiasm and
capital in small amounts.[214] In January of 1882 Fort Mill, in York
County, was agitating the building of a cotton mill there, and $50,000 was
set as the amount of stock to be secured.[215] Chester, a little earlier
concluded her size would compel her to produce $300,000 for a mill within
her borders.[216] A gentleman of Griffin, Georgia, offered to subscribe
one fourth of the capital necessary to start a mill there.[217]
Having seen the character of the arguments used in attracting native
capital to the Southern cotton mill projects, and the extent of the
response to these appeals, it is next necessary to turn to the other
source of assistance--outside capital. Practically this may be termed
Northern capital, although Englishmen interested themselves in the
Southern ventures, and much money came from what were strictly termed, the
Eastern States. In the minds of the people of South Carolina, North
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and those States, capital stock of a Southern
mill held in Baltimore would be classed as appertaining to the North.
It is proper first to consider the attitude of the South toward Northern
capital; second, the appeals made to Northern capital; and third, the
effect of these appeals or the response of them.
In many aspects the rise of cotton mills in the South was less an
industrial development than a subtle drama, powerful in its great motives.
As William Garratt Brown has said of the history of the Southern States
in their struggle upward after the war, it is not only to be studied with
diligence of research, but is to be viewed with passion. The story of the
cotton mills is filled with elemental emotions; the moving characters are
splendid, clear-cut dramatic types; there are the villain, the hero, the
schemer, the lover of his fellow men. The vices and virtues take their
part--self-sacrifice, jealousy, hate, charity, revenge, bravery, honor,
patriotism.
The first act of the drama is constituted in the defeat of Hancock and the
magnificent refusal of the South to be baffled--the oath to rebuild her
shattered fortunes. The actors leave the stage with hope filling the
future. The curtain rises on the second act to discover the chief spirits
of the South setting systematically about "the cotton mill campaign";
their brethren converted to a belief that manufacturing the staple would
transform the South, they turn in entreaty to their fellows for support,
and the answer is loyal and gallant.
The third act opens with a situation which tests the greatness of the
players' faith in what they profess. Domestic resources exhausted or
exhausting, or slow in response to the need, should the object for which
they were striving be lessened in its meaning, importance and
desirability? Should the cotton mills which were to mean so much be
restricted to the means of the South, urged to the front by a splendid
pride and devotion? Should the _esprit de corps_ which animated the
Southerners, and the cheerfulness of their co-operation, with all that
inspired these, when they failed of further effect, be considered to set
the natural and proper limits to expansion?
Was this to close the action? Or was the South, remembering her vows, to
cling to her ambition undiminished? In spite of wounds yet fresh and
burning, which in the name of pity and honor and self-esteem cried out to
be nursed and comforted at home, could the South face again her enemies,
and this time not just to challenge, which was hard, but to entreat, which
was hardest? Would the South rise superior to pride, and be content with
nothing short of the fullest heroism? Would she go to the North for
capital for her young cotton mills?
It was a silent struggle with herself. Little was uttered, but fundamental
emotions were at play. When she decided to appeal for assistance in a work
which she knew to be right, the climax of the drama had been reached. The
crucial test had been endured, and the South had emerged triumphant.
As has been said, few lines are there to indicate the feeling. It is
largely dumb show. But we may look at the expressions that did occur to
show the attitude of the South toward the question of Northern capital.
The following manifesto is significant, involving as it does recognition
of the necessity for a modification of political views if capital to be
invested in the South, in the eyes of the North, was to be made safe: "In
this state (South Carolina) we need capital and less party and
politics.... Such men as Gould, Vanderbilt and Plant have invested
millions of dollars in our railroads, manufactories and other enterprises,
and have been remunerated in the face of a 'Solid South and a Solid
North'. It is useless to say that millions have been driven off from like
investments on account of personal whims and jealousies among prominent
politicians in both parties. _Can the South afford to remain solid?_ This
is the great question of the day, and it can be answered in the
negative.... We want all the capital possible to develop our hidden and
inexhaustible resources...."[218] And again: "So long as we have section
unity in politics in the South its material prosperity will be checked and
an absolute injury will be sustained through its entire commercial and
agricultural dealings by exciting distrust of capital.... 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 in which sectionalism is
involved."[219]
The News and Courier wished to accord to every dollar of Northern capital
invested in the South the same credit as was felt to be due home capital
likewise contributed to the building up of the section. "Outside capital
... is beginning to seek this Southern field to aid in a more rapid and
thorough work of restoration of dead or dormant enterprises. This movement
needs a wise encouragement by public and private approval. Some of that
credit which was accorded to the man who caused an additional blade of
grass to grow should be given to everyone who affords facilities to
manufacture an additional boll of cotton, or to carry it and other produce
to market."[220]
A gentleman connected with the International Cotton Exposition said: "We
people of the South should embrace every opportunity which, like the
opportunity afforded by this Exposition, will bring among us intelligent
and interested observers of our industrial condition, resources and
aptitudes. We have in the midst of us the raw material, so to speak, of a
magnificent prosperity. We lack knowledge, population and capital. These
may be slowly accumulated in the course of years, or they may be rapidly
by well directed efforts to obtain them from beyond our own borders. We
advocate the latter plan."[221] This is as business-like as anyone could
desire.
In an interview with the Atlanta Constitution, Francis Cogin reviewed the
cotton manufacturing situation in Augusta, reciting the profits and
asserting that the Southern mills had an advantage over those of the North
such as would allow the former to earn dividends at a time when the latter
would not be making a dollar. He concluded: "The future of cotton
manufacture in the South will be limited simply by the good sense and
courtesy of our own people. If we invite capital, make it safe here, and
welcome those who bring it, we will get all we want."[222] The element of
safety, here remarked, meant frequently safety to be brought about by
political arrangements which would violate the established creed of the
South; but sometimes ordinary business balance was pleaded for, as when a
North Carolina paper quoted with approval from the Financial Chronicle:
"Why cannot the South understand ... that the worst hindrance to her
needed influx of industry and capital is uncertainty?"[223]
In another chapter the degrees of intensity with which the cotton mill
campaign was urged were seen to vary, roughly, with the distance from
Columbia, South Carolina, say, as a center. There is a casual note in the
little that found its way into the Richmond papers. This is to be
remarked in Richmond's attitude toward Northern capital. It was not a
stirring, vital thing in Virginia. For instance: "When we consider that
the takings of the Continent from Lancashire are not piece goods, but
yarns, why cannot we in the South make these yarns for the Continent
ourselves and save to ourselves the profit of conversion now enjoyed by
the English buyer of the raw material? Why not have a large and successful
cotton manufacturing industry?
"We are persuaded that once the folks in New England, who have surplus
money awaiting employment, thoroughly investigate the points Richmond
presents for a safe lodgment of that capital in manufacturing, the flow
will start this way."[224]
The attitude of W. H. Gannon was peculiar, but serves as an introduction
to the mention of a phase of the subject which is important. Mr. Gannon,
referred to in other connections, believed that Northern capital ought to
be welcomed at the South as helping to develop an industry in which the
South could stand without a rival. He favored inducing Northern
manufacturers to set up plants bodily in the South. But, being the agent
of a society which sought to colonize New England consumptive operatives
in co-operative mill villages in the South, the settlement to be
financially backed by a Northern capitalist or manufacturer, Mr. Gannon
wished to place a modification upon the influx of capital to the Southern
States. He asked whether the South should encourage an economic system
with "large stock companies with hundreds of thousands of dollars, in
which the operatives have no pecuniary interest in the plant, and from the
active management of which we ourselves would be virtually excluded? (It
is to be borne in mind that, as at present organized, the treasurer and
selling agents in those great concerns necessarily control their
direction); or is it better that we aid small co-operative concerns
wherein the plant is owned in great part by the operatives, and in which
we might familiarize ourselves with manufacturing in all its
details?"[225]
To contend for small mills, whether as above for the co-operative features
suitable to them, or as a means of insuring proper caution in the
development of the industry, frequently with entire sincerity, was
nonetheless, I think, one evidence of dislike and distrust of Northern
capital. H. P. Hammett, an old cotton mill man in South Carolina, said: "I
do not share in the opinion commonly expressed that we must procure
capital from the North to manufacture the cotton at the South. I would by
no means exclude it, but gladly welcome it." But he worked around
gradually to this concluding statement, relative to the report that
English and Northern capitalists were seeking to locate mills on the water
powers of the South: "--it would be unfortunate if most of the best powers
should pass from the control of our own people before they knew it."[226]
One more characteristic quotation, and the point is clear: Objection had
been raised to the legislation forbidding the pooling of railroads,
producing corners in freights with rising rates--the Sherman Act was
probably meant. This was too much for the Winnsboro, South Carolina, News,
the reaction of which resulted in these words: "Well enough is it to talk
about repelling Northern capital by discriminating legislation, but far
better have no Northern capital than have it holding native noses down to
the grindstone. The half-starved wolf refused to change places with the
sleek mastiff that wore a master's collar. Northern capital that brings
Northern collars is not what we wish, and we will not have it as long as
the people send incorruptible legislators to Columbia. We welcome foreign
capital down here, provided it recognizes that the State is
supreme...."[227]
While it is easily understood how this attitude obtained--the wonder is,
in fact, as already seen, that it was not more nearly universal than
sporadic--the shortsightedness of such a policy for the South is apparent.
For whatever outside capital reaped in dividends, the South reaped a
larger advantage in collateral benefits socially. The gain to the
communities where mills were located, supposing even that Northern capital
was greatly in preponderance, were more than any money earnings, in sums
however large, for it meant building for the future in material
institutions that would prove dynamic. The cotton mills, and all they
brought in their train, presaged a change in social ideals and economic
outlook on which no price was to be set.
If Mr. Baldwin, the railroad president, was a little early in making the
statement in the middle months of 1881, surely his purpose was good, and
his hopefulness was justified, when he said: "I say on the strength of
recent and extended observation that whatever of antagonism to Northern
capital may have existed in the South has disappeared. I never met it, at
any time, but (I) am willing to grant that it may have existed sometime
and somewhere."[228]
As a corollary of the fact, recognized at the South, that whatever were
the social gains resultant upon the establishment of cotton factories,
capitalists put their money into these ventures because they believed the
conditions of manufacture assured to them dividend, the South grounded its
appeals to Northern investors in the hard physical advantages possessed by
the South as a field for cotton manufacture, usually stressing
superiorities over the Northern States. Northern capitalists were as eager
to reap profits as were Southern projectors of mills to enlist their aid
and interest, and so the claims of the South were easily investigated
without the medium of propaganda. The widespread publicity given to the
whole matter of Southern manufacturing in the cotton mill campaign, while
no doubt it was registered in all parts of the North and East, was
commenced and carried on as of concern to the South.
Correspondence of the New York Times from Atlanta well illustrates this.
It is to be noticed how quickly the preliminaries are got
over--considerations and speculations in which Southern papers indulged to
any length: "Manufacturing in the South is the one subject on which
thinking men here speak with entire confidence. They have, most of them,
some qualifying doubts as to agricultural progress, the cheapening of
cotton production, the raising of home supplies, immigration, mining, and
the many other now ambitions and enterprises which have engaged so much
attention since the opening of the new era of industrial development. But
concerning the future of manufactures, particularly of cotton, all men of
intelligence and business experience speak with the assurance of inspired
prophecy. It is, in fact, not easy to see why the mill should not seek the
cotton instead of the cotton seeking the mill." With this introduction,
the plunge is made into the supporting facts, which ought to turn the flow
of capital toward the South.
The first statement is that it is a dead waste to ship raw cotton to a
mill 1,500 miles away, when it can be made into yarns or fabrics in
factories distant from the field only short half-day's journey for a mule.
The cost of sending the cotton to New England is reckoned, in expenses of
bagging, ties, ginning, baling, storage, insurance, drayage, sampling,
compressing, commissions of brokerage, waste in handling, and freight to
amount to $14.90 per bale, or almost exactly 1-1/2 cents per pound which
the New England manufacturer pays for the cotton above the price received
by the planter. The estimate of $100,000,000 is given as the charge on the
cotton crop of the South of 1879, on Edward Atkinson's figures, for the
items mentioned.
"... to the anxious capitalist tired of a petty 4 per cent. and seeking
new and more profitable investments such facts are not without interest.
They go to support the claim that the Southern mill has an advantage of
from 10 to 20 per cent. over its New England competitor. But these
advantages are by no means confined to the elimination of unnecessary
charges for baling and transportation." Water power in the South, six
dollars per horse power per annum, or in some instances given away for the
location of a mill, as against a cost of twelve dollars in New England, is
dwelt upon, with the greater utility of the Southern water powers due to
the absence of freezes. The cheapness of labor is given prominent place,
and the suitability of the climate of the South for cotton
manufacture.[229]
Exemption from taxation was a regular method of inviting outside as well
as encouraging domestic investment. South Carolina exempted from taxation
for a period of ten years all new machinery put in a factory. The
Observer, of Raleigh, said editorially: "... North Carolina might well
learn a lesson from the liberal course pursued in South Carolina and
exempt from taxation for ten years all cotton factories within our
borders. The tax does not net the State more than a thousand dollars or
so, and the counties only double as much. But then there may be a great
deal in it tending to induce Northern capitalists to make investments with
us. Once here, they will be so pleased with our advantages that they will
never think of leaving us."[230]
As early as 1872 Georgia had passed a statute remitting taxes on cotton
and woolen mills for a decade.[231]
An indication of the comparative coolness of the States near Northern
influence, already remarked, in a little con
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