The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South Part 1

The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South.

by Broadus Mitch.e.l.l.

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 a.s.sistance, 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 Inst.i.tute 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 inst.i.tuting in extending their time and counsel and courtesy. From lack of s.p.a.ce, 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 a.s.sistance, however, it gives me pleasure here to return thanks to Hon. John Skelton Williams, Comptroller of the Currency; Mr. George A. Nolting, 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 grat.i.tude to Mrs. Charles Reuter and the members of her family, under whose roof most of these pages were written.

Broadus Mitch.e.l.l

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 compa.s.s 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 partic.i.p.ation 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 doc.u.ment giving a photograph of conditions at one point of time could replace an utterance which sprang from his rich a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sertions 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 circ.u.mstances of the combined influence of the invention of the cotton gin, the inst.i.tution 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 pa.s.sed 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 towns.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sertion 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 cla.s.sed 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 a.s.suredly 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 a.s.serted 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 cla.s.sed under that term. Similar efforts, all preliminary to the establishment of the factory system, were made in Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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.