From the cotton field to the cotton mill

Front matter

Class ^

Book. .

Copyright N (

Preface

The author has spent the greater part of his life in the section described. While living in a rapidly growing mill town ten years ago, the sight of scores of wagons transferring scanty household goods from farmhouses to factory tenements awakened his interest in the sudden transformation of farmers into factory operatives.

His interest in the problem has cost much time and trouble. He has read everything available upon the subject, has sifted and compared dozens of statistical tables, and has compiled others. He has visited many mills, has talked with dozens of mill owners, managers, superintendents, overseers, and operatives. The children in the mill, at school or upon the streets, and the parents at home

VI PREFACE

have not been overlooked. The teachers, ministers, and church workers in the mill villages have helped. The business men, the officers of the law, the farmers, and the laborers, black and white, all have added something.

Removal from the state gave the opportunity of visiting similar manufacturing establishments in other states, and has also afforded perhaps a truer perspective. However, a part of every year has been spent in North Carolina, and impressions and opinions have been tested by time, the great touchstone of truth.

Greater hesitation in delivering final judgments has followed increasing knowledge. The interpretation of the life of a people is no slight undertaking. The author cannot speak so confidently as he would have done five years ago. Many phenomena, apparently permanent, have proved to be transient, and unexpected elements have increased the complications. At least he has written the truth

PREFACE Vll

as the truth appears after studying the problem for ten years.

While the study has been confined to North Carolina, much is equally applicable to other Southern states. Eepetition has been unavoidable, since different phases of the problem have been taken up in turn. Every effort to eliminate the unessential has been made, however, and many paragraphs might easily be extended into chapters.

The list of those who have given assistance is so long that separate credit is impossible. Especial thanks are due to F. L. Robbins, Esq., of Salisbury, North Carolina. His knowledge and experience guarantee the correctness of the technical chapters, and his sympathy and insight have been valuable.

HOLLAND THOMPSON.

Contents

PAGE

I. The Problem 1

II. The State and its People .... 16 III. Domestic Manufactures and the Beginning of the Textile Industry . . 37 IT. The Growth since 1861 .... 55 V. The Present State of the Industry . 74 VI. The Real Factory Operative . . .96 VII. The Operatives at Work .... 118 VIII. Wages and Cost of Living .... 137 IX. Social Life and Agencies for Social

Chapter I

When an old state — one of the original thirteen — builds almost two hundred cotton mills within twenty years, and also enters largely into other manufactures, evidently a great economic change is indicated. The fact that the capital has come chiefly from a multitude of small investors within the state, makes the change more striking. When, with almost imperceptible immigration, from 150,000 to 200,000 persons are transferred from the country — perhaps from the very farms — where they and their ancestors have lived for more than a century, to live in towns or factory villages, and receive their pay in wages rather than in commodities, the social changes must be equally important.

North Carolina has been and is yet a rural state. No city has ever dominated, or even influenced, any considerable portion of the territory. In 1900 there was not a single city with a population of 25,000. There were only six towns with more than 10,000, and only twenty-eight with more than 2500. Of a total population of 1,893,810, only 17.9 per cent, lived in incorporated towns at all, no matter how small, compared with 47.1 per cent, in the United States as a whole. Only Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas of the Southern states showed a smaller proportion of town dwellers. Only 12.1 per cent, gained a livelihood by manufacturing or mechanical pursuits, while 64.1 per cent, were employed in agriculture or fisheries. But these figures differ decidedly from those of 1890. Then only 13 per cent, lived in towns, 9.6 per cent, were engaged in manufacturing, while 69 per cent, were engaged in agriculture. Since 1900

THE PKOBLEM 6

the percentage of those engaged in manufacturing has steadily increased, and the transition to an industrial society is well begun. The state stands third in the manufacture of cotton; the product of the cotton-seed oil mills is important; North Carolina furniture is shipped to South America and South Africa ; and North Carolina tobacco is sold over the world.

The state is being influenced profoundly by the transfer of a population by families instead of by individuals from the country to the town. Now, between an agricultural and an industrial population are many points of difference. The manner of life is unlike; the opinions are generally opposed ; the ideals are not the same. As yet the division line in North Carolina is not sharp and clear. There is no manufacturing section in which agriculture is merely subsidiary. Cotton mills are located in more than half the counties of the state, and other industries are more or less scattered. There is no sharply defined operative class, for the workers in the mills and factories of North Carolina were either born on the farms, or are onlyone generation removed, and the tang of the soil still persists. With the making of operatives and artisans from farmers we have to deal.

Yesterday the mill operatives produced raw material for others to fashion; to-day they fashion it themselves. They were landowners or at least land renters with all the rural independence. Now they work at the overseer's nod, and receive their pay in wages rather than in products of the soil which they have directly created. Instead of living remote from neighbors, they are crowded into factory villages where they may talk from house to house. They spend the larger part of their waking time within walls, tending complicated machines instead of working in the open air with a few simple tools. In the country the work was irregular and an occasional holiday might be taken without apparent loss. In the mills loss of wages and the displeasure of the overseer follow any departure from absolute regularity. The operative must work every day and the whole of the day.

Such a radical change in manner of life must affect them physically and mentally. They must learn how to live in towns, to adapt themselves to their surroundings. The children worked on the farms, as they have done since farming began, but here they are subjected to constant instead of intermittent demands upon their strength and endurance. The mental activity of all must be influenced; a quickening or a deadening must follow.

Their social, religious, and political ideas are undergoing change. The gregarious instinct develops rapidly, and solitude, once no hardship, becomes unendurable. The religious ideas and organization which served the rural inhabitant seem not so satisfactory to the factory worker. The church is becoming alarmed to find that it is losing its hold upon the factory population. Political unrest is not yet general, but in a few localities the workers are slowly becoming conscious of themselves. Feeble attempts to organize a Socialist propaganda may be seen. The labor agitator is at work.

Those left on the farms are affected by the withdrawal of population, a part of which goes to the towns for employment in the various industries, and another part to invest its capital in trade or manufacturing rather than in agriculture. Both the churches and the schools feel the loss. Neighborhoods once attractive from a social standpoint are now lonely. On the other hand, the establishment of little towns in the fields and woods around the widely distributed mills affords new markets for farm produce. The wages for farm labor — for a long time either stationary or decreasing — rise because of the increased demand and the smaller supply, and improved machinery and more intensive farming are necessarily introduced. The rural telephone and improved roads, — both largely the results of the increased commercial and industrial activity, — together with rural mail delivery, help to bring the country communities into closer touch with the outside world.

The negro also is directly affected. The increased population and activity in the towns make opportunities for a larger number as servants or as laborers. Lumbering, or railway construction and improvement, have drawn away others from the farms. Those who remain receive larger wages, or may rent better farms than was possible before. The greater demand for their labor brings about greater consideration and greater intolerance. Less and less patience is exhibited toward the worthless and the indolent.' At the same time, the faithful and reliable tenant or laborer receives increasing kindness and consideration.

The increase of population and wealth in the old towns is working many changes. Communities which had altered little since the days of Comwallis are feeling the modern industrial spirit. " Business" is being exalted to a position heretofore unknown. A type of shrewd, calculating, far-sighted business man is being developed. The " Southern Yankees" devote themselves exclusively to their work and need ask no favors in any contest of commercial strategy. Social lines are shifting. Families which have decidedly influenced the spirit of the community become less prominent, unless they take part in the new movement. There are signs of class distinctions based upon wealth and business success.

The whole attitude of mind has changed more during the last fifteen years than in the fifty preceding. The Civil War did little more than to intensify the convictions previously existing. That acute, though often unfair, critic of Southern life, Judge Tourge'e, well says, "It modified the form of society in the South but not its essential attributes." Reconstruction fixed these convictions more firmly. Now old prejudices and fixed ideas, political and social, show signs of weakening. Independent voting is no longer uncommon. Only the prominence of the race question prevented a greater division upon national lines in 1904. A military record no longer outweighs all other considerations. Not a single member of the present Congress from the state was a Confederate soldier. Commercialism is doing what bayonets could not do.

The ideal of success is changing. An increasingly large proportion of the college graduates adopt a business career, or go into the mills and factories to learn every process in spite of the dust and the grime. The state is growing more like industrial societies everywhere. Agricultural societies may show much variation, but industrial communities tend more toward a type. Nevertheless the influence of the old civilization is felt through the expression of the new, and modifies it almost in every detail.

These are the phenomena with which we have to deal. The task of this paper is to sketch some of these changes while in process; to show how this new industrialism suddenly introduced is affecting the economic and social life of the people. To make a section through the state and study all the kaleidoscopic relations would require many volumes. The most that can be attempted is to give a general view, and then to show in some detail the life of the thousands, suddenly transferred from agricultural to industrial employment, particularly in cotton, and to study how they are adjusting themselves to their new environment. An honest effort to state, calmly and dispassionately, actual not fanciful conditions will be made. Only incidentally will there be any attempt to predict the future other than to point out tendencies. That must wait for more complete studies. Few similar investigations have ever been made, and they have dealt, principally, with the growth of capital and the rise of the entrepreneur, rather than with the development of an operative class.

Studies of other countries or of other sections have not dealt with precisely the same phenomena. Before the industrial revolution, England was already a manufacturing country through the thousands of hand looms in the weavers' cottages. The factory system first brought these operatives together and furnished power. The first effect was to drive those unable to find a place in the new system back to the soil already crowded, or to throw them upon the parish. In North Carolina increased opportunities for profitable employment in every line of industry have followed the change.

The transformation in this state is more nearly like that in New England seventyfive years ago, but still with decided differences. In 1810, according to Tench Coxe, the value of the textile products of North Carolina in the domestic system was greater than that of Massachusetts produced by hand plus that of the few factories then existing. 1

1 Statement of Arts and Manufactures in the United States, 1810: N. C., $2,989,140; Mass., $2,219,279.

12 FEOM COTTON FIELD TO COTTON MILL

North Carolina, induced by considerations which will be discussed hereafter, turned her activity into other channels, and as a manufacturing state grew less important for half a century. Massachusetts, aided by the policy of the general government, continued to develop along industrial lines. Every improvement in method was adopted. Increasingly expensive and complex machines, often bought from the profits from simpler types, were installed. The plants grew in size and cost, and the amount and proportion of capital invested in manufacturing greatly increased.

When North Carolina again entered the contest for industrial success, the conditions of the problem were different. The industry was firmly established in another section, which had the prestige of long-continued success, controlled all the channels of the trade, and had a great body of skilled operatives. Greater capital was required and competition was keener. The state had almost lost the traditions of an industrial past and that difficult task, the removal of an agricultural population by families rather than by individuals, was to be accomplished. Moreover, the influence of the presence of the negro must not be underestimated.

Another factor of the difference which has its place, and must not be neglected, even in a purely economic study, is the essential difference between Northern and Southern character and attitude of mind, — a difference distinct from any question of an aristocratic structure of society. What has produced these differences need not be discussed here. The differences exist. The North and the South are two countries with different ideals, different prejudices, different standards. France and Germany are no more unlike than some portions of the United States. As a whole, the differences are certainly as great as those between England and Ireland. Any attempt to form comparisons and judgments without taking into consideration these ingrained differences will be of slight value.

Little aid in this study can be had from statistics. Complete and accurate figures concerning that portion which may be reduced to tables cannot be procured. The Census Reports do not give those facts which are of most interest and value. The Bulletins of the Department of Commerce and Labor are not broad enough in their scope. The State Bureau of Labor and Printing has no power to require answers to its inquiries, and its funds are so small that canvassers cannot be employed. Voluntary answers are the sole dependence. The questions necessarily are vague and general, and even these are often inaccurately answered, or are not answered at all. 1 Manifestly no private individual can gather full statistics.

But if figures, accurate at the time of collection, were secured, they would be obsolete almost by the time they were printed. The

1 Letter from former commissioner.

state of the cotton industry, with which we shall deal particularly, is dynamic in the extreme. New mills are completed, old ones are enlarged, product is diversified, new machinery is introduced making new wage scales, night work is begun or discontinued. The surroundings of the little mill in the country with a few hundred spindles, and of the large establishment in a mill center, vary greatly, and the operatives move from one to the other with frequency. Further, the life of a people cannot be put into columns and averaged. That noted statistician, the lamented Professor Mayo-Smith, in fact declared that the opinions of trained observers were worth more than statistics, in estimating the relative welfare of different communities.

Yet underneath all the diversity there are constant factors, tendencies strongly marked, which may be described and analyzed if one studies the people as well as the material facts. We may be able to say "how" even if we cannot say "how much."

Chapter II

Though the first attempts to plant English settlements within the limits of the United States were made upon North Carolina soil, following the exploring expeditions sent out by Sir Walter Ralegh in 1584, their failure left the country long unoccupied. Meanwhile the Virginia settlements were spreading. Soon after 1650 straggling pioneers, induced by the desire for the rich land along the eastern streams, began to come within the present limits of the state. The old belief that these early settlers were driven by religious persecution to seek new homes, seems to have little foundation. 1

In 1663 a charter for Carolina was issued

1 See the careful researches of Weeks, " Southern Quakers and Slavery,' ' J. H. U. Studies, extra volume, xv.

by Charles II to eight Lords Proprietors. Their territory was extended and their power confirmed two years later. All the privileges and powers pertaining to the bishopric of Durham were granted, and the Proprietors attempted to form a province modeled upon the County Palatine of Durham. The celebrated Fundamental Constitutions contemplated the establishment of a European feudal system, with orders of nobility, commons, and slaves, in a new country so thinly settled that it can hardly be said to have been settled at all.

The story of the failure is long and need not be told in detail. When the Crown again took control in 1729, the province had been divided into North and South Carolina and settlements had been made along the sounds and streams of the eastern section. Englishmen from Virginia, from Barbados, settlers direct from the mother country, German Palatines, Swiss, French Huguenots, and a few New Englanders made up a population amounting possibly to 30,000 whites and 6000 negroes. 1 Some large tracts of land had been granted, and there was already the beginning of a plantation system which increased in importance with the years. With all the mixture of nationality, however, English ideas and ideals were dominant.

Estates were never so large as in Virginia or in South Carolina. With a few exceptions, 660 acres was the largest grant made by the Proprietors, and 640 was more common. This policy was in striking contrast to their course in South Carolina. When the Crown assumed control, the policy of small grants was continued, though a few large tracts were granted for speculative purposes. 2 As a result, North Carolina became a province of small planters and farmers, compared with her neighbors.

While such settlers were filling up the East, and adventurous individuals were making their way up the streams toward the West,

1 Raper, " North Carolina " (1904).

pioneers of another type occupied that section. Soon af ter y.83Q<*cfagon trains from Pennsylvania came down through the Shenandoah valley and settled upon the broad stretch of territory included in the valleys of the Catawba and the Yadkin. These were immigrants or the children of immigrants from the North of Ireland, the so-called " Scotch-Irish" who did so much to subdue western Pennsylvania.

When they began to feel crowded there, the overflow followed the foothills of the Alleghanies, and the western sections of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and western Georgia received a valuable population. Others landed at Charleston instead of Philadelphia, followed the rivers toward the northwest and met the southern current along the Yadkin. Stern, adventurous, religious, they made ideal pioneers, and from them developed that sturdy, independent middle class which helped to give North Carolina its peculiar characteristics.

Their occupancy of the wide territory was soon shared by Germans, also coming chiefly from Pennsylvania, though some landed at Charleston and joined their countrymen in what are now the counties of Davidson, Rowan, Cabarrus, Mecklenburg, Gaston, Lincoln, Catawba, and Iredell. About 1750 a colony of the Unitas Fratrum, better known as Moravians, bought a large tract of land around the present town of Winston-Salem. This they held in common, and urged on by religious zeal made great improvements. Small colonies from the back counties of Virginia and from Maryland also made settlements along the Yadkin, and a strong Quaker influx occupied the present counties of Randolph, Chatham, Alamance, Surry, and Guilford.

After the battle of Culloden in 1746, Scotch Highlanders came to Wilmington and ascended the Cape Fear River to Cross Creek, the present town of Fayetteville. From this nucleus they spread over a half dozen counties, where few except Scotch names are heard to-day.

During the Civil War, whole companies of "Macs" were enlisted. A colony of Irish direct from Ulster had been planted in the neighboring county of Duplin in 1730. 1

Further, in few cases did these different nationalities locate upon the same territory where association might wear away characteristic peculiarities. The " consciousness of kind" was strong enough to segregate those of the same language, religion, and habit of mind. There was little communication between the different settlements, and definite characteristics of the eighteenth century persisted until late in the nineteenth.

In one county the distinction between the German and the Scotch-Irish has disappeared only within the twenty-five years just past. The jealousy between the " Dutch" and the " Irish" side was strong, and there was little association and less intermarriage. Idioms and expressions heard frequently in one part of the county were hardly intelligible in the

1 Hanna, " The Scotch-Irish " (1902).

other. Culinary processes were different. The location of the courthouse, or the struggle for county officers, might be the occasion for a bitter contest.

If there was little communication between the different neighborhoods, there was less between the sections of the state. In the East were large, rich plantations upon the sounds and confluent creeks and rivers. Communication here was easy, as few points are more than five miles from water. Along with the large landowners were individuals to whom the much-abused term "poor whites" might be applied with more or less accuracy. Fish, oysters, wild fowl, and game were plentiful ; the land was rich, and the procuring of a bare subsistence was too easy to require much work. To-day it is estimated that two months' work in every year will enable a family to live with some degree of comfort.

During the colonial period, English ideas governed this section as they did in Virginia. Even to-day those counties north of the

Roanoke River belong to Virginia rather than to North Carolina. Pieces of old English furniture and bits of English china and silver are to-day treasured heirlooms.

Back of the rich alluvial lands were the pine barrens to which the thriftless were gradually driven by the inexorable working of economic law. Until, with the development of the refrigerator car, it was discovered that this region would bring large returns in the trucking industry, the land was of little value except for the pine forests, which have been ruthlessly destroyed by the demand for turpentine and naval stores.

Back of this section, in the rolling Piedmont country, in the district around Hillsboro, German, English, and Scotch-Irish were settled, and behind them were the settlements already mentioned. The land was hilly, and, except upon the streams, not rich, though susceptible of high development through scientific agriculture. Intensive culture was demanded and not a great plantation system.

The extreme West, the mountainous region, was settled slowly, partly by the shiftless and incapable whom the economic pressure of population forces toward the free land, partly by the bold and adventurous spirits of whom Daniel Boone was a type. Such men, intoxicated by the sense of freedom growing out of their mastery of the forest, find the proximity of any neighbors unpleasant and go on to seek new lands. The difficulties of communication have kept that section more or less primitive to the present day, and it need not be considered as an industrial factor.

In 1790 these middle and western counties were almost self-sufficient. Land was plenty and cheap. Food was abundant, though from lack of markets there was little encouragement to raise more than could be consumed locally. The streams were not navigable, and the rough, hilly roads made transportation by wagon difficult and expensive. Each year wagon trains went to Philadelphia or Charleston, and later to Fayetteville and Cheraw ; but only wares of small weight and considerable value could be hauled.

The domestic industries, which will be discussed more fully in another place, 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.

By the Constitution of 1776, the inhabitants of the Eastern counties (many of which were originally only precincts of the first counties) had a disproportionate share in the government. To the demands of the West for improvement in transportation and educational facilities, they turned a deaf ear. With them both local intercourse and communication with the world was easy, and they sent their children either to England to be educated, or to the Northern colleges already established.

Naturally, bitter jealousy and antagonism, which are not yet entirely gone, grew up between the East and the West. The inhabitants were different in descent, in religion, and in habits of thought. The physical differences in territory fostered differences in social and economic organization which emphasized the distinctions already existing.

The Western section began to strive for the establishment of new counties, hoping thus to gain its ends. Sometimes the creation of new counties seemed to become an end in itself rather than a means. The whole legislative history of the state for fifty years is largely comprised in this struggle between the East and the West. All great questions were pushed aside for the engrossing dispute. Meanwhile economic and social interests, which might have been promoted by wise legislation, languished.

Except in the East, the feeling against slavery was strong during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The Manumission Society was founded in 1816 and the name changed to the Manumission and Colonization Society the next year. Many abolition societies were also organized. At the meeting of the Manumission Society in 1825, 36 branches were reported, and in 1826 there were 1600 active members, many of them slaveholders. The Nat Turner slave insurrection of 1831, the growth of abolition societies in the North, and economic changes making slavery more profitable caused the dissolution of the society, and no meetings were held after 1834. 1

The Western counties were also greatly affected by the increasing importance of cotton, and the number of slaves grew rapidly. On the Southern border where cotton was a profitable crop, and also in the rich river valleys farther north, a plantation system developed. A study of population figures indicates clearly these changes.

In 1790 the population of the West was: whites 136,655; slaves 30,068; while in the

1 Weeks, op. cit.

East there were 151,549 whites and 70,508 slaves. In 1860 the white population of the West was 385,724 and the number of slaves 146,463; while in the East there were 244,218 whites and 184,596 slaves.

Thus the white population of the East had increased 61 per cent, in seventy years while its slave population had increased 162 per cent. The white population of the West had increased 182 per cent, and its slave population 387 per cent, during the same period. Obviously, the West was the growing section both in whites and slaves. Further, though the actual number of slaves in the West never equaled the number in the East, the rate of increase was much greater. The proportion of slaves to whites in the West never reached the proportion in the East, however. In 1860 the slave population of the West was 38 per cent, of the white, while in the East it was more than 75 per cent. Counting five persons to the family, it appears that there were for every white family in the

West 1.9 slaves, while in the East there were 3.83 slaves. 1

One consequence of the extension of slavery was the emigration of thousands of the small farmers. Tennessee was settled from North Carolina. With the development of the Northwest Territory, that section received large additions, chiefly of those to whom slavery was obnoxious. The New Garden Monthly Meeting (Quaker) between 1801 and 1866 issued 245 certificates to individuals and families going to Ohio and Indiana. In the latter state one finds names of streams and townships directly transferred from North Carolina. It is estimated by Quaker historians that in 1850 one third of the population of Indiana was composed of North Carolinians and their children. 2

There was also a strong current toward the Southwest. Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi,

1 Consult Bassett, " History of Slavery in North Carolina, " J. H. V. Studies, 1899.

2 Weeks, op. cit. See also Marryat, " Diary in America " (1839), p. 143.

and Louisiana gained many settlers. Younger sons of slaveholders, taking a few slaves with them, or non-slave holders, made their way into that region where fertile lands might be had at nominal prices, and developed larger plantations than they had left. In 1855, 28 per cent, of the students of the University of North Carolina were from other Southern states, and in 1859, 39 per cent, of the students were from without the state, chiefly the sons of expatriated North Carolinians.