The rise of cotton mills in the South

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Class yOC ^V-t.-T

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BY BROADUS MITCHELL

Preface

In prefacing some observations on the history of the South a writer has said: "It will be something if these papers shall make it plain that my subject is a true body of human life — a thing, and not a mass of facts, a topic in political science, an object lesson in large moralities. To know the thing itself should be our study ; and the right study of it is thought and passion, not research alone/' 1 The same is true of the present story of the South's espousal of manufactures in place of whole devotion to agriculture. Rightly set forth, it is not only an industrial chronicle, but a romance, a drama as well. One who himself bore a part in the events here described, at the outset of my project hoped that I would grasp both the economic and the spiritual aspects of the period under review. 2 This I have tried to transmit to the reader, and I have found that the fuller the account of material circumstance, just so much the clearer becomes the spiritual significance.

In point of view I owe most to my Father, accepting his concise explanation that the South was overcome at Appomattox because it placed itself in opposition to the compelling forces of the age — by agency of the invention of the cotton gin held to slavery instead of liberty, insisted upon States' rights in place of nationality, and chose agriculture alone rather than embracing the rising industrialism. As a result, the task since 1865 has been to liberalize the South in thought, nationalize it in politics, and industrialize it in production. "Would we make cotton king? Let us aspire to spin every fibre of our exhaustless fields. By such alignments with this wondrous mother-age, we shall enable the South to take her rightful part in determining the national

1 William Garrott Brown, The Lower South in American History. 2 Mr. J. C. Hemphill.

vii

Vlll THE RISE OF COTTON MILLS IN THE SOUTH

destiny/' 3 My study is little more than illustration of this analysis of the past, this interpretation of the present and future.

Formerly, a landed aristocracy shut out the average man from economic participation; but with' the rise of cotton mills, the poor whites were welcomed back into the service of the South. As a conclusion from my survey I cannot but express the anxiety that through lessons of the old mistake we shall avoid the new error, insuring that an aristocracy of capital shall not now preclude industrial democracy.

My purpose has been to describe the birth of the industry in the South rather than its development. In only a small number of instances has this plan been departed from; many topics rich in interest have not been broached.

I regret that two books did not come into my hands in time to be used in this study. Holland Thompson's "The New South," and George T. Winston's "A Builder of the New South '" (the story of the life work of D. A. Tompkins), are contributions which will be found valuable.

I owe thanks for special assistance to Professor Jacob H. Hollander and Professor George E. Barnett, of The Johns Hopkins University, who guided the investigation ; the proprietors of the Manufacturers' Record, who permitted me to use the early files of the paper; Mr. T. S. Raworth, of Augusta; Mr. William M. Bird, of Charleston; Professor Yates Snowden and Mr. August Kohn, of Columbia, all of whom made documentary material available to me. Others have given me hardly less generously of their time and thought; footnote references to interviews and correspondence with these must serve as acknowledgment in each case.

B. M.

3 Samuel Chiles Mitchell, " Educational Needs of the South," in The Outlook, N. Y., vol. lxxvi, no. 7, p. 415 ff.

CHAPTER I The Backgrouni

This opening chapter undertakes a brief survey of the historical and economic background out of which the cotton manufacturing industry of the South, as a distinct development, emerged. It may be said that thus to begin the story of the rise of the mills with discussion of a period which lies 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 lifts to show a stage which, except for a few unrelated characters, remains empty throughout an entire act.

It is a purpose here to refer to the views of some observers who believe they have caught glimpses of men and facts in these prior years not only presaging but causally related to the main action later. The total of this chapter will show, however, that the development, as such, first substantially showed itself and had its complete genesis about the year 1880.

In the neglect of Southern economic history, information of the early period is not abundant, yet there is less dispute as to findings of fact than as to right interpretation of material evidences agreed upon. In bringing the several beliefs into parallel presentation it will be seen that concerning the rise of cotton mills in the South a little body of theory exists. Several of the statements that will be given are not well-informed, and others are almost too studied, so that they lose perspective. Interpretations will be cited in connection with the different stages under discussion, so that the relative weighting of these stages, as intended by writers, will appear.

It is first useful to notice the limits of divergence of views. One who wrote with empirical purpose and may be believed to have been not deeply interested in the historical setting of the mills, has said of one State, taken by him as typical : " 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 conception of continuity is in marked contrast with a representative expression of another Southerner likewise for some time a resident of the North. After referring to promising industrial beginnings it is declared 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 . . . combined influence of the invention of the cotton gin, the institution of slavery, and the checking of . . . immigration. As late as 1810 the manufactured products of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia exceeded in value those of the entire New England states. By Whitney's invention . . . cotton planting became so profitable, that for a period of forty years the price remained above twenty-five cents a pound. Factories were abandoned. ... As cotton and slavery advanced, the population of free white work people were driven further and further 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 manufactures for agriculture went back to the pursuits of their fathers, these mountaineers formed the labor supply." 2

2 D. A. Tompkins, in The South in the Building of the Nation, vol. ii, p. 58. For a more summary statement, cf. ibid., Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, pp. 108-109. Cf. also ibid., History of Meek-

THE BACKGROUND I I

Not so categorical as one opinion that " from 1810 to 1880 the South was industrially a desert of Sahara," this view still makes it clear 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.

There is sufficient evidence that in what may be roughly called the Revolutionary Period, the South was well started toward a balanced economic development, with manufactures as well as agriculture. 3 In South Carolina early encouragement was given to the manufacture of cotton specifically ; one Hugh Templeton, seeking inventor's privileges, in 1789 deposited with State authorities a plan for a carding machine 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." 4 In 1795 the legislature authorized commissioners to project a lottery for the benefit of William McClure in his effort to establish a cotton manufactory to make " Manchester wares." 5 The

lenburg County, vol. i, pp. 133-137; The Tariff and Reciprocity; Road Building and Repairs, p. 24; W. L. Trenholm, The Southern States, quoted in C. D. Wright, Industrial Evolution of the United States, pp. 145-146; J. A. B. Scherer, Cotton as a World Power, p. 168 ff.; Walter H. Page, The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths,

3 " Upon the whole, the last half of the Eighteenth century, before the influence of the cotton gin and Arkwright's inventions were fully felt in the South, was a period when agriculture yielded some ground in primary manufactures and household industries." (V. S. Clark, in South in Building of Nation, vol. v, p. 308). Cf. Tompkins, The South's Position in American Affairs, p. 1. Of North Carolina a careful student has said : " Though there were no towns of any size, the number and 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" (Holland Thompson, From the Cotton Field to the Cotton Mill, p. 25). See, especially with reference to iron making in this period, Richard H. Edmonds, Facts About the South (ed. 1894), p. 3 ff . There is importance in the founding of the Manumission Society, with 1600 active members as late as 1826 (ibid., pp. 26-27).

4 August Kohn, The Cotton Mills of South Carolina, pp. 10-11.

5 Ibid., pp. 9-10. In an appropriation bill of 1809, the sum of $1000 was advanced to Ephraim McBride "to enable him to construct a spinning machine on the principles mentioned in a patent he holds from the United States" (ibid., pp. 10-11). In the same

South shared in the national impulse toward economic self sufficiency consequent upon the stoppage of colonial commerce with England and the Revolution. 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." The chairman offered ten pounds to the first producer in a certain time of fulled woolen cloth. The provincial congress took steps the same year to stimulate, by bounties, the manufacture of gunpowder, rolling and slitting mill products, cotton cards, steel, paper, woolen cloth and pig iron. 6

Although 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. 7 As early as 1770 there was formed in South Carolina a committee to establish and promote manufactures, with Henry Laurens as chairman. 8 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 evidence of a prevalent spirit for mechanical improvement.

Glimpses at individual establishments show the textile industry of the South in this Revolutionary Period to have

year the request of the president of the Homespun Company of South Carolina for a loan on account of a patent was unfavorably received by a legislative committee, but it was recommended that he be allowed until the next meeting of the legislature "to report on the utility of the machine called the Columbia Spinster, so as to entitle, in case the same be approved, the inventor of the same to the sum provided by law for his, benefit" (ibid., p. 11). Cf. ibid., pp. n-13.

6 For these facts the writer is indebted to a MS. of M. R. Pleasants, " Manufacturing in North Carolina before i860."

7 Clark, in South in Building of Nation, vol. v, p. 310.

8 Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 7.

been generally of the domestic character. Manufacturing was conducted by individuals rather than corporations, and wa9 usually directly connected with plantations. Daniel Hey ward, 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." 9 Domestic production is clearly seen in a statement the same year that a planter 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, and it was said : " He expects to have it in his power not only to clothe his own negroes, but soon to supply his neighbors." 10

A few plants may have approached a commercial character. In 1790 it was related 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, with 84 spindles each, and several other useful implements for manufacturing every necessary article in cotton." This establishment was coincident with Slater's famous factory at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, founded in 1790, and may have antedated it, though comparative credit to the Stateburg enterprise is perhaps diminished by information that while some long staple cotton was imported from the West Indies, and a variety of goods were made, it was conducted as an adjunct to a plantation, parts of its equipment were later removed to and set up on another plantation, and much of its yarn was spun for persons in the vicinity. It is notable, however, that the machinery was made in North Carolina. 11

10 South Carolina and American General Gazette, Jan. 30, 1770, quoted in ibid., p. 7. Cf. ibid., pp. 6-7.

11 American Museum, viii, Appendix iv, part 2, July 1, 1790, cited in ibid., p. 8. The question mark is Mr. Kohn's. If Mr. Kohn is correct in believing that " a regular cotton mill " was established by

The textile industry in the South in the latter part of the eighteenth and earlier part of the nineteenth centuries was stamped with the hallmark of domestic production. 12 However, it is to be remembered that a century and a half ago this and other manufactures in every part of America and in England too bore very much of the domestic character, 13 and that probably Southern States showed instances of power-driven machinery before Slater set up the first Arkwright mill in Rhode Island. The South had plantermanufacturers it is true, but this link between agriculture and industry 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 toward economic balance and the promise in these years of a rational development. 14

Mrs. Ramage, a widow, on James Island, Charleston District, in 1778, the fact is highly interesting, because the date is nine years antecedent to that of America's "first factory," at Beverly, Massachusetts. The South Carolina mill was operated by mule power; no traces survive (ibid., p. 8. Reference is particularly to the City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, Charleston, Jan. 24, 1779).

12 Referring especially to the establishments just noticed and to water-driven spindles near Fayetteville, Mr. Clark has said : " Small mills may have 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" (History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607-1860, p. 537). As indicating further the lack of causation in these ventures, it is observed : " Maryland is hardly typical industrially of the Southern states. Its factories date from the Revolution . . ." (ibid., in South in Building of Nation, vol. v, pp. 328-329). "... 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" (ibid., p. 312). Cf. ibid., p. 310, and W. W. Sellers, A History of Marion County, p. 26.

1 3 Carroll D. Wright, " The Factory System of the United States," p. 6, in U. S. Census of Manfactures, 1880.

14 The Bolton Factory was built in 181 1 on Upton Creek, Wilkes County, Ga. In 1794 on this site had been erected one of Whitney's first cotton gins, propelled by the water power that later ran the cotton mill. It is said that Lyon here conceived important improvements in the Whitney invention, making a saw gin (Southern Cotton Spinners' Association, proceedings, seventh annual convention, p.

THE BACKGROUND I 5

The nature of the mills up to 1810, then, is clear. Coming now to those established in decades just following, a subject is entered in which some controversy is involved. These plants I have chosen to call 1 the "old. 1 mills.!" A distinction is to be observed between influence of these factories upon the later great development and the proper character to be ascribed to them as of themselves. A manufacture which is forerunner in time is not necessarily antecedent in effect. To substantiate a view that the Civil War interrupted a course which was clearly laid down in years previous, it ought to be demonstrable that the old mills had essentially the same features as those of the later development, with only those lacks which were inherent in an industry in formative stage. 15 The South had small cotton farmers of a prevalent sort before ever Knapp taught efficient production. If the old mills were of a notably different stripe from those of the period fifteen years after the War, the genesis of the industry, economically speaking, lies in

41 ff.). Here is a suggestion of the fact that the South was on the right road — a gin, so far from diverting attention entirely to the cultivation of the staple, was succeeded by a cotton mill on the same spot, operated by the same power. Perhaps Helper was in bounds when the 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" (H. R. Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South, ed. i860, pp. 161-162).

15 A North Carolinian of post-bellum experience, but who has been identified with one of the foremost industrial communities of the South, thought 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" (W. F. Marshall, interview, Raleigh, N. C, Sept. 16, 1916). Loose, unsupported statements are frequent: "The first cotton mill ... in North Carolina was built at Lincolnton in 1813 by Michael Schenck. . . . This mill was the forerunner of that remarkable industrial development which has taken place in North Carolina since that time" (Pleasants MS.).

the later date. The mere fact that the old mills were known to the later builders is hardly enough. 18

Not a few plants in the South have been in continuous operation since an early date. 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. 17 In the light of the spirit in which mills were built about 1880 and the demonstrated total newness of the hands to the processes and even the idea of textile manufacture, it seems unnecessary to controvert an opinion that not only did the ante-bellum factories furnish a starting point for the later development, but domestic weaving had accustomed the people to the industry. 18

The history of the mills of the thirty years following 1810 is rather hazy. 19 Important facts, however, stand out.

16 "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 " (John Nichols, int., Raleigh, N. C, Sept. 16, 1916). He continued to speak of these mills in close conjunction with the names of the families and manufacturers who owned them — the personal factor stood out in his mind more strongly than any other.

17 Mr. Kohn believes that the one with the longest record is that founded at Autun, near Pendleton, S. C, in 1838, by B. F. Sloan, Thomas Sloan, and Berry Benson (Cotton Mills of S. C, p. 15). Cf. Charlotte (N. C.) News, Textile Industrial Edition, Feb., 1917, with reference to the Rocky Mount Mill. One long-established enterprise fell under local dislike as late as the seventies, a generousminded father being suceeded in the management by reckless sons; the strength of the personal factor was thus a danger; in spite of undiscriminating statements that this mill afforded a manufacturing tradition to the community, it really lost all public character.

18 Suggested by Mr. Charles E. Johnson in an interview, Raleigh, N. C, Sept. 16, 1916. For a clear distinction between first establishments in Philadelphia and New England and genuine factory development, cf. Wright, in U. S. Census of Manufactures, 1880, "Factory System of U. S.," p. 6; Clark, in South in Building of Nation, vol. v, p. 319.

19 For a careful narrative of the establishments of the settlers who moved into the South from New England about 1816, with details of the factories of the Hills, Shelden, Clark, Bates, Hutchings, Stack, the Weavers, McBee, Bivings, etc., cf. Kohn, Cotton Mills of S. C, and The Water Powers of South Carolina. For those in

There was little localization of the industry. There was a good deal of moving about from one water-power to another, the machinery being hauled from place to place with apparent convenience. 20 A founder would sell an enterprise, build another and sell it and build a third. 21 It was difficult to convey machinery to the factory when purchased at a distance. 22 Much machinery was made in local blacksmith shops, and must have been crude even for that period. 23 While elaboration of the point falls elsewhere, 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 in the South 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, Clark, Henry, and the Weavers, they came from the industrial atmosphere of New England, then particularly stimulated by the encouragement lent to textile manufacturing by the embargo laid on English goods by the War of 1812. 24

Or through collateral business connections or marriage they were brought into the business. Simply private invest- North Carolina, Holland Thompson is useful; cf. also Southern Cotton Spinners' Association, Proceedings 7th Annual Convention, p. 41 ff., and Tompkins, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, pp. 301-302.

20 Wood for the boiler of the Mount Hecla Mills growing scarce, the machinery was taken to Mountain Island and there run by water (Thompson, pp. 48-49).

21 Kohn, Cotton Mills of S. C, p. 14.

22 That for the Mount Hecla Mills about 1830 was shipped from Philadelphia to Wilmington, N. C, up the Cape Fear River to Fayetteyille, and then across country by wagon to Greensboro. The equipment of six or seven hundred spindles for the Hill factory in Spartanburg County fifteen years earlier was brought by wagon from Charleston (Kohn, Cotton Mills of S. C.,p. 14). Cf. Charlotte News, Textile Ed., 1917, with reference to Rocky Mount Mill, and Thompson, p. 45 ff.

23 The Bivingsville mill (J. B. Cleveland, int., Spartanburg, S. C, Sept. 8, 1916), and Shenck mill (Thompson, p. 45 ff.) are cases in point. Cf. Thompson, pp. 42-43.

24 W. J. Thackston, int., Greenville, S. C, Sept. 12, 1916.

ment enlisted participation of men in various callings. Of course these same forces operated afterwards, but in the earlier time there was no response to a public enthusiasm or a social demand that acted like a magnet in drawing into the industry men who otherwise would never have entered it, certainly not as entrepreneurs.

A plant turning out iron products was operated in connection with the Schenck mill. 25 Cotton factories conjoined with gins and saw mills are not unknown in the South today, but in whatever instance this occurs there is indicated a lack of specialization.

Perhaps the most striking confirmation of the view here taken of the restricted and semi-domestic character of the old mills is found in the facts relating to the marketing and consumption of their products. A commercial nature is ascribed to the establishment of General David R. Williams on his plantation in Darlington County, South Carolina, which " in 1828 . . . 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 crop in New York and wove part of it into negro cloth for home use," and twenty years later distant and local demands were being supplied. Evidence hardly supports the suggestion that the product of such small Southern mills as this " controlled the Northern yarn market/' 26

On the other hand, local consumption and the link with domestic industry, noted in the above instance, were 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 char-

2 5 Ibid.

26 Clark, in South in Building of Nation, vol. v, p. 321 ; cf . Kohn, Cotton Mills of S. C, pp. 18-19, giving quotation from Columbia Telescope. Contrast, however, William Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry (1845), P- II : "Limited as our manufactures are in South- Carolina, we can now, more than supply the State with Coarse Cotton Fabrics. Many of the Fabrics now manufactured here are exported to New-York, and, for aught I know, find their way to the East-Indies."

acter was thus ingrained. 27 The yarn of the Batesville Factory, before the Columbia and Greenville railroad came to Greenville about 1852, passed current almost like money, in ten pound " bunches " covered with blue paper, and although " mountain schooners " carried it sometimes a hundred and fifty miles into North Carolina and Tennessee, it was given in barter for meat and rags. 28

A banker intimately connected with the textile industry in one of the oldest industrial communities and a member of a family to which many writers are quick to point as founders of cotton manufacture in the South through con-

27 Clark, in South in Building of Nation, vol. v, p. 321. 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." So beneficial did this prove during the War that a cavalry troop of Federals was sent up from New Bern in 1863 and burned the mill (Charlotte News, Textile Ed., 1917). It is remarked that making only twelve to fifteen hundred pounds, of 4s to 12s daily, the mill could not get a steady market for its wares (Thompson, pp. 48-49). Until 1851 slaves and a few free negroes were worked in this mill. This distinguishing difference between the old mills and those of the later development, when the labor of negroes was far from the thoughts of builders and managers, will be dwelt upon in another place. The McDonald Mill at Concord, during the Civil War, dealt in barter. A gentleman in a nearby town said he remembered as a boy trading a load of corn for yarn to be woven by the women at home (Theodore Klutz, int., Salisbury, N. C, Sept. 1, 1916). In 1862 the Confederate Government commandeered the Batesville factory, in South Carolina, and took nearly all of the product. That portion allowed to private purchasers was always sold by 10 o'clock in the morning (W. J. Thackston, int., Greenville). Of the three small plants running in Spartanburg County before the War, one was on Tyger River, spinning yarns on half a dozen frames, and people drove twenty to twenty-five miles to the door of the mill for the product, although it was sold, also, in the country stores (Walter Montgomery, int., Spartanburg, S. C, Sept. 5, 1916). The first woolen mill of Francis Fries at Salem, N. C, had a little fulling and dyeing plant for finishing cloth woven by the farmers' wives and daughters (Tompkins, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, pp. 183-184). Cf. Thompson, p. 31.