Chapter VI: FINANCING THE MILLS (Continued) (2)

If the success of the Augusta Factory in 1865 was sufficient to maintain at par issues of extra stock, as just noted, the reverse was true of Graniteville two years later, when the elder Hickman took charge. Twenty years earlier, the plant had cost to build $375,000. By 1867 the stock had increased to $716,000, and the shares had fallen to $62.50 in value. The mill was $50,000 in debt. Colonel Hickman cancelled $116,000 capital shares, bringing the interest-bearing stock of the company down to $600,000. He restored the depreciated stock to its proper value.[445] Reference has been made to a stock dividend of 20 per cent. issued by a mill of Gastonia within the last few years.

A very present instance of this same quality, reflected this time in the recuperative power of a mill, is contained in a prediction made by the gentleman who knows most about the Graniteville Mill, that the stock which then, at reorganization, sold for $60 the share will in a year, if all goes well, sell at par.[446]

It has been said that the stock of the Rock Hill Cotton Factory could not be bought, and that the stock of several mills sold for $300 per share. That of the Tucapau Mills, in South Carolina, is not to be had today, or it can be had only at 3 or 5 for one. This is by some regarded as the most successful mill in the State.

It would seem that absolutely no stock of the Salisbury Mills is on the market. Recently an energetic young man anxious to buy stock of the mill for principals, went to the treasurer of the company and to shareholders individually, without success. The treasurer said that by looking long enough, and waiting for his chance, he might induce some stockholder to sell at 200.[447] This comparatively low figure in his prognostication is perhaps accounted for by the conservative character of the company from the start, and the uniformly satisfactory, though not brilliant dividends of the enterprise, together with the fact, maybe most potent of all, that sixty of the one hundred and five shareholders in the Salisbury Mills are ladies, the majority of whom have received their holdings through inheritance.[448]

The Majestic Mill, Gaston County, North Carolina, which in 1916 after nine months' operation declared a dividend of 10 per cent., sold three shares of stock which in some way had not been marketed, at 150 each.[449]

In mentioning the contrast between the market price at this time of the stock of mills in various localities. Thought was particularly of the facts as to the Augusta mills' securities and those of the plants in and about Gastonia. The latter are as optimistic as the former are the reverse. Mills in Gastonia making in 1916 from 75 to 100 per cent. net profits, are represented by stock selling at figures ranging from $150 to $250 the share.[450]

VITA

Broadus Mitchell was born at Georgetown, Kentucky, December 27, 1892; he attended a primary school in Richmond, Virginia, and then, for four years until 1908, Richmond Academy; for one session, 1908-1909, attended the Hope Street High School, Providence, Rhode Island; in 1909 entered the University of South Carolina; in the summer of 1911 was a member of the reportorial staff of The Daily Record, Columbia, South Carolina; graduated from the University of South Carolina with A.B. degree in 1913; from June, 1913, until October, 1914, was a member of the reportorial staff of the Richmond Evening Journal; entered The Johns Hopkins University in 1914; was a Hopkins Scholar during this and the succeeding session; was Fellow in Political Economy, 1916-1917; in July, 1917, became special staff writer The New Leader, Richmond, Virginia, and was given furlough from this position to return to the University in the fall of 1917; Fellow by Courtesy and instructor in Courses in Business Economics, 1917-1918.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] P. H. Goldsmith, The Cotton Mill South, p. 4.

[2] D. A. Tompkins, in The South in the Building of the Nation, Vol. II, p. 58. A more summary statement by the same author is the following; after speaking of the prominence in the South of manufactures in the early years of the nineteenth century: "The profit of cotton raising with slave labor drew people away from manufactures to cotton planting. On the abolition of slavery, the capabilities of the people to organize and conduct manufactures showed itself again.... The re-establishment was not commenced immediately after the civil war, because of the chaotic disorder brought about by the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of the negro." But now (1899) "every obstacle to the development of manufactures has been removed. In many parts of the South the development is already well advanced and in others it will undoubtedly grow rapidly." (Ibid., Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, pp. 108-109.)

[3] The South's Position in American Affairs, p. 1. Cf. "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.)

[4] Holland Thompson, From the Cotton Field to the Cotton Mill, p. 25. "Except in the East, the feeling against slavery was strong during the first quarter of the nineteenth century", and there is remarked the foundation in 1816 of the Manumission Society, which had thirty-six branches in 1825 and 1600 active members in 1826. (Ibid., pp. 26-27.)

[5] August Kohn, The Cotton Mills of South Carolina, pp. 10-11.

[6] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, pp. 9-10.

[7] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, pp. 10-11. In 1809 the legislative committee on incorporations reported unfavorably a request of John Johnson, Jr., President of the Homespun Company of South Carolina, for a loan on account of a patent, 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., pp. 11) Cf. Ibid., pp. 11-13.

[8] For these facts the writer is indebted to an unpublished manuscript of M. R. Pleasants, "Manufacturing in North Carolina before 1860", to which reference will frequently be had.

[9] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, p. 310.

[10] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 7.

[11] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 7.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 7. His citation is of the South Carolina and American General Gazette, Jan. 30, 1777. Cf. Ibid., pp. 6-7.

[15] Ibid., p. 8. Reference is particularly to the City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, of Charleston, January 24, 1779.

[16] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina. Citation is of the American Museum, VIII, Appendix IV, part II, July 1, 1790. The question mark is Mr. Kohn's.

[17] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, pp. 8-9.

[18] W. W. Sellers, A History of Marion County, p. 26.

[19] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, p. 312. Cf. Ibid., pp. 328-9. Referring to the manufactories near Charleston and Statesburg, and to carding and spinning machinery set up in eastern Tennessee in 1791, he concludes, "However the industrial progress of these years was irregular and local rather than general and permanent." Ibid., p. 310.

[20] Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607-1860, p. 537. As indicating further the lack of causation in these earliest ventures, it is said: "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. 328-9.)

[21] "In this country, as well as in England, the germ of the textile industry existed in the fulling and carding mills; the former, dating earlier, being the mills for finishing the coarse cloths woven by hand in the looms of our ancestors; and in the latter, the carding mill, the wool was prepared for the hand-wheel. At the close of the Revolution the domestic system of manufactures prevailed throughout the states" (Carroll D. Wright, "The Factory System of the U.S." p. 6, in U.S. Census of manufactures, 1880.)

[22] The Bolton Factory was built in 1811 on Upton Creek, nine miles southwest of Washington, 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 here Lyon conceived important improvements on the Whitney invention, making a saw gin. (Southern Cotton Spinners' Association proceedings seventh annual convention, pp. 41 ff.) Here is a rather striking indication 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, gave way to a cotton mill which was located on the same site and operated by the same water power.

[23] H. R. Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South, (ed. of 1860) pp. 161-162.

[24] W. F. Marshall, interview, Raleigh, N.C., September 16, 1916.

[25] "The first cotton mill built 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, ibid.)

[26] John Nichols, interview, Raleigh, N.C., Sept. 16, 1916. A. A. Thompson, President of the Raleigh Cotton Mill, expressed about the same view in an interview at Raleigh on the same day.

[27] J. L. Hartsell, interview, Concord, N.C., September 2nd 1916.

[28] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 15. Cf. Charlotte News, (N.C.) Textile Industrial Edition, Feb., 1917, with reference to the Rocky Mount Mill.

[29] Though their father had been prominent for his conduct of the mill and had displayed in his personality a generous disposition toward the community, the sons were said to be wild and reckless, and when they fell heir to the plant alienated the sympathies of the people of the vicinity. Any possible public character for the business was thus destroyed.

[30] Charles E. Johnson, interview, Raleigh, N.C., Sept. 16, 1916.

[31] C. D. Wright, "Factory System of the U.S.", p. 6, in U.S. Census of Manufactures, 1880. Cf. Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V., p. 319.

[32] For a careful narrative of the establishments of the settlers who moved into South Carolina from New England about 1816, with details of the mills of the Hills, Shelden, Clark, Bates, Hutchings, Stack, the Weavers, McBee, Bivings, etc., consult Kohn, Cotton Mills of S.C., and The Water Powers of South Carolina; for those in North Carolina H. Thompson is useful. Cf. also Southern Cotton Spinners' Association proceedings seventh annual convention, pp. 41 ff. and Tompkins, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, pp. 301-302.

[33] Wood for the boiler of the Mount Hecla Mills, growing scarce, the machinery was taken to Mountain Island, and there run by water. (H. Thompson, pp. 48-9.)

[34] Cf. Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 14.

[35] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 14. Cf. Charlotte News, Ibid., with reference to the Rocky Mount Mill.

[36] H. Thompson, pp. 45 ff.

[37] Ibid.

[38] J. B. Cleveland, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 8, 1916.

[39] H. Thompson, pp. 42-43. Cf. p. 12.

[40] Theckston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12, 1916.

[41] Theckston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12, 1916.

[42] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V., p. 321. Cf. Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, giving quotation from Columbia Telescope.

[43] Charlotte News, Ibid. The McDonald Mill at Concord during the Civil War dealt in barter. A gentleman in a nearby town told the writer that he remembered as a boy trading a load of corn for yarn to be woven by the women at home. (Theodore Klutz, interview, Salisbury, N.C., Sept. 1, 1916.) In 1862 the Confederate government commandered the Batesville factory in South Carolina, and took nearly all of the product. That portion which was allowed to private purchasers was always sold by ten o'clock in the morning. (Thackston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12, 1916.)

[44] Thompson, pp. 48-9.

[45] Tompkins, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, pp. 183-4.

[46] Walter Montgomery, interview, Spartanburg, S.C., Sept. 5th, 1916.

[47] Thackston, interview, Greenville, S.C., Sept. 12th, 1916.

[48] John W. Fries, interview, Winston-Salem, N.C., Aug. 31, 1916.

Another with a broad view of the history of the industry in the South was willing to include in a similar statement the Graniteville mill about which a good deal of controversy has clustered: "The cotton mills in the South before the war were third-rate affairs. I speak of Graniteville and Batesville and such plants as these. I remember my mother's telling me that the warp ... used to be supplied by the mills for use in the homes of the housewives. They were not regular cotton mills as the plants of later establishment have come to be." (W. W. Ball, interview, Columbia, S.C., Jan. 1, 1917.)

[49] Figures of Thompson give 700 ______ and 7000 bales of cotton consumed. (Thompson, pp. 49 ff.)

[50] U.S. Census of Manufactures, 1900. Cotton Manufactures, pp. 54 ff. A map showing the distribution of cotton spindles in 1839 indicates a good representation for all the Southern States, except Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Florida, as to mills of small size, but the localization both as to plants and spindles in New England is marked. (Clark, History of Manufactures in the U.S., section on cotton manufactures, pp. 533-560. See the whole section for a masterful discussion of both historical and economic phases.)

[51] Cf. Thompson, pp. 49 ff.

[52] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, pp. 319-320. "Few mills south of Virginia had power looms prior to 1840." (Ibid., p. 321.) Cf. omission of looms for Southern States in the census figures quoted above.

[53] Clark, South in Building of Nation, Vol. V. p. 322.

[54] William E. Dodd, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V. pp. 566-7.

[55] Quoted in Pleasants.

[56] Quoted in Pleasants.

[57] Quoted from Niles' Register, May 10, 1828, in Pleasants. Mr. Pleasants remarks that not until the late twenties did the leaders of thought awaken to the disintegrating process that had set in two decades before, and he notices the striking fact that in a report to the legislature in 1828 it was said: "Nothing but a change of system can restore health and prosperity at large. With all the material and elements for manufacturing, we annually expend millions for the purchase of articles manufactured in Europe and in the North out of our own raw material. At this rate the state is on the road to bankruptcy. There must be a change. But how is this important revolution to be accomplished? We unhesitatingly answer--by introducing the manufacturing system into our own state and fabricating at least to the extent of our wants.... Our habits and prejudices are against manufacturing, but we must yield to the force of things and profit by the indications of nature. The policy that resists the change is unwise and suicidal. Nothing else can restore us."

[58] Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg County, Vol. I, p. 124. Cf. Ibid., pp. 126-7.

[59] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, pp. 18-19.

[60] Clark, History of Manufactures in U.S., pp. 553 ff. Cf. Ibid., in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, pp. 213-214, and pp. 316 ff.

[61] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 16.

[62] "Cheapness of cotton, abundance of water-power, the resources of the coal-fields, when steam began to supplant the dam, the other mineral resources, and the wealth of forests of pine, live oak, cypress, and other woods in which the South abounded, did not even attract from other parts sufficient capital to develop the section to anything like its full extent. No artificial expedients were necessary there. But capital did not come." (Ingle, Southern Sidelights, p. 73.)

[63] Quoted in A. B. Hart, The Southern South, pp. 231-232.

[64] Helper, p. 25.

[65] Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. I, p. 100.

[66] Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 200-201.

[67] Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. I, pp. 98-99. This statement is strongly influenced by Tench Coxe. Cf. Ibid., Cotton Growing, pp. 3-4. It has been said of the Irish people by Lord Dufferin that "the entire nation flung itself back upon the land, with as fatal an impulse as when a river, whose current is suddenly impeded, rolls back and drowns the valley which it once fertilized", and Sir Horace Plunkett comments, "The energies, the hopes, nay, the very existence of the race, became thus intimately bound up with agriculture." (Sir Horace Plunkett, Ireland in the New Century, p. 20.)

[68] Tompkins, Building and Loan Associations, p. 43. Cf. Ibid., The Cultivation, Picking, Baling and Manufacturing of Cotton from Southern Handpoint, pp. 5-6.

[69] Tompkins, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, pp. 109-110. It is interesting that this occurs in a book by a practical manufacturer intended to point the way to technical success in mill management. It is perhaps an indication of how social the South is in even its most distinctly industrial aspects.

[70] Another has used the expression that "the South was throttled by an out grown Economic System." (F. T. Carlton, History and Problems of Organized Labor, pp. 19-20.)

[71] Tompkins, Cultivation, Picking, Baling and Manufacturing of Cotton, pp. 5-6. "Agricultural Methods were 'stereotyped'." This writer did more than any other in showing the character of the equipment for cotton cultivation and the alterations made therein after the war.

[72] W. H. Gannon, The Landowners of the South, and the Industrial Classes of the North, pp. 7 ff.

[73] William Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, pp. 18-19.

[74] Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. I, p. 194. "The price which America paid for the introduction and use of cotton was sectionalism, slavery, and war." (James A. B. Scherer, Cotton as a World Power, p. 243.) For a careful description of the circumstances surrounding the invention of the cotton gin, and the legal documents in the dispute over the rights to it, cf. ibid., Cotton and Cotton Oil, pp. 19 to 31, inclusive, and appendix. "We abandoned a once leading factory system; we imported slaves; we let all public highways become quagmires; we destroyed every possibility for the farmer except cotton and by cut-throat competition amongst ourselves we reduced the price to where there was not a living in it for the cotton producer. We made cotton in a quantity and at a price to clothe all the world excepting ourselves." (Ibid., Road Building and Repairs, p. 24.)

[75] Ingle, Southern Sidelights, p. 49.

[76] Scherer, p. 253.

[77] Scherer, pp. 168 ff. Cf. Walter H. Page, The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths, p. 139.

[78] A. D. Mayo, In The Social Economist, Oct., 1893, pp. 203-204.

[79] F. L. Olmsted, The Seaboard Slave States, pp. 140-141. Cf. Ibid., p. 185, pp. 213-214.

[80] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, pp. 298-299. Cf. "The amount of it, then, is this: Improvement and progress in South Carolina is forbidden by its present system." (Ibid., pp. 522-523. And for his general philosophy on the subject, Ibid., pp. 490-491.)

[81] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, pp. 179-180.

[82] Ibid., pp. 288 ff.

[83] Plunkett, p. 147.

[84] Ingle, Southern Sidelights, pp. 68-69.

[85] Ingle, Southern Sidelights, p. 11.

[86] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, pp. 213-214. Not only did slavery deter from coming to the South immigrants opposed to the institution, but the Southern whites were indisposed to welcome those who refused to grow into the system. A Southern Newspaper of the fifties betrayed this: "A large proportion of the mechanical force that migrate to the South, are a curse instead of a blessing; they are generally a worthless, unprincipled class--enemies to our peculiar institutions, and formidable barriers to the success of our native mechanics. Not so, however, with another class who migrate southward--we mean that class known as merchants; they are generally intelligent and trustworthy, and they seldom fail to discover their true interests. They become slaveholders and landed proprietors; and, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, they are better qualified to become constituents of our institution, than even a certain class of our native born.... The intelligent mercantile class ... are generally valuable acquisitions to society, and every way qualified to sustain 'our institution'; but the mechanics, most of them, are pests to society, dangerous among the slave population, and ever ready to form combinations against the interest of the slave-holder, against the laws of the country, and against the peace of the Commonwealth." (Quoted in Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 511.)

[87] Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. II, p. 204.

[88] Cf. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 153.

[89] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 511.

[90] Sidney Andrews, The South Since the War, pp. 342-343.

[91] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 543.

[92] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 210.

[93] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 10.

[94] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, pp. 9-10. "He who has possessed himself of the notion that we have the industry, and are wronged out of our hard earnings by a lazy set of scheming Yankees, to get rid of this delusion, needs only seat himself on the Charleston wharves for a few days, and behold ship after ship arrive laden down with the various articles produced by Yankee industry." (Ibid.)

[95] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, pp. 9-10. "He who has possessed himself of the notion that we have the industry, and are wronged out of our hard earnings by a lazy set of scheming Yankees, to get rid of this delusion, needs only seat himself on the Charleston wharves for a few days, and behold ship after ship arrive laden down with the various articles produced by Yankee industry." (Ibid., p. 11.)

[96] Helper, pp. 21 and 23. See these pages also for interesting illustrations of dependence upon the North, some of which plainly influenced Henry W. Grady.

[97] William Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 8. Nothing is more frequently remarked as indicative of the exclusive attention to the cultivation of cotton than the large reliance of an almost purely agricultural country upon other sections for many articles of food. And not only subsistance for the people, but subsistence for the plantation as such often had to be imported. Missing nothing, Olmsted said, in a description of a rail journey in North Carolina, "The principal other freight of the train was one hundred and twenty bales of Northern hay. It belonged ... to a planter who lived some twenty miles beyond here, and who had bought it in Wilmington at a dollar and a half a hundred weight, to feed to his mules. Including the steam-boat and railroad freight, and all the labor of getting it to his stables, its entire cost to him would not be much less than two dollars a hundred. This would be at least four times as much as it would have cost to raise and make it in the interior of New York or New England.... He had preferred to employ his slaves at other business." (Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, pp. 376-379.)

But Gregg gave encouragement in any brighter aspects that he found, as when he said, "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." (Ibid., pp. 11) And he held out to his State the prospect of the results that might reasonably be expected from adoption of his proposals: "Were all our hopes ... consumated, South Carolina would present a delightful picture. Every son and daughter would find healthful and lucrative employment; our roads, which are now a disgrace to us, would be improved; we would no longer be under the necessity of sending to the North for half made wagons and carriages, to break our necks; we would have, if not as handsome, at least as honestly and faithfully made ones.... Workshops would take the place of the throngs of clothing, hat, and shoe stores, and the watch-word would be, from the seaboard to the mountains, success to domestic industry." (Ibid., p. 17.) When Southern resources were exploited, the total benefit might not come to the locality; "The great abundance of the best lumber for the purpose, in the United States, growing in the vicinity of the town, has lately induced some persons to attempt ship-building at Mobile. The mechanics employed are mainly from the North." (Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 567.)

[98] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 544.

[99] Quoted in Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 175.

[100] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 363.

[101] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 166.

[102] Tompkins, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, preface to appendix. This is one of a thousand incidents which bring to mind the similarity between Irish temperament and that of the people of the South--how prone both have been to obscure to themselves real issues in public affairs for a joke's sake. And the reflection would be dismal for both peoples but for the finer discernment of which each, at other times, has shown itself capable. Cf. Plunkett.

[103] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 18.

[104] Ingle, Southern Sidelights, p. 47. Cf. Burkett and Poe, Cotton, pp. 312 and 313, and E. C. Brooks, The Story of Cotton, p. 157.

[105] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 169.

[106] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 20. "Lamentable, indeed is it to see so wise and so pure a man as Langdon Cheves, putting forth the doctrine, to South Carolina, that manufactures should be the last resort of a country. With the greatest possible respect for the opinions of this truly great man, and the humblest pretensions on my part, I will venture the assertion, that a greater error was never committed by a statesman." (Ibid., p. 14) For a very fine passage, omitted here only because of its length, showing the fallacy of Cheves' position, and defining what Gregg meant by "domestic manufactures"--not household industry, but the erection of steam mills in Charleston, of cotton factories there and throughout the State; "I mean, that, at every village and cross-road in the State, we should have a tannery, a shoe-maker, a clothier, a hatter, a blacksmith ... a wagon maker ... this is the kind of manufactures I speak of, as being necessary to bring forth the energies of a country, and give healthful and vigorous action to agriculture, commerce and every department of industry"--See Ibid., pp. 14-15-16. The Southern Quarterly Review in 1845 quoted Cheves: "'Manufacturing should be the last resort of industry in every country, for one forced as with us, they serve no interests but those of the capitalists who set them in motion, and their immediate localities'." And Mr. Kohn remarks, "This expression was not peculiar to any one class of leaders in South Carolina at that time," and he instances other examples. (Kohn, Cotton Mill of S.C., p. 13.) Cf. also references to Burkett and Poe and to Brooks.

[107] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 14. See p. 52.

[108] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, pp. 19-20.

[109] Ibid., p. 20.

[110] Gregg, Speech on Blue Ridge Railroad, p. 67.

[111] Gregg, Speech on Blue Ridge Railroad, p. 29.

[112] Quoted in The News and Courier, Charleston, March 9, 1881. Said Olmsted in 1856: "Singularly simple, childlike ideas about commercial success, you find among the Virginians.... The agency by which commodities are transferred from the producer to the consumer, they seem to look upon as a kind of swindling operation: ... They speak angrily of New York, as if it fattened on the country without any good in return." (Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 138.)

[113] "... the labor of negroes and blind horse can never supply the place of _steam_, and this power is withheld lest the smoke of an engine should disturb the delicate nerves of an agriculturist; or the noise of the mechanic's hammer should break in upon the slumber of a real estate holder, or importing merchant, while he is indulging in fanciful dreams, or building on paper, _the Queen City of the South_--the _paragon_ of the age. No reflections on the members of the City Council are here intended, they are no doubt fairly representing public opinion on this subject...." (Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 23.)

[114] "The State of South Carolina has been extremely guarded in extending grants to banking institutions, and in this she has shown her wisdom, for it is an extremely dangerous power to exercise." He hoped, however, that the danger to be apprehended from banking privileged would "not be confounded with, and brought injudiciously to bear against the charters which are necessary to develop the resources of our country, and give an impetus to all industrial pursuits.... The practice of operating by associated capital gives a wonderful stimulus to enterprise, and where such investments are fashionable, no undertaking is too great to be consummated. Why is it that the Bostonians are able in a day, or a week, to raise millions at one stroke, to purchase the land on both sides of a river, for miles, to secure a great water power and the erection of a manufacturing city?... The divine, lawyer, doctor, schoolmaster, guardian, widow, farmer, merchant, mechanic, common labourer, in fact, the whole community is made tributary to these great enterprises. The utility and safety of such institutions is no longer problematical.... If we shut the door against associated capital and place reliance on individual exertion, we may talk over the matter and grow poorer for fifty years to come, without effecting the change in our industrial pursuits, necessary to renovate the fortunes of our State. Individuals will not be found amongst us who are willing to embark their 100, 200 or $300,000 in untried pursuits: ... If liberal charters were granted, one hundred successful establishments would spring into existence, where one, of feeble order, could be expected from individual effort.... About three-fourths of the manufacturing of the United States, is carried on by joint-stock companies: ... We shall certainly have to look to such companies to introduce the business with us...." He showed the perpetuity of the corporate form by instancing one South Carolina cotton factory operated by a joint stock company; "... there is but one of the original proprietors living, yet the factory is still going on prosperously, producing as good results as it ever has done ...", and this mill he contrasted with the venture of an individual which was prosperous until his death, when the legatees, not able to carry on the manufacture, forced the sale of the property at half its value. (Gregg, An Enquiry into the Propriety of Granting Charters of Incorporation for Manufacturing and Other Purposes, in South Carolina, pp. 4-11.)

[115] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, pp. 314-315.

[116] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 361.

[117] Ibid., pp. 358-359.

[118] Ingle, Southern Side Lights, p. 32 ff. "There were 101 persons in the jails of Georgia on June 1, 1860; Virginia had 189; Massachusetts, 1161 and Illinois, 489. In the open life of the South and West, where men could easily get to the land, there was little crime and jails were often empty; in the industrial belt the prisons were always occupied. In like manner and for the same reasons Southern and Western hospitals for the insane and homes for the poor often showed very small percentages of these unfortunates." (William E. Dodd, Expansion and Conflict, p. 231.) Cf. the map on p. 188, showing the industrial belt of 1860 to extend along the Atlantic Seaboard from New Hampshire to the head of Chesapeake Bay, covering the coastal States, with scattering development indicated to the westward. The territory south of Maryland shows a few plants of an output of $250,000.

[119] Upon this whole matter, see Scherer, p. 179 ff. "In 1816, when Webster opposed protection, there was a capital of only about $52,000,000 invested in textile manufacture, of which much still lay in the South. In 1828, when he reversed his position, this capital had probably doubled, and had become localized in and about New England." (Ibid., p. 181.) Cf. Ibid., p. 234.

[120] Scherer, p. 152. "When the United States of America was formed, manufacturing interests were as well developed in the South as the North. Slavery ... existed under protection of law more than a hundred years in Massachusetts before it was tolerated by law in Georgia. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the tariff was not a matter which was exclusively political.... The subject ceased to be an economic one and became a political one in proportion as slavery grew in the South and diminished in the North, and in inverse proportion as manufactures dried up in the South and became of greater importance in the North.... The time came when the South stood for free trade and the North for protection. This was because slavery made agriculture more profitable in the South and protection made manufacturing more profitable in the North with the South as a protected market." (Tompkins, The Tariff and Reciprocity.)

[121] Tompkins, Tariff and Protection.

[122] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, p. 316 ff. See pp. 30-31-32. Contrast Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. I, pp. 133-137.

[123] But some of the agitation in favor of industries in this period, as in other ante-bellum and indeed post-bellum years, had a flavor not symptomatic of healthy desire for improvement. One hundred and thirty-one delegates represented nineteen North Carolina counties at a meeting held in Salisbury in 1836, at which resolutions were adopted asking the legislature to give assistance in the building of railroads; another evidence of this interest was the Knoxville railroad convention of about the same date. Of the advantages which it was agreed would flow from the building of the Charleston and Cincinnati Railroad, it was declared that "it will form a bond of union among the States which will give safety to our property and security to our institutions." (Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. I, p. 125.) Of more positive character was the utterance of a Southerner who viewed with deep concern the danger that the North would crush slavery and place the South under complete submission to tariff aggressions, congressional representation for the latter section finding a stop in the limit to slave territory: "Under these circumstances, the true policy of the south is distinct and clearly marked. She must resort to the same means by which power is accumulated at the North, to secure it for herself. She must embark in that system of manufacturing which has been so successfully employed at the north.... All civilized nations are now dependent upon our staple to give employment to their machinery and their labor.... If, then, we manufacture a large portion of it ourselves, we reduce the quantity for export, and the competition for that remainder will add greatly to our wealth, while it will place us in a position to dictate our own terms. The manufactories will increase our population; increased population and wealth will enable us to chain the southern States proudly and indissolubly together by railroads and other internal improvements; and these works by affording a speedy communication from point to point, will prove our surest defense against either foreign aggression or domestic revolt." (J. D. B. DeBow, Industrial Resources of the South and Southwest, Vol. II, p. 127.) J. H. Taylor, of Charleston, combatted the antipathy toward massing the poor whites in factories with the reflection that small farming in competition with slave labor brought discontent that might mean social upheaval, whereas the factory opened a door of opportunity that allowed of intelligence and stability; with the chance of coming to own a slave, "they would increase the demand for that kind of property, and would become firm and uncompromising supporters of Southern institutions." (Ingle, Southern Sidelights, pp. 25-26.)

[124] In earlier pages he has developed with much care the promising industrial status of the Colonial and Revolutionary South. "In the Southern colonies iron making became an important industry, even before the beginning of the eighteenth century." The activity in Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia is shown: Governor's Spottswood's ventures in Virginia, the passage in 1727 by the Virginia General Assembly of "an act for encouraging adventures in iron-works"; South Carolina forges built in 1773 are dwelt upon. His original investigations reveal valuable facts as to iron-making in North Carolina and upper South Carolina--details are given of the works of E. Graham & Company, formed in 1826 and later merged with the King's Mountain Iron Company; the Magnetic Iron Company, 1837, near the former plant, and the South Carolina Manufacturing Company. It is to be noticed, however, as a modification upon the good effect which might have been expected from these enterprises, that the Graham Company had a considerable part of its capital invested in slaves, and sixty per cent. of the Magnetic Company's capital of $250,000 was used for the same purpose. (Richard H. Edmonds, Facts About the South, Ed. 1894, pp. 3 ff.)

[125] Ibid., pp. 10 ff.

[126] Edmonds, p. 18 ff.

[127] In reference to the false idea of wealth and prosperity in the ante-bellum South, it has been said, "A delusion of great wealth was created in the listing as taxable property of slaves to the amount of at least two thousand millions." (A. B. Hart, The Southern South, p. 218.)

[128] Edmonds, p. 2.

[129] Ibid., p. 14.

[130] Edmonds, pp. 1-2.

[131] Ibid., pp. 2-8, 19-20.

[132] Edmonds, p. 21. Cf. Ibid., pp. 19-20.

[133] E. G. Murphy, The Present South, p. 97.

[134] Murphy, p. 102.

[135] Murphy, pp. 10-11.

[136] Murphy, p. 21.

[137] There were earlier expressions of the same spirit, some, as if in foretaste of the South's fate under the old system, before the Civil War, and others immediately following the war. But the motives were liable to be selfish and unsound, as for the purpose of retaining slavery, and if they did not lack, that fire and conviction which marked the full movement commencing fifteen years later, they were fruitless of large results. "We are going to work in good earnest, not only to repair the waste places of the war, but to build up and improve and prosper, and to show the world that we can be good soldiers in peace as we are in war." (W. J. Barbee, published 1866) Cf.

[138] News and Observer, Raleigh, N.C., Nov. 9, 1880.

[139] "... business is driving sentimental politics to the woods." (News and Observer, Dec. 31, 1880.)

[140] Reprinted in News and Courier, Charleston, S.C., July 11, 1881.

[141] "... they (the New York Times, which carried an editorial questioning the word of General Wade Hampton, and the 'malignants' of the Republican party) must realize the difference between a Southern gentleman and a Northern malignant. They know that the former cannot prevaricate, while the Northern leaders of the Republican party and the malignants are usually devoid of personal honor." This is from an editorial in the News and Observer, Raleigh, N.C., and is too characteristic of most of the political writing in the South which was an outcome of reconstruction.

[142] Reprinted in News and Courier, May 14, 1881.

[143] Reprinted from the Memphis Avalanche, in The Daily Constitution, Atlanta, Ga., March 30, 1880.

[144] Reprinted in News and Courier, March 18, 1881. The writer had been a slave-holder.

[145] A sentence occurring in an editorial of the News and Courier, in the issue of March 24, 1881, is indicative of the love with which this city looked upon the undertaking proposed: "A man who has been in the whirl of New York or in any of the brand new cities of the great West coming into Charleston might readily enough come to the conclusion that the old city was in a sad state of decadence ... but our own people ... if they have their eyes open (or hearts open would perhaps be the better expression) could not fail to see manifest improvement."

"They dub thee idler, smilingly sneeringly, and why?--
How know they, these good gossips, what to thee
The ocean and its wanderers may have brought?
How know they, in their busy vacancy,
With what far aim thy spirit may be fraught?
Or that thou dost not bow thee silently
Before some great unutterable thought."

--Henry Timrod

[146] "The people of South Carolina are nothing if not heroic, and right or wrong, they are sincere, earnest, and brave ... the same heroic qualities are now leading in the restoration of the South to prosperity, and on a basis that must speedily give the reconstructed States a degree of substantial wealth and power that was never dreamed of before the war." (A. K. McClure, "The South: Industrial, financial and political", p. 55, published 1886.)

[147] The News and Courier, in an editorial on March 19, 1881: "Every true South Carolinian must rejoice at the prudence and energy exhibited by the citizens of Columbia in their management of the cotton mill campaign.... It will be a happy day for the whole State when the hum of myriad spindles is heard on the banks of the historic canal. Columbia will then grow rapidly, speedily rivalling Augusta in the number and success of the cotton mills. Thousands will be added to the population, and from our political center additional life and energy will flow to every part of the State.... we confess to having a weakness for Columbia, which suffered so sorely at the end of the war, and which is the only place of consequence in South Carolina that has not improved its business and enlarged its boundaries since the overthrow of Radicalism in 1876. But cotton mills will soon make amends for the vicissitudes and hopelessness of the past, and for that reason The News and Courier takes the warmest possible interest in the cotton mill campaign at Columbia." The Observer, Raleigh, N.C., July 11, 1800: "... when our people once begin to mingle freely, having a community of interests and a common purpose, sectional feelings will be obliterated, and we will forget that there has been an East, a center, or a West, and remember only that we are all North Carolinians, sharing the same fortunes, blessed with a common hope and ennobled with the same proud memories of a glorious past." The News and Courier, January 25, 1881, carried a plea for State aid for Columbia in her enterprise to build a 16,000-spindle mill, the same as forms the subject of the first part of this note. The editorial especially advocated the placing of convicts at work on the construction: "... The capital, _because it was the capital_, was laid in ashes by Sherman's troops. In the person of Columbia, all South Carolina was ravaged and laid waste. The city which suffered so sorely may reasonably expect the just assistance of the State in the endeavor to repair her losses caused by war, and intensified by years of contact with political profligacy and misrule."

[148] "What the South should do is the caption that graces the editorial effusions of all classes cf papers, and especially those of our own deeply solicitous and anxious friends of the North. Many of us think we know. The South should depend upon its own virtue, its own brain, its own energy, attend to its own business, make money, build up its waste places, and thus force upon the North that recognition of our worth and dignity of character to which that people will always be blind unless they can see it through the medium of material, industrial and intellectual strength. We may proclaim political theories, but it is the more potent and powerful argument of the mighty dollar that secures an audience there, and the sooner we realize it the better for us." (News and Observer, Raleigh, N.C., Nov. 27, 1880.)

[149] Editorial in News and Courier, Mar. 9, 1881.

[150] It is interesting and pathetic to observe how unaccustomed the South was to the most obvious facts of business. Concentration upon one crop had precluded from the Southern mind--speaking in the aggregate, of course--the first reasonings springing from diversification of industry and from ordinary competition. But once the necessity for a different attitude became apparent, the statesmanlike manner in which this was pressed must provoke admiration. The article in J. D. B. DeBow's "Industrial Resources", etc., pp. 124-125, presents the consideration that the cotton crop of Tennessee, amounting to 200,000 bales, 90,000,000 pounds at 6-1/2 cents an average pound, gave the producers 11-1/2 per cent. profit on their investment, while the manufacturers of the same crop made 24 per cent. profit--more than twice as great. "Are there any so blind as not to see the advantages of the system?" Much earlier Southern statements of the true fact from manufacturing cotton was to be found, but in the delirium of the latter days of slavery these were lost sight of. Wm. J. Barbee, in his "The Cotton Question" pp. 138 and following, commends for the reflection of capitalists in 1866 the "Manufacture of Cotton by its Producers, suggestions of S. R. Cockrill seventeen years ago." Cockrill speculated as to the gain to be derived from cotton mills in the cotton states, and said: "Facts like these should fix the attention of the cotton planter, teach him his true interest, and stimulate him to become the manufacturer of the product of his field, instead of permitting others to reap the entire profit."

[151] News and Courier, Feb. 2, 1881. The editorial appeared apropos of the opening of books for subscriptions to the Charleston Manufacturing Company, which occupies a prominent place in the history of cotton manufacturing in the South. The editorial concluded: "This is the logic of the investment of money in cotton mills in Charleston. It will pay the stockholders their ten or twelve per cent., and the city at large will get a dollar's profit on every dollar's worth of raw cotton that the mills consume."

[152] While the manufacture of cotton was the most prominent manifestation of the newly quickened spirit in the South, it was by no means the only one. Every opportunity for productive enterprise was eagerly investigated; the discovery of one of these was hailed in the papers with an enthusiasm like the joy of a child in a new-found plaything. Properties of soils, the use of the telephone, the most profitable employment for State convicts were some of the topics of interest. There was, of course, a complete absorption for a time in railroads in the Southern Atlantic coast states, either for the further building of small independent lines, the merging of these into systems, or the extension of the coastal lines over the mountains into Tennessee.

There was also a phase of the movement distinctly moral in tone, as, e.g., the wide formation of temperance societies about this time.

[153] News and Courier, Aug. 1, 1881.

[154] While it is clear that the purpose to build cotton mills in the South arose irrespective of the means at the disposal of the people with which to do so, and would have come about had their financial limitations been even more discouraging, it is certainly true that a revival of business at the time of the commencement of the cotton mill campaign was a spur to the widespread investigation into the profitableness of cotton manufacturing. That there was coming to be money seeking investment, or at any rate capable of investment, was good reason for the searching out of opportunities for productive industry. The following gives an insight into the better times that had begun: "The year that is just finished will be to the present generation a red-letter one, for it brought to an end the long and weary period of enforced economy and restricted business that followed the panic of 1873, and put every branch of industry at work. Agriculture was encouraged in the West and South by good crops and remunerative prices, the factories received more orders than they could fill, the railroads were blocked with freight, the mines were pushed to a greater extent than ever, and all other interests were quickened towards the end of the old year in a way that was full of promise." This summary of the year 1879 appeared in The Daily Constitution, Atlanta, January 7, 1880. The return to specie payments did much to stimulate trade. A contribution to the Savannah, Ga. Morning News, quoted by W. H. Gannon in "The Landowners of the South and the Industrial Classes of the North", pp. 6, 7 and 8. The article was probably written by Mr. Gannon himself.

[155] Quoted from Savannah Morning News by W. H. Gannon, The Landowners of the South and the Industrial Classes of the North. "The cotton mill to the cotton field" was the familiar dogma which crystallized out of the course events were taking.

[156] The term is taken from The News and Courier, where it was used first, perhaps, in the issue of January 31, 1881. Before long it had come to be a phrase in everybody's mouth, and proved to be apt beyond any thought, probably, of the editor who first ran the line over a column of notices of new mills established.

[157] "The News and Courier busies itself with every enterprise, big and little, that will turn a dollar's worth of raw material into more than a dollar's worth of manufactures." (News and Courier, Mar. 19, 1881.)

[158] Reprinted in Daily Constitution, Mar. 9, 1880.

[159] News and Courier, Jan. 12, 1882.

[160] Ibid., Feb. 22, 1881, see p. 11, note 3.

[161] Ibid., January 26, 1881.

[162] "While Charleston and other points in the State are discussing and initiating their cotton manufactories, Spartanburg is pushing ahead with her grand enterprise. (Spartanburg correspondence of News and Courier, Feb. 4, 1881.) The same purpose to encourage new mills actuated the News and Observer, December 24, 1880, in referring to Edward Richardson, of the firm of Richardson and May, cotton factors, in New Orleans ... the cotton king of the world. He runs ten to twelve plantations.... Has built a town (Cresson) ... where he has factories employing 400 looms, 18000 spindles and 800 hands. He is worth from $15,000,000 to $18,000,000, all accumulated in the South, the poor South." The encouragement lent by one mill to others to come into the field was recognized. In working for the establishment of the Charleston Manufacturing Company, the News and Courier was starting a force that would grow in power through the years: "When this pioneer company shall have made a good start, other companies will speedily follow...." (January 28, 1881). And again (Observer, January 2, 1880): "Another large cotton factory. The Charlotte Observer chronicles the erection in the immediate future of a cotton factory in that city, and regards it as the beginning of a prosperous growth of manufactures." An item in the Barnwell, S.C. Sentinel, reprinted in the News and Courier, Feb. 8, 1881, declared: "The people of Charleston should have never hesitated as long as they have about embanking in the manufacture of cotton goods, and we firmly believe, as the ball is started, that it will be kept moving...." The Keowee Courier, in an editorial also reprinted in the Charleston paper, commended Charleston as setting an example to the entire State. A Georgia note, carried in the News and Courier of February 24, 1881, is especially specific in this connection: "If the organization of this manufacturing company (the Enterprise Factory, Augusta, Georgia, which was to be greatly enlarged after making good profits) proves a good omen--its extension may work as an invaluable stimulus to other enterprises now. It will hurry up the walls of the stupendous Sibley Mill, where 25,000 spindles will soon mingle in our industrial acclaim. It will quicken the shuttles of that giant corporation, the Augusta Factory." "It will spur on the Globe Factory and the Summerville Mills to renewed effort, while our South Carolina neighbors cannot but catch the spirit of improvement."

[163] Reprinted in the News and Courier, Jan. 31, 1881.

[164] Reprinted in the News and Courier, Feb. 23, 1881.

[165] Ibid., Jan. 27, Mar. 20 and May 4, 1881.

[166] The commencement of the movement was right clearly marked in the minds of the people. The News and Courier (August 1, 1881) in an editorial commenting on the address of Major Hammett on cotton manufacturing in the South, printed in that issue of the paper, had these words: "Major Hammett was the founder of the Piedmont Factory, which, under his management, is one of the finest and most profitable cotton mills in the South. The Piedmont Factory was projected and built before the opening of the cotton mill campaign in the South, and Maj. Hammett ranks, therefore, as one of the pioneers in cotton manufacturing in South Carolina."

[167] News and Courier, Oct. 13, 1881.