The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South

by Broadus Mitchell

Figures are set up to show the favorable economic condition of the South in 1860 as compared with the North, and these head up naturally in the observation that, "Blot out of existence in one night every manufacturing enterprise in the whole country, with all the capital employed, (he was writing in 1894) and the loss would not equal that sustained by the South as a result of the war.... New England and the Middle States, having grown rich by the war, almost trebled their property (from 1860 to 1870) while the South drops from the first place to the third. In 1860 it outranked the Northern section by $750,000,000."[126]

In criticism of these quotations specifically it is to be said that the early development in industrial pursuits and the thorough lapse before 1840 are properly observed. The present writer believes that Mr. Edmonds has exaggerated in his own mind both the spirit for manufactures, particularly in the decade from 1850 to 1860, and the extent of their establishment. The recital that there were 24,590 plants, with an investment of $175,100,000, seems at first to be striking, but a simple division shows that on an average this made the investment in each only $7,144.37, which is surely not indicative of considerable importance. Many of the enterprises must have been much smaller than would be represented by this average, and the few which were a great deal larger were rare exceptions. The very disparity in size of establishments points away from any concerted movement toward manufacturing. As to the railroad construction, much of it was narrow-gauge, and all of the facts tend to show that railroads were looked upon as facilitating commerce rather than manufactures; even after the war the pet scheme to build a railroad over the mountains gathered sentiment in the long-cherished desire to link Charleston with "the producing interior" typefied in Cincinnati; as rails were laid, piecemeal, through the Piedmont, advantages afforded by them for the erection of factories were seldom mentioned, and their utility in tapping pools of available labor was not considered. The easier transport of cotton and the development of the South Atlantic ports were the thoughts uppermost.

To vaunt property figures of the South of 1860 by including, as Mr. Edmonds has done, the value of slaves, is an obvious error; and especially because of the failure to note the inclusion of this factor, the spirit of the other exhibits is cast in doubt. Though legally they were property, in the social-economic sense the slaves did not constitute capital any more than their owners represented capital. The question is rather whether this part of the population, as productive agents under the system of enforced labor, did not mean a liability and not an asset at all.[127]

Mr. Edmonds is guilty sometimes of careless statement, as when he says, "The Southern people do not lack in energy or enterprise, nor did they prior to 1860.... From the settlement of the colonies until 1860 the business record proves this."[128] Or again, "the energy and enterprise displayed by the South in the extension of its agricultural interests was fully as great as the energy displayed in the development of New England's manufactures or that of the pioneers who opened up the West to civilization."[129] Such expressions, it will presently be shown, proceed from a loyalty to the South and a just desire to defend her against assault respecting her part in post-bellum development, but facts brought out in these pages show the mistaken zeal in seeking to place the old South abreast in industry or even agriculture.

Allowing what is perhaps the exciting cause of Mr. Edmonds' argument to appear from his own context, light is shed in the following sentences: "... 'The New South', a term which is so popular everywhere except in the South, is supposed to represent a country of different ideas and different business methods from those which prevailed in the old ante-bellum days.... Its use ... as intended to convey the meaning that the South of late years is something entirely new and foreign to this section, something which has been brought about by an infusion of outside energy and money is wholly unjust to the South of the past and present. It needs but little investigation to show that prior to the war the South was fully abreast of the times in all business interests, and that the wonderful industrial growth which has come since 1880 has been due mainly to Southern men and Southern money. The South heartily welcomes the investment of outside capital and the immigration of all good people ... but it insists that it shall receive from the world the measure of credit to which it is entitled for the accomplishment of its own people." And then he instances the cotton mills and Birmingham and Atlanta.[130] His explanation of the inactivity in the South for ten or fifteen years following the war, in the fact and causes of which he is entirely correct,[131] bears out the belief, clearly indicated in the passage just quoted, that it is his real purpose to accord to the ante-bellum South her deserved praise. However, he overreached in trying to establish anything like continuity for Southern enterprise over the ante-bellum years. The interpretation here given of the new South is now a platitude, but it may not have been a tilting at windmills when he wrote; indeed, its acceptance now may be due in no small part to Mr. Edmonds.

Altogether, it is best to rest Mr. Edmonds' theory with the following passage, in which there is no confusion of his own thought and no controversy with anyone: "Since 1880, although the South is still (1894) practically without great accumulated wealth, her people have turned to manufacturing with a facility that not only shows that they are in no way lacking in capability to compete in manufacturing pursuits, but, considering the limited capital, this section has exhibited remarkable gains in developing its resources under adverse conditions. In a little more than a decade from the time the work of development may be said to have begun, it is not a question whether Alabama can compete with Pennsylvania in iron, but rather whether Pennsylvania can compete with Alabama. Nobody now doubts that the South can compete with New England in the manufacture of cotton goods, but many do doubt whether New England can compete with the South.... Since 1880 the growth of manufactures in the South and their success has been more than astonishing."[132]

Edgar Gardner Murphy in his spiritual interpretation of the South showed himself discerning and gifted beyond almost any other writer. His conception of the economic history of the South may be held to have been secondary in his purpose and so in his thought. However, his position as an expositor of the section and the emphasis which he places upon his economic opinions regarding its past, make it incumbent upon the student to examine his views. In the following quotation the turn which he gave to the influencing argument of Mr. Edmonds and his personal slant in interpretation of this, are apparent:

"The present industrial development of the South is not a new creation. It is chiefly a revival. Because the labor system of the old South was so largely attended by the economic disadvantages of slavery, and because the predominant classes of the white population were so largely affected by social and political interests, it has often been assumed that the old order was an order without industrial ambitions.

"The assumption is not well founded. Instead of industrial inaction we find from the beginnings of Southern history an industrial movement, characteristic and sometimes even provincial in its methods, but presenting a consistent and creditable development up to the very hour of the Civil War. The issue of this war meant no mere economic reversal. It meant economic catastrophe, drastic, desolate, without respect of persons, classes or localities.... Thus the later story of the industrial South is but a story of reemergence."[133] There are then outlined the steps of Mr. Edmonds' argument, except that Murphy failed to make clear the almost total lapse of industrial activity by 1840.

The incentive to discover an industrial past for the section, which Mr. Edmonds found in the desire to establish the South as the magician of her ante-bellum awakening, is matched in Murphy's motive by a more subtle design. In one place he said: "... the most distinctive element in the economic movement of this period (1880 to 1900) is the increasingly dominant position of manufactures as contrasted with agriculture. This industrial revival is but the reemergence of the tendency which we found so manifest in the statistics of 1860. It is but one reassertion of the genius of the old South."[134] Here with his absolute conception of the ante-bellum South is hinted the purpose which really animated it. That in speaking of the post-bellum development as "one reassertion of the genius of the old South" he did not mean, as very easily might be supposed, that through the earlier history of the section had run a genius for industrialism, is made clear in the following passage, which, though it refers particularly to social relationships, is pertinent for the industrial bearings: