The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South

by Broadus Mitchell

In the broken and all but disheartened condition of the South after enduring the war, radical rule and defeat of political hopes, this conception of another economic future, once it burst upon the consciousness of the Southern people, amounted to nothing less than a religion.[145] Every one of the old pangs added devotion to the new purpose. The whole pride of the South seemed about to go to disruption, and the imminent danger of this lent a passionate loyalty to the changed program which appealed to everything that was best and noblest in the people.

The new spirit was strongest in North and South Carolina and in that portion of Georgia contiguous to South Carolina. Distance from this region as a center about marks the intensity of feeling and comprehensiveness of grasp with which the impulse was voiced. Florida and Mississippi felt it little, due probably to their position so very far South as to be still submerged in misery; Virginia was only slightly affected and Maryland hardly at all in the same sense as the middle South, because of proximity to the North and difference of character, by reason of the absence of cotton as the staple. North and South Carolina and the region about Augusta, Georgia, gave the plan its first conception and its most whole-hearted support because, it appears, North Carolina is by nature resourceful and hardy above any Southern State, and South Carolina, despite every discouragement, would have the heart to try again because she is thoroughbred in a company of thoroughbreds.[146]

Just as the philosophy varied in intensity territorially, so it varied in degree within the same region. Some wished salvation through material advance for the sake of the State; this was natural, as growing out of a well-known loyalty of the citizens of Southern commonwealths.[147]

Others with larger view proclaimed the new gospel for the whole South as a section, rather adopting an attitude of aloofness toward the North, wishing the Southern people to work out their great problem without assistance from those who would be predisposed to meddlesome criticism. It is true that reorganization for the South was the most national thing Southerners could turn themselves to at that time, and in the judgment of many still is, but speakers and writers often failed of just the most fortunate expression of their purpose in that they did not strike the national note very consciously.[148]

It is something to have gone through what the South went through and come out not dispirited utterly, not defiant against fate or enemies, not forgetful of the past, but, remembering the worst, determined soberly, quietly, thoroughly to do the fundamental thing and do it nationally. It was left for Charleston more than all others—noblesse oblige—to speak this greatest message:

"The Southern people must be national themselves, in their aspirations and conduct, if they would have the government truly national in spirit", and have Garfield "President of the whole country, and not of a section, or party, to have a government of 'the whole country', to be entitled to it, we must think of the whole country as our own, and demand no more than we are ready to give. It must come to this. In the near future the successful leaders, South and North, will be those whose first thought is for the Republic, men who are national in feeling and purpose; men who understand that the political and social strength and safety of each State depend not on isolation and separation, but on combination and union."[149]

By the late fall and winter of 1880 the mind of the South was ripe for progress and accomplishment. Perhaps the first gropings after procedure struck upon the consideration that manufactures would add another profit to the profit of agriculture. The big, general conception was first grasped without refinements or modifications or drawbacks; it was received with almost childlike simplicity and faith.[150] But it came to be ingrained. "The cotton which now comes into Charleston and is sold here pays commissions to the factors and brokers, and when shipped leaves behind it the price of the drayage, compressing and storage. Cotton which comes into Charleston and is manufactured here is doubled in value, and an amount equal, at least, to the value of the raw cotton when it reached the city boundary is distributed among the people of Charleston. This is the simple key to the prosperity which invariably attends the development of manufactures. Manufacturing gives additional value to raw material, and this additional value goes into the communities where the manufacturing is done. At present Charleston does nothing to increase the value of the cotton which comes here for sale. It leaves us as it finds us. The city lives on the pickings and scrapings....

"Cotton mills change all this. A bale of raw cotton worth forty dollars is spun into yarns or cloth worth eighty dollars.... The stockholders and the working people get the whole difference between the cost of the cotton and the value of the yarns or cloth, except what little may be expended for material that cannot be purchased here."[151]

President H. P. Hammett, of the Piedmont Factory, in a remarkable address before the State Agricultural and Mechanical Society and State Grange, of South Carolina, to which reference will several times be made, after describing the earlier absorption of the South in a single pursuit, and the ills that grew from this, said: "A new condition of things and a changed sentiment amongst the people prevail at present; with the changed relations of society and institutions a sentiment favorable to a diversity of pursuits has developed ... a disposition is manifested to develop the many resources heretofore lying dormant or hidden.[152] Capital when needed is furnished, and men of energy, enterprise and ability develop ... the general sentiment of the people is to utilize all the facilities within their reach.... Under such circumstances it is natural that the public mind should be directed to the manufacture of their great staple."[153]

There were a score of reasons making this course seem plausible.[154] They were advanced, scrutinized, at the South sometimes accepted with a grain of salt, at the North not infrequently flatly and stoutly challenged as absurd; they were patiently explained or difiantly, and not always with the closest reasoning, flung in the faces of their objectors—but finally they were proclaimed as gospel, and in this sign the South set out to conquer. Of these beliefs is to be placed first and foremost the conviction that, other things aside, manufacturing was most economical and so logically belonged, at the source of production. Here is the doctrine, given in all simplicity, and not without the force characteristic of newspaper correspondences of that day: "Sir, it matters not what anyone may say to the contrary, common sense tells us that other things—machinery, skilled labor, motive power and facilities of shipment—being equal, a cotton factory in the midst of cotton fields must prove more profitable than the same concern a thousand miles from its base of supply could possibly be."[155] Other factors there were—cheap labor, unused water powers, abundance of wood and coal nearby, local market for the sale of product, longer running time than in the North, a favorable climate, saving in fuel and light, absence of damage to cotton by compress, saving in bagging and ties, assistance to be given to women and children much in need of work—all of them bore their part in focussing the energies of the South upon that program which was to mean so much in so many ways—the "cotton mill campaign."[156]