The current passion for building cotton mills—it was nothing short of this—was stimulated and guided by press[157] and platform in urging, chronicling and praising advances.
The Columbia, Georgia, Enquirer, after recounting the progress of the city in spinning—it had 60,000 spindles—said: "These are the weapons peace gave us, and right trusty ones they are.... The story the spindles tell is one of joy to all, and show (shows) how rapidly we are climbing the hill of prosperity."[158] The affectionate tone of this item from the Rock Hill, S.C. correspondence of The News and Courier is unmistakable: "In conclusion let me say a few words in regard to the 'pet' of the town, the Rock Hill Cotton Factory. This factory is owned and controlled by the citizens of the town, (except $15,000 in stock owned in Charleston). It has a capital of $100,000, has over 6,000 spindles, with 1,500 more to be added in a few days."[159] The Marion, S.C. correspondent of the same paper a year earlier contributed this for his town: "Our wants: A bank, an academy, a cotton factory, a comfortable room for passengers at the depot, an iron foundery, and last, but not least, work upon our streets."[160] So much did cotton mills come to be considered the natural signs of progress that Raleigh made apology for not having a single mill. "There is not a cotton factory in Raleigh, but there are not less than five large planing mills, two foundries, two boiler factories ...", and there follows a list of everything in the corporate limits, including schools and even newspapers.[161]
Under its caption, "The Cotton Mill Campaign", the active News and Courier every few days listed new entries into the field of cotton manufacture. The issue of February 8, 1881, presented a particularly large number of items from different towns. The Newberry Herald exhorted the citizens with reference to Charleston's achievement thus: "Cheer for Charleston—A Movement all Along the Line. Charleston is in a fair way to have two large cotton factories in a short while.... Camden is preparing for a cotton factory. Hodges, Abbeville County, is preparing for a cotton factory. Rock Hill has a cotton factory. Greenville has several cotton factories. Newberry, the best location for a cotton factory in the State, and the place most needing one is not preparing for a cotton factory, and there is no present likelihood that she ever will." The method followed here, of citing the advance of other places in mill building as an incentive, was widely used, and not commonly with the rather complaining tone of the above from Newberry.[162]
That the spirit was in the air is clearly discernible in a Winnsboro contribution: "Why does not Fairfield (the county in which the town of Winnsboro is located) make the experiment? It is said that $15,000 will set in motion over five hundred spindles, and continual additions can be made." While recognizing that water power was difficult of access, steam might be used, for there was plenty of cheap fuel for years to come, and the Charlotte railroad offered easy communication with the world for a mill located along its tracks. The Hampton, S.C. Guardian struck the note: "Factories are springing up all over the State, and our people must not be found lagging in the race of progress."[163]
How the people were reaching out for cotton mills, with their attendant profits and advantages, may be seen in this advertisement appearing in the winter of 1881: "We will give to a Cotton Manufacturing Company, that will organize and locate at Landsford, S.C., with a capital of $300,000 a site, 20 acres of land and 3000 horse water power. Apply for particulars to T. C. Robertson, Allen Jones, Rock Hill, S.C.; Wm. R. Landsford; Edward McCrady, Jr., Charleston."[164]
A little earlier the cotton mill campaign had extended itself to the point of interesting class effort, for the most prominent German citizens of Charleston organized a mill in a short space of time.[165]
The cotton mill campaign had gotten well under way[166] when its further progress was greatly facilitated and its successful outcome made plain by the projection of a plan to display the resources of the Southern States in an exposition at Atlanta. The scheme was first proposed in October of 1860, and the International Cotton Exposition was opened in Atlanta October 5, 1881. The exposition, in organization, history and influence, is inseparably bound up with the name of Edward Atkinson, economist, publicist and manufacturer of Boston. He gave it its inception; in an unselfish and magnanimous spirit he guided its beginnings and brought it, by his advocacy and superintendence, to completion. He was "the father of the Atlanta exposition."[167] In a sincere desire to see the South extricated from the disorganization of the war and the years that followed, he planned this method of showing the people what he considered to be their true interest, namely, concentration upon better methods of cultivating and preparing cotton for market and for manufacture. With a fine comprehension of the most fundamental needs of the section in many directions, he conceived the care of cotton between the field and the factory to be properly the first concern of the Southern States, not temporarily, but for all time. The Atlanta exposition he proposed as the lens through which to focus attention upon this.
But Mr. Atkinson, most singularly for a man of his grasp, penetration and experience, had not reckoned upon the force of the enthusiasm for manufacturing cotton, which, as has been shown, came over the Southern people. That cotton mills were being built he could not but see; that they were making profits he could not deny—but in the economic wholesomeness and permanency of the factories he would not believe. In the International Cotton Exposition he created a Frankenstein to amaze and frighten and torment him. For once the resources, of the South were displayed in visible, tangible form in reasonable compass, and once the people were united upon an effort which should gauge their strength and possibilities, the invitation, or, as some put it, the duty to manufacture the staple in the fields where it grew leaped out as a fact more patent than ever. The people had felt the strength that came from union in a common purpose, and nothing could deter them from following the light that this brought to them. Mr. Atkinson, who had acted in the best of faith and with great ability, was surprised and chagrined; when he found that, while following his lead in showing the necessity of more careful culture and preparation of the crop for manufacture, the South, by the agency of the exposition, was fascinated in going beyond his goal, and building mills to make up the cotton for itself, he protested earnestly, and went to no end of pains to turn the people from their course. But the horse had taken the bit in his mouth, had glimpsed a broader highway open ahead, and the reins that had directed him once were of no avail to arrest his career.
Conscious of his New England milling and insurance interests, it is likely that Edward Atkinson felt the South, which he had tried to help, distrusted him. And though the fact of his connections, coupled with a manner of addressing himself to the Southern people at times unfortunate in its seeming superiority, and tendency to become impatient and didactic, might easily have led the section to regard him with enmity, it is to be remembered to the credit of the Southerners that they showed as great charity for his, as they regarded them, short-comings of judgment, as they held in esteem his friendship and constructive co-operation. The vision which the South had caught rose superior, in almost all cases, to any pleasure to be found in taunting those who differed in view, especially when so much was owing to a man as belonged to Mr. Atkinson. His position is one of the most important in the whole history of cotton manufacturing, not only in the South, but in this country, and it is the most dramatic and pathetic. He stood virtually alone after the exposition had run a few months, protesting impotently against a new state of things, every development of which seemed to cry the lie to his objections. His very antagonism lent impetus to the current setting toward cotton mills for the cotton estates. And, to make the sting even more poignant, instead of looking upon his opposition to Southern cotton manufacturing as representing a class of jealous industrialists at the North—and many things there were to lend color to such a belief—the South was appealing over his head to New England capitalists to come down and help erect factories.[168]
How Southern sentiment had grown beyond Mr. Atkinson's purposes for the exposition is to be seen in the words of A. O. Bacon, speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, in welcoming a party of South Carolina legislators and their friends to the Exposition three months after its opening: "This exposition—marks an important epoch in the industrial history of the country. It has aroused the South to the value of new enterprises and of new methods of labor; it has awakened the North to a realization of the boundless resources and enormous industrial capacities of the South. It comes at a most propitious moment, for the South, in sympathy with the quickening energies which excite the continent, is even now trembling in the initial throes of the mighty industrial revolution that surely awaits her. A great change is about to come upon us. 'In the fabric of thought and of habit' which we have woven for a century we are no longer to dwell, and a new era of progressive enterprise opens before us."[169]