The Clifton Mill near Spartanburg, furnishes a fair example of the distribution of holdings of the capital stock of a larger enterprise. The joint stock company owning the mill operated under a special act of incorporation of the Legislature, exempting the property from taxation for a period of years, and relieving the stockholders of personal liability. The shares were of a par value of $100. and aggregated $500,000 of which $250,000 was paid in. The stock was held mostly in Spartanburg, Charleston, Boston and Baltimore. Spartanburg capitalists owned $200,000 worth of the stock, Charlestonians $150,000, and $50,000 was held in Boston.[206] To make the capital stock $500,000 most of the original stockholders had doubled their subscriptions.[207]
For a factory near Gaffneys, South Carolina, which would need $500,000 capital stock to the amount of $200,000 would be subscribed for in Chester County, it was thought, and for the remaining $300,000 the North would be looked to.[208]
Together with large subscription to the stock of the Atlanta Exposition from the North and East, went an early subscription of $20,000 in Atlanta.[209]
While it might be considered under the heading of the cotton mill campaign, or denominated "Southern enterprise", I believe it will be most interesting to relate at this point briefly the facts in the Columbia canal scheme, as illustrating how domestic capital threw itself into the situation in which the South found herself in 1880, and the years immediately following. It is especially instructive to notice how Northern enterprise, while, so far superior to Southern initiative at all times before, after 1880 failed where in the South sometimes native energy succeeded.
Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, is located at the falls of the Congaree River. Today there is a canal of about three miles in length, 60 or 75 feet in breadth, terminating at the lower part of the city. At the end of the canal is a duck mill. In 1868 the Messrs. Sprague, manufacturers of Rhode Island, took up a plan of developing this water power at Columbia, but "in consequence of their misfortunes, failed", and the whole matter of the canal passed to the hands of the State Canal Commission. Some prominent Columbians, hoping to revive the project, contributed money to the employment of one Mr. Holly, a first-rate hydraulic engineer of Rochester, New York. Mr. Holly was making surveys and progressing satisfactorily when, after three months, his engagement was discontinued. The reason for this was that Thompson and Nagle, engineers of Providence, on a tour of inspection through the South, were attracted to the water power at Columbia, and Mr. Thompson appealed to the State for franchises, in which appeal he was supported by the citizens of Columbia who had helped promote the modest work under Mr. Holly. On February 10, 1880, the final contract between Thompson and Nagle and the State Canal Commission was entered into; by its terms the engineers were to have the use of 200 convicts for three years, and at the expiration of this time they were to have developed at Gervais Street 15,000 horse power of water power, and have in operation a cotton mill of at least 16,000 spindles.
Thompson and Nagle thought the necessary capital could be had at the North. They failed to secure it, and attributed their failure to the turmoil of the presidential campaign which was raging. Though this was probably a valid basis for the appeal to the Legislature for an extension of the rights granted them, the application for extension was denied. At this juncture, modifying the scope of the plans somewhat, the foremost citizens of Columbia took up the matter themselves, and organized the Columbia and Lexington Water Power Company to bring about the development.[210]
Nightly meetings were held of those interested in the purchase of Mr. Thompson's charter. In one hour eleven subscribers gave $5,000 each—$55,000—toward the amount.[211] A few days later the subscriptions in Columbia had reached $117,600, and the expectation was that the sum set to be raised in Columbia—$125,000—would be exceeded.[212]
Mention has been made several times of the Charleston Manufacturing Company. At the end of the first day $120,000 of its capital stock had been taken.[213] A little later the subscriptions to the stock had become $200,000 and more, mostly "for small amounts, which is what is desired. At the present rate the whole capital required will soon be subscribed." On July 6, the News and Courier had these two editorial paragraphs, the justifiable satisfaction pervading which is not to be mistaken: "We are authorized and requested to say that the whole of the stock of the Charleston Manufacturing Company, being half a million dollars, has been subscribed, and that the books are closed. It is useless, therefore, to continue to send in subscriptions.
"We believe that more than three-fifths of the whole capital stock are held in Charleston, so that right here will come the bulk of the direct profit by the working of the company...."
But before the Charleston Manufacturing Company had completed its organization another corporation had come into existence. This was a mill company promoted and most largely subscribed to by the Germans of Charleston, headed by Captain Tecklenburg. Not much was said about the concern in the papers, but of its $100,000 of capital stock, $75,000 were subscribed between January and May of 1881. This Palmetto Manufacturing Company, as it was called, was apparently, the most restricted in its stockholders of any mill that had been projected in the South to this time.