The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South

by Broadus Mitchell

This author is to be accepted in his general dictum that "The official return of cotton manufactures in 1810 is too inaccurate either to measure the extent of the industry or to describe its location. Probably many census agents did not know what a textile mill was; and they classed as factories, plantation loom houses and the cottages or shops of village jenny-spinners. This explains the large number of establishments reported from the South and West. Advertising then to the mills just noticed and to water-driven spindles near Fayetteville, he continues: "Less study had been given to the industrial records of the South than to those of the North, and during the subsequent period of indifference or hostility to manufacturing in that section some annals of the earlier interest in those pursuits were doubtless lost. Small mills may have been started in the Carolinas and Georgia, and after a brief infancy have vanished and left no name; but, if so, the fact is curious rather than significant for it had no relation to the subsequent history of the industry."[20]

While it is thus seen that the textile industry in the South in the latter part of the eighteenth and earlier part of the nineteenth centuries was stamped with every hall-mark of domestic production, and while they were ephemeral in their operation, it is to be remembered that a century and a half ago the industry in England as well as in America bore more or less of the domestic character;[21] and Southern States showed instances of power-driven machinery before Samuel Slater built the first Arkwright mill in Rhode Island. The South had planter-manufacturers it is true, but this striking link with agriculture as contrasted with New England is easily explained in the more general fertility of the soil and the effect this of course had upon the occupation of the people. Furthermore, the very fact of this coupling indicates the inclination towards economic balance and the promise in these years of a rational development.[22] Bearing these things in mind and viewing the wastage which he conceived to have been wrought by slavery, Helper was probably within justified bounds when he declared:

"Had the Southern States, in accordance with the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, abolished slavery at the same time the Northern States abolished it, there would have been, long since, and most assuredly at this moment, a larger, wealthier, wiser, and more powerful population, south of Mason and Dixon's line, than there now is north of it."[23]

Sentiment as to the right description of the mills of the Revolutionary years is clear. Coming now to those of the period later than 1810, a subject is entered in which some controversy is involved. These plants may be denominated in general the "old mills". While the two ideas are closely related, a distinction must be held in mind between the influence of these factories upon the later great development and the proper character which is to be ascribed to them as of themselves. Only the latter object is primary in the present chapter.

A North Carolinian, who, while of post-bellum experience only, has been closely identified with one of the foremost industrial communities of the South, told the writer that in his opinion it had been "a clear case of arrested development; it would have all come sooner, but for the war. It might be said that had slavery continued, manufacturing would never have come in the South; but it is also true that slavery was doomed. There is no use in talking about what might not have happened had slavery continued."[24] To uphold this view that the Civil War interrupted a course which was clearly laid down in the years previous, it ought to be capable of demonstration that the old mills had essentially the same character as those of the great period, with only those lacks which were inherent in the industry of the formative stage. A manufacture which is forerunner in time is not necessarily antecedent in effect.[25] The South had small cotton farmers of a prevalent sort before ever Knapp taught efficient production. If the old mills were of a substantially different stripe from those of the period of fifteen years after the war, the genesis of the industry, economically speaking, vests in the later date.

Another North Carolinian asserted that "In the older mills before the war, the seed had been planted, and cultivation was renewed after the war. The ante-bellum mills were pretty well known throughout the country. The woolen mills at Salem, and the cotton mills in Alamance and a few in Gastonia were known. The fact that such goods as 'Alamance' had a name already was an advantage."[26] But the mere fact that the old mills were known is not enough; it is further interesting that he continued to speak of them in close conjunction with the names of the families and manufacturers who owned them—the personal factor stood out in his mind. It is easy to find a number of undescriminating statements, as that the mills of Concord were the natural outgrowth of the old McDonald Mill, that there was a manufacturing tradition in the place.[27]

Not a few plants in the South have been in continuous operation since an early date. Mr. Kohn believes that the one with the longest record is that founded at Autun, near Pendleton, South Carolina, in 1838, by F. B. Sloan, Thomas Sloan and Berry Benson.[28] But this does not mean that many of these, so far from inspiring the later development, were not themselves by its stimulus so greatly changed as to be radically different from their former character. In addition to the general neglect accorded the old mills by public estimation, there is evidence that positive local dislike fell to one long-established enterprise at a date even as late as the seventies.[29]

It seems hardly necessary to controvert, in the light of the spirit with which mills were built about 1880 and the demonstrated total newness of the hands to the processes and even the idea of textile manufacture, an opinion that not only did the ante-bellum mills serve as a starting point for the later great development, but domestic weaving had accustomed the people of the industry.[30]

A clear distinction, and one too often lacking, was made by Carroll D. Wright between first establishments and genuine factory development in reference to the industry of Philadelphia and New England. Using English spinning inventions, "During the war (Revolution) the manufacturers of Philadelphia extended their enterprises, and even built and run (ran) mills which writers often call factories, but they can hardly be classed under that term. Similar efforts, all preliminary to the establishment of the factory system, were made in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1780."[31] While it is not pretended that the Southern mills of a later period were of quite as limited a character as is here meant, it is wholesome to bear this point in mind.

The history of the Southern cotton mills of the period embracing the thirty years following 1810 is rather hazy.[32] Facts important to this discussion, however, stand out. In the first place, there seems to have been a good deal of moving about from this water-power to that, the machinery being hauled from place to place with apparent convenience.[33] A founder would sell an enterprise, build another and sell it and build a third.[34] It was difficult to convey machinery to the factory when purchased at a distance. That for the Mount Hecla Mills about 1830 was shipped from Philadelphia to Wilmington, North Carolina, up the Cape Fear river to Fayetteville, and then across country by wagon to Greensboro. Machinery for the Hill factory in Spartanburg county, consisting in 1816 or 1817 of seven hundred spindles, had to be brought by wagon from Charleston.[35] Some of the machinery for the Michael Schenck mill, built near Lincolnton, North Carolina, in 1813, was bought in Providence and hauled by wagon from Philadelphia.[36] For this mill a portion of the machinery was built by a brother-in-law of Schenck, and when the dam broke and it became necessary to rebuild further down the creek, a contract was made with Michael Blom, a local workman, for additional machinery.[37] Other mills had locally manufactured equipment. Spindles for the original Bivingsville mill are said to have been made in a blacksmith shop.[38] "Much machinery for the early cotton mills was made by the local blacksmiths. They were important men in the community and often grew prosperous."[39] In those days the blacksmith was a more skillful mechanic than in these, but the machinery they produced must have been crude even for that period.