[20] Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607-1860, p. 537. As indicating further the lack of causation in these earliest ventures, it is said: "Maryland is hardly typical industrially of the Southern States. Its factories date from the Revolution...." (Ibid., in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, pp. 328-9.)
[21] "In this country, as well as in England, the germ of the textile industry existed in the fulling and carding mills; the former, dating earlier, being the mills for finishing the coarse cloths woven by hand in the looms of our ancestors; and in the latter, the carding mill, the wool was prepared for the hand-wheel. At the close of the Revolution the domestic system of manufactures prevailed throughout the states" (Carroll D. Wright, "The Factory System of the U.S." p. 6, in U.S. Census of manufactures, 1880.)
[22] The Bolton Factory was built in 1811 on Upton Creek, nine miles southwest of Washington, Wilkes County, Ga., in 1794, on this site had been erected one of Whitney's first cotton gins, propelled by the water power that later ran the cotton mill. It is said that here Lyon conceived important improvements on the Whitney invention, making a saw gin. (Southern Cotton Spinners' Association proceedings seventh annual convention, pp. 41 ff.) Here is a rather striking indication of the fact that the South was on the right road—a gin, so far from diverting attention entirely to the cultivation of the staple, gave way to a cotton mill which was located on the same site and operated by the same water power.
[23] H. R. Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South, (ed. of 1860) pp. 161-162.
[24] W. F. Marshall, interview, Raleigh, N.C., September 16, 1916.
[25] "The first cotton mill built in North Carolina was built at Lincolnton in 1813 by Michael Schenck.... This mill was the forerunner of that remarkable industrial development which has taken place in North Carolina since that time." (Pleasants, ibid.)
[26] John Nichols, interview, Raleigh, N.C., Sept. 16, 1916. A. A. Thompson, President of the Raleigh Cotton Mill, expressed about the same view in an interview at Raleigh on the same day.
[27] J. L. Hartsell, interview, Concord, N.C., September 2nd 1916.
[28] Kohn, Cotton Mills of South Carolina, p. 15. Cf. Charlotte News, (N.C.) Textile Industrial Edition, Feb., 1917, with reference to the Rocky Mount Mill.
[29] Though their father had been prominent for his conduct of the mill and had displayed in his personality a generous disposition toward the community, the sons were said to be wild and reckless, and when they fell heir to the plant alienated the sympathies of the people of the vicinity. Any possible public character for the business was thus destroyed.