The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South

by Broadus Mitchell

The foregoing paragraphs have been designed to lead up to a very interesting view expressed by an author often quoted in these pages. Speaking of the years 1840-1860, Mr. Clark has said: "In the South the most striking feature of this period was the gradual breaking down of a traditional antipathy of manufactures. This hostility was opposed to the obvious interests of a region where idle white labor, abundant raw materials, and ever-present water-power seemed to unite conditions so favorable to textile industries. Cotton planting engaged the labor of the negro and the thought and capital of a directing white class, but the natural operatives of the South remained unemployed, and the capital of the North and of Europe was mobile enough to flow to the point of maximum profit without regard to sectional or national lines, were such a profit known to be assured by Southern factories. Slavery as a system probably had less direct influence upon manufactures than is commonly supposed, but the presence of the negro through slavery was important." It is noticed that white immigration from Europe, which at this time supplied the most considerable mechanical skill, avoided districts heavily populated with negroes; that plantation self-sufficiency meant isolation with small need for good communicating roads; that the market for middle-grade goods was restricted by the servile character of the colored population; that the credit system, by which factors controlled the directioning of productive capital, rested upon cotton culture by negro labor; that while the corn laws held in England, reciprocity between the Southern States and the mother country tended to discourage manufactures in this section while the conditions of commerce favored manufacture in the North. "These business interests, supported by social traditions and political sectionalism, were strengthened in their opposition to new industries by a wide-spread popular prejudice against organized manufactures.... Nevertheless the South chafed continually under the discomfort of an ill-balanced system of production...." He speaks of the canal at Augusta and of cotton mills at Charleston, Mobile, Columbus, New Orleans and Memphis directly following the writings and object lesson of William Gregg in his Graniteville factory and declares: "Though some large undertakings were wrecked by the financial crisis of 1857, more from weak banking support than from faults of operation, modern cotton manufacturing in the South dates from the founding of Graniteville rather than from the post-bellum period.... However, viewed in comparison with the cotton manufactures of the North, those of the South were still insignificant.... Nevertheless, the present attainment of the industry assured its definite future growth, and ultimate national importance."[60]

And Mr. Kohn has said that "The real and the lasting development of cotton mills in South Carolina might be started with the Graniteville Cotton Mill...."[61]

It is difficult for the present writer to see the distinction which Mr. Clark desires to draw between the effect of the presence of the negro and the presence of slavery. Well enough to assert that the capital of the North and of Europe was mobile enough to flow across the Atlantic and across Mason and Dixon's line were a profit in manufacture in the South known to be assured, but the fact is that capital did not flow in for industrial purposes because bright manufacturing prospects had not been proved out, and this largely because home enterprise was a laggard while slavery claimed the section's capital resources for cotton cultivation. The absence of immigration was as certainly the effect of slavery.[62] While it is true that for long years after emancipation, and continuing to this day, the influence of the presence of the negro in restraining inflow of immigrants, particularly of artizans, it is evident the lessening of this deterrent and the removal of other nearly equal drawbacks could not proceed or commence while slavery existed. It should be clear to anyone that from the point of view of the independent white workman the presence of the negro in slavery held as a far more forcible objection than the presence of the negro in freedom. His killing economic competition and his radiated social poison were beyond any dispute and beyond prospect of remedy until he was made at least a free producer. There could not, in the second place, be development of schools and roads, and there could not be fraternization of work-people, while slavery continued. And the prospect for immigration for the South has taken its rise from the Civil War.

It was slavery that made plantation self-sufficiency in primitive needs universal, that made isolation and physical barriers to intercourse. The credit system in its hey-day rested in large degree upon supply by the factor of all industrial products, which needs must be sustained so long as every local energy was foredoomed for absorption into cotton growing.

It can not rightly be said that the traditional antipathy to manufactures in the South was "opposed to the obvious interests of a region where idle white labor, abundant raw materials, and ever-present water-power seemed to unite conditions so favorable to textile industries", if Southern consciousness and purpose is meant. This applies particularly to the labor factor. It will be shown later in this study that in the period before the war the mills often employed slaves as the exclusive operatives in the factory, either when belonging to the management or hired from their owners; in some cases slaves or free negroes were employed as operatives in the same mills with whites; and finally, and more importantly, through the reconstruction years and at the very outset of the cotton mill era the thought of the establishers of mills nor infrequently groped out in the inclination again to engage negro hands and to induce white operatives to come from the North and even from England and the Continent—overlooking the native Anglo-Saxon population as a useful supply of workers as though it had not been there. Before the war the presence of raw cotton was certainly looked upon more usually rather as a guarantee of economic independence than as a stimulus to produce within the section those products of manufacturing which the staple was potent to purchase.

It is not implied that conspicuous promulgators and exemplars of the need for a change in economic activity, such as William Gregg and others, and more still of lesser consequence of whom we have fewer evidences, were not products of a reaction that showed itself from the long continuance of slavery, but they stand out, impotent as they are striking, against a dull and motionless background of prevalent system.

Materials and viewpoint are both too well understood to require here demonstration of the preventive influence which slavery and cotton had upon industry in the South. And yet some observations may be brought out for the special purposes of this study, looking especially through the eyes of Southern men. Henry Watterson has said: "The South! The South! It is no problem at all. The story of the South may be summed up in a sentence; she was rich, she lost her riches; she was poor and in bondage; she was set free, and she had to go to work; she went to work, and she is richer than ever before. You see it was a ground-hog case. The soil was here, the climate was here, but along with them was a curse, the curse of slavery."[63] Probably not over-induced by bitter animus is Helper's direct charge: "And now to the point. In our opinion, an opinion which has been formed from data obtained by assiduous researches, and comparisons, from laborious investigation, logical reasoning, and earnest reflection, the causes which have impeded the progress and prosperity of the South, which have dwindled our commerce, and other similar pursuits, into the most contemptible insignificance; sunk a large majority of our people in galling poverty and ignorance, rendered a small minority conceited and tyrannical, and driven the rest away from their homes; entailed upon us a humiliating dependence on the Free States; disgraced us in the recess of our own souls, and brought us under reproach in the eyes of all civilized and enlightened nations—may all be traced to one common source, and there find solution in the most hateful and horrible word, that was ever incorporated into the vocabulary of human economy—Slavery!"[64]

Tompkins saw clearly, and in effect said again and again, that "the result of the introduction and growth of the system of slavery was revolutionary; it turned the energies of the people almost wholly to the cultivation of cotton; it practically destroyed all other industries...."[65] And again, "By the influence of the negro the South lost its manufactures and largely its commerce, and became practically a purely agricultural section of the nation."[66] Speaking of the effect of the cotton gin and the cultivation of the staple by slave labor, he said: "The shops which had been productive of trading were closed to the public, and were utilized only for what was needed on the plantation.... There were no industries requiring skill or thought, and there was no necessity for scientific farming or anything else scientific.... Slavery not only demonstrated that people will not think unless it is necessary, but also that they will not work unless it is necessary.... Within three decades after the invention of the cotton gin, slavery had accomplished its revolution. The people whose minds had been occupied with diversified industries and industrial expansion, were narrowed down to the development and growth of cotton.... The mills and shops lay idle, the abundant natural resources were ignored, and everything staked upon one occupation...."[67] This writer was fond of linking the economic trend of the South in 1800 with that which emerged after Reconstruction, as thus, "In the latter part of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth there was a well-developed and extensive manufacturing interest in the South. White mechanics were numerous, and lived well. The growth of the institution of slavery had nearly destroyed all manufactures ... by the middle of the nineteenth century.... After the abolition of slavery, and after a period of disastrous experiment in trying to legislate on social and political conditions 'without regard to race, color or previous condition of servitude,' education, intelligence or moral character ... manufactures were quickly re-established in the South, and the descendants of the mechanics of former days ceased at once to be 'poor white trash' and became with marvelous quickness as good carpenters, machinists, carders, weavers, etc., as their ancestors were."[68]

Something of Tompkins' newspaper published and publicist habit comes out in this conclusion of his advice against the usefulness of negroes in cotton mills: "Dependence upon the negro as a laborer has done infinite injury to the South. In the past it brought about a condition which drove the white laborer from the South or into enforced idleness. It is important to re-establish as quickly as possible respectability for white labor."[69]

Not only is it to be said that "the growth of slavery stifled manufactures",[70] but it is noteworthy that while this baleful influence lasted no improvements were made in the methods or appliances for the preparation of raw cotton for the market. Except in size and superficial appearance there was no change in the ante-bellum gin, gin-house and screw from 1820 to 1860. "The cotton was packed by hand, carried into the gin-house in baskets by laborers, carried to the gin by laborers, pushed into the lint-rooms, carried to the screw, packed in the box of the screw and bound with ropes, all by hand." But after the war came a feeder, a condenser, a hand-press to be used in the lint room, and cotton elevators. "... the spirit of enterprise, invention and improvement in the people of the South has not only revived, but the entire method and all the machinery and appliances for preparing cotton for the market have been revolutionized."[71]