The Fabric of Civilization Part 9

This change in the national complexion had two very important results. It brought into the country a constant stream of cheap labor, polyglot, and lacking in h.o.m.ogeneity, and consequently slow at first to unionize and strike. This characteristic brought another in its train--a lack of stability, and a p.r.o.neness to transiency. The second result was hardly less important. It meant that though labor was relatively plentiful, much of it was unskilled. This lack of skill put a premium upon quant.i.ty production, and led to efforts to develop automatic machinery and labor-saving devices of all kinds. It compelled most American manufacturers to specialize upon the coa.r.s.er kinds of yarns and cloths, made in simple weaves and patterns, in the making of which the minimum amount of skilled labor was required.

Native Stock in Southern Mills

Conditions in the South were somewhat different. From the beginning, the employes here have been almost entirely of native stock. They came from a cla.s.s which previously had little opportunity for any employment of a regular character outside of farming. When the mills were built these folks were given, for the first time, an opportunity for continuous employment. Whole families entered the mills, fathers, mothers and children serving in different or in the same departments. The South at first specialized on ducks, twills, denims, and such coa.r.s.e work. Now, however, there is a growing tendency to diversify the product. The reason is found in the increasing capability of the workers, many of whom have by now spent many years of their lives in the mills, and whose fathers before them were operatives. Unless present conditions change and the South becomes the mecca of immigrants--a development probably less likely now than in the years before the war--there seems to be a strong possibility that a cla.s.s of operatives, rivalling eventually in skill those of the English mill towns, will be developed. The stock is the same, and the latent capabilities are all there. The determining factors will probably be the economic changes of the next few years.

A remaining factor in the organization of the mill is the size of the individual plant, the number of spindles and looms it contains, the number of workers employed, etc. It is in just this particular that some of the most characteristic developments of the American industry are found. About the time of the Civil War, the average New England mill had less than ten thousand spindles. Today the average is probably between fifty and one hundred thousand, and perhaps nearer the latter figure than the former. Some of the mills have nearly, if not quite, a full million spindles in several buildings. The average in the South is much less than the New England average. The industry in the older section is definitely localized, even to the extent of having whole towns devoted almost exclusively to the manufacture of single grades of cloth. In the South the mills are more widely scattered, advantage having been taken of labor supply, water power, and other conditions. Local pride has sometimes caused the establishment of mills in regions economically unfitted for them. Such mills do not long survive. The advantage of large scale production has thus been seized chiefly by the New England mills, but the generally lower wages of the South have tended to equalize the situation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Original Whitney cotton gin, preserved in Smithsonian Inst.i.tute in Washington_]