The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South Part 13

[100] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 363.

[101] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 166.

[102] Tompkins, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features, preface to appendix.

This is one of a thousand incidents which bring to mind the similarity between Irish temperament and that of the people of the South--how p.r.o.ne both have been to obscure to themselves real issues in public affairs for a joke's sake. And the reflection would be dismal for both peoples but for the finer discernment of which each, at other times, has shown itself capable. Cf. Plunkett.

[103] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 18.

[104] Ingle, Southern Sidelights, p. 47. Cf. Burkett and Poe, Cotton, pp.

312 and 313, and E. C. Brooks, The Story of Cotton, p. 157.

[105] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 169.

[106] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 20. "Lamentable, indeed is it to see so wise and so pure a man as Langdon Cheves, putting forth the doctrine, to South Carolina, that manufactures should be the last resort of a country. With the greatest possible respect for the opinions of this truly great man, and the humblest pretensions on my part, I will venture the a.s.sertion, that a greater error was never committed by a statesman."

(Ibid., p. 14) For a very fine pa.s.sage, omitted here only because of its length, showing the fallacy of Cheves' position, and defining what Gregg meant by "domestic manufactures"--not household industry, but the erection of steam mills in Charleston, of cotton factories there and throughout the State; "I mean, that, at every village and cross-road in the State, we should have a tannery, a shoe-maker, a clothier, a hatter, a blacksmith ... a wagon maker ... this is the kind of manufactures I speak of, as being necessary to bring forth the energies of a country, and give healthful and vigorous action to agriculture, commerce and every department of industry"--See Ibid., pp. 14-15-16. The Southern Quarterly Review in 1845 quoted Cheves: "'Manufacturing should be the last resort of industry in every country, for one forced as with us, they serve no interests but those of the capitalists who set them in motion, and their immediate localities'." And Mr. Kohn remarks, "This expression was not peculiar to any one cla.s.s of leaders in South Carolina at that time," and he instances other examples. (Kohn, Cotton Mill of S.C., p. 13.) Cf. also references to Burkett and Poe and to Brooks.

[107] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 14. See p. 52.

[108] Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, pp. 19-20.

[109] Ibid., p. 20.

[110] Gregg, Speech on Blue Ridge Railroad, p. 67.

[111] Gregg, Speech on Blue Ridge Railroad, p. 29.

[112] Quoted in The News and Courier, Charleston, March 9, 1881. Said Olmsted in 1856: "Singularly simple, childlike ideas about commercial success, you find among the Virginians.... The agency by which commodities are transferred from the producer to the consumer, they seem to look upon as a kind of swindling operation: ... They speak angrily of New York, as if it fattened on the country without any good in return." (Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 138.)

[113] "... the labor of negroes and blind horse can never supply the place of _steam_, and this power is withheld lest the smoke of an engine should disturb the delicate nerves of an agriculturist; or the noise of the mechanic's hammer should break in upon the slumber of a real estate holder, or importing merchant, while he is indulging in fanciful dreams, or building on paper, _the Queen City of the South_--the _paragon_ of the age. No reflections on the members of the City Council are here intended, they are no doubt fairly representing public opinion on this subject...."

(Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry, p. 23.)

[114] "The State of South Carolina has been extremely guarded in extending grants to banking inst.i.tutions, and in this she has shown her wisdom, for it is an extremely dangerous power to exercise." He hoped, however, that the danger to be apprehended from banking privileged would "not be confounded with, and brought injudiciously to bear against the charters which are necessary to develop the resources of our country, and give an impetus to all industrial pursuits.... The practice of operating by a.s.sociated capital gives a wonderful stimulus to enterprise, and where such investments are fashionable, no undertaking is too great to be consummated. Why is it that the Bostonians are able in a day, or a week, to raise millions at one stroke, to purchase the land on both sides of a river, for miles, to secure a great water power and the erection of a manufacturing city?... The divine, lawyer, doctor, schoolmaster, guardian, widow, farmer, merchant, mechanic, common labourer, in fact, the whole community is made tributary to these great enterprises. The utility and safety of such inst.i.tutions is no longer problematical.... If we shut the door against a.s.sociated capital and place reliance on individual exertion, we may talk over the matter and grow poorer for fifty years to come, without effecting the change in our industrial pursuits, necessary to renovate the fortunes of our State. Individuals will not be found amongst us who are willing to embark their 100, 200 or $300,000 in untried pursuits: ... If liberal charters were granted, one hundred successful establishments would spring into existence, where one, of feeble order, could be expected from individual effort.... About three-fourths of the manufacturing of the United States, is carried on by joint-stock companies: ... We shall certainly have to look to such companies to introduce the business with us...." He showed the perpetuity of the corporate form by instancing one South Carolina cotton factory operated by a joint stock company; "... there is but one of the original proprietors living, yet the factory is still going on prosperously, producing as good results as it ever has done ...", and this mill he contrasted with the venture of an individual which was prosperous until his death, when the legatees, not able to carry on the manufacture, forced the sale of the property at half its value. (Gregg, An Enquiry into the Propriety of Granting Charters of Incorporation for Manufacturing and Other Purposes, in South Carolina, pp. 4-11.)

[115] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, pp. 314-315.

[116] Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, p. 361.

[117] Ibid., pp. 358-359.

[118] Ingle, Southern Side Lights, p. 32 ff. "There were 101 persons in the jails of Georgia on June 1, 1860; Virginia had 189; Ma.s.sachusetts, 1161 and Illinois, 489. In the open life of the South and West, where men could easily get to the land, there was little crime and jails were often empty; in the industrial belt the prisons were always occupied. In like manner and for the same reasons Southern and Western hospitals for the insane and homes for the poor often showed very small percentages of these unfortunates." (William E. Dodd, Expansion and Conflict, p. 231.) Cf. the map on p. 188, showing the industrial belt of 1860 to extend along the Atlantic Seaboard from New Hampshire to the head of Chesapeake Bay, covering the coastal States, with scattering development indicated to the westward. The territory south of Maryland shows a few plants of an output of $250,000.

[119] Upon this whole matter, see Scherer, p. 179 ff. "In 1816, when Webster opposed protection, there was a capital of only about $52,000,000 invested in textile manufacture, of which much still lay in the South. In 1828, when he reversed his position, this capital had probably doubled, and had become localized in and about New England." (Ibid., p. 181.) Cf.

Ibid., p. 234.

[120] Scherer, p. 152. "When the United States of America was formed, manufacturing interests were as well developed in the South as the North.

Slavery ... existed under protection of law more than a hundred years in Ma.s.sachusetts before it was tolerated by law in Georgia. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the tariff was not a matter which was exclusively political.... The subject ceased to be an economic one and became a political one in proportion as slavery grew in the South and diminished in the North, and in inverse proportion as manufactures dried up in the South and became of greater importance in the North.... The time came when the South stood for free trade and the North for protection.

This was because slavery made agriculture more profitable in the South and protection made manufacturing more profitable in the North with the South as a protected market." (Tompkins, The Tariff and Reciprocity.)

[121] Tompkins, Tariff and Protection.

[122] Clark, in South in Building of Nation, Vol. V, p. 316 ff. See pp.

30-31-32. Contrast Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. I, pp. 133-137.

[123] But some of the agitation in favor of industries in this period, as in other ante-bellum and indeed post-bellum years, had a flavor not symptomatic of healthy desire for improvement. One hundred and thirty-one delegates represented nineteen North Carolina counties at a meeting held in Salisbury in 1836, at which resolutions were adopted asking the legislature to give a.s.sistance in the building of railroads; another evidence of this interest was the Knoxville railroad convention of about the same date. Of the advantages which it was agreed would flow from the building of the Charleston and Cincinnati Railroad, it was declared that "it will form a bond of union among the States which will give safety to our property and security to our inst.i.tutions." (Tompkins, History of Mecklenburg, Vol. I, p. 125.) Of more positive character was the utterance of a Southerner who viewed with deep concern the danger that the North would crush slavery and place the South under complete submission to tariff aggressions, congressional representation for the latter section finding a stop in the limit to slave territory: "Under these circ.u.mstances, the true policy of the south is distinct and clearly marked. She must resort to the same means by which power is acc.u.mulated at the North, to secure it for herself. She must embark in that system of manufacturing which has been so successfully employed at the north.... All civilized nations are now dependent upon our staple to give employment to their machinery and their labor.... If, then, we manufacture a large portion of it ourselves, we reduce the quant.i.ty for export, and the compet.i.tion for that remainder will add greatly to our wealth, while it will place us in a position to dictate our own terms. The manufactories will increase our population; increased population and wealth will enable us to chain the southern States proudly and indissolubly together by railroads and other internal improvements; and these works by affording a speedy communication from point to point, will prove our surest defense against either foreign aggression or domestic revolt." (J. D. B. DeBow, Industrial Resources of the South and Southwest, Vol. II, p. 127.) J. H.

Taylor, of Charleston, combatted the antipathy toward ma.s.sing the poor whites in factories with the reflection that small farming in compet.i.tion with slave labor brought discontent that might mean social upheaval, whereas the factory opened a door of opportunity that allowed of intelligence and stability; with the chance of coming to own a slave, "they would increase the demand for that kind of property, and would become firm and uncompromising supporters of Southern inst.i.tutions."

(Ingle, Southern Sidelights, pp. 25-26.)

[124] In earlier pages he has developed with much care the promising industrial status of the Colonial and Revolutionary South. "In the Southern colonies iron making became an important industry, even before the beginning of the eighteenth century." The activity in Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia is shown: Governor's Spottswood's ventures in Virginia, the pa.s.sage in 1727 by the Virginia General a.s.sembly of "an act for encouraging adventures in iron-works"; South Carolina forges built in 1773 are dwelt upon. His original investigations reveal valuable facts as to iron-making in North Carolina and upper South Carolina--details are given of the works of E.

Graham & Company, formed in 1826 and later merged with the King's Mountain Iron Company; the Magnetic Iron Company, 1837, near the former plant, and the South Carolina Manufacturing Company. It is to be noticed, however, as a modification upon the good effect which might have been expected from these enterprises, that the Graham Company had a considerable part of its capital invested in slaves, and sixty per cent. of the Magnetic Company's capital of $250,000 was used for the same purpose. (Richard H. Edmonds, Facts About the South, Ed. 1894, pp. 3 ff.)

[125] Ibid., pp. 10 ff.

[126] Edmonds, p. 18 ff.

[127] In reference to the false idea of wealth and prosperity in the ante-bellum South, it has been said, "A delusion of great wealth was created in the listing as taxable property of slaves to the amount of at least two thousand millions." (A. B. Hart, The Southern South, p. 218.)

[128] Edmonds, p. 2.

[129] Ibid., p. 14.

[130] Edmonds, pp. 1-2.

[131] Ibid., pp. 2-8, 19-20.

[132] Edmonds, p. 21. Cf. Ibid., pp. 19-20.

[133] E. G. Murphy, The Present South, p. 97.

[134] Murphy, p. 102.

[135] Murphy, pp. 10-11.

[136] Murphy, p. 21.

[137] There were earlier expressions of the same spirit, some, as if in foretaste of the South's fate under the old system, before the Civil War, and others immediately following the war. But the motives were liable to be selfish and unsound, as for the purpose of retaining slavery, and if they did not lack, that fire and conviction which marked the full movement commencing fifteen years later, they were fruitless of large results. "We are going to work in good earnest, not only to repair the waste places of the war, but to build up and improve and prosper, and to show the world that we can be good soldiers in peace as we are in war." (W. J. Barbee, published 1866) Cf.

[138] News and Observer, Raleigh, N.C., Nov. 9, 1880.

[139] "... business is driving sentimental politics to the woods." (News and Observer, Dec. 31, 1880.)

[140] Reprinted in News and Courier, Charleston, S.C., July 11, 1881.

[141] "... they (the New York Times, which carried an editorial questioning the word of General Wade Hampton, and the 'malignants' of the Republican party) must realize the difference between a Southern gentleman and a Northern malignant. They know that the former cannot prevaricate, while the Northern leaders of the Republican party and the malignants are usually devoid of personal honor." This is from an editorial in the News and Observer, Raleigh, N.C., and is too characteristic of most of the political writing in the South which was an outcome of reconstruction.

[142] Reprinted in News and Courier, May 14, 1881.

[143] Reprinted from the Memphis Avalanche, in The Daily Const.i.tution, Atlanta, Ga., March 30, 1880.

[144] Reprinted in News and Courier, March 18, 1881. The writer had been a slave-holder.