A burly, forceful man in middle life, who has risen from foot pedlar to
mill president, said with frankness: "I am making more money than I know
what to do with. I am ashamed to take it!" He showed me the statements of
the orders for product with which his four mills would be kept busy for
the next four or five months. He expected to clear $60,000 on the output
of each plant for this period.[393] Mr. Robinson, previously quoted,
recognizes that the cotton mills at Gastonia are more prosperous than
those of any other section of which he knows.[394] Not even early in the
period, when mills were first building, did they make such profits as now,
is the opinion of an old manufacturer at Gastonia.[395]
The foregoing citation of the earnings of various mills at various points
of time in the period since their establishment has served to exhibit the
general movement of profits. At the outset, most conditions were favorable
to large gains--there was little competition, labor was most plentiful and
cheap, the lack of advantageous marketing facilities was to some degree
offset by purely local demand for the product, and the deficiencies of
management tended to be neutralized by the presence of physical advantages
which disappeared when a more advanced development increased the size of
plants, widened the area from which raw cotton was drawn, and extended the
market for product. It is said repeatedly that in those days any fool
could make money in cotton manufacture in the South.[396]
With the closing years of the second decade of the mill growth, most of
these advantaging circumstances were fading before the increase of
competition. Their very success was proving fatal to the mills. They had
ceased to be local affairs. When outside influences came in--commission
and machinery men--new and difficult problems had to be faced. The
factories were assuming the physical proportions which they were bound to
assume, and which it was right they should assume, but they ran ahead of
the development in the textile industry, and in the South of expertness of
management, business resourcefulness and economic outlook. The spirit
could not keep up with the flesh, and the mind lagged behind the body.
The prosperity which the mills are now enjoying they very well understand
to be hectic, the result of the European War. They were having a hard time
enough until the war came and put them all on velvet, as someone expressed
it; 25% of the Southern Mills were in bad shape, defaulting an interest,
etc.[397]