While there has perhaps been no previous effort to bring the several beliefs into parallel presentation, concerning the rise of cotton mills in the South a little body of theory has grown up. Many of the statements are not well-informed, and in other cases they are almost too studied. Aside from a preparatory instance, designed to show the limits of divergence between the various views, the method here chosen is that of relating the different assertions to all of the periods to which they apply, rather than attempting to give at once expositions of each in continuity. It is hoped that in trying to examine the views in detail, the relative weighing of periods as intended by the writers will not be lost. One who made his study with empirical purpose, and may believed to have been not deeply interested in the historical setting of the cotton mills, has made the following observation for South Carolina, taken by him as typical of the Southern States: "The story of the development of the cotton manufacturing industry in South Carolina is not wanting in impressive elements. From the beginning in 1790 till 1900 it was a struggle of gradually increasing intensity and extension."[1] This is a very positive statement of what may be called the continuity theory. Mr. Goldsmith's view is in marked contrast with a representative expression of Mr. Tompkins, like himself a Southerner for considerable time a resident of the North: "The settlement of mountainous and middle North Carolina was practically by the same elements,--Scotch-Irish, Germans, Moravians, and Quakers,--as came to Pennsylvania. Many emigrants landing at Philadelphia and New Castle, Delaware, settled first in Pennsylvania and moved southward through the Valley and Piedmont of Virginia to the Carolinas. Others landed at Charleston and moved northwestward. In South Carolina even the names of several of the northern counties are identical with those of Pennsylvania, as Lancaster, Chester, and York counties.