The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South
John Stuart Mill · en
The size of the plant to be erected was given consideration in financing a
mill, though this did not enter to the extent that one would think.
Opposite views were held as to the practicability of financing small
mills. As far back as 1849 it seems natural to find a plan for financing a
mill, by which fifteen planters would take each $4,000 worth of stock,
select a site near their plantations, each detail three men, making a
building force of forty-five, with teams and an overseer and general
manager, the latter one of the stock-holders; these proceeding to put up a
wooden building of three rooms.[268] A persistence of the economy which
suggested this arrangement is reflected, perhaps, in an editorial of The
Daily Constitution, Atlanta, thirty years later, in which it is pointed
out: "The people of the South who have money to put into manufacturing
enterprises should build spinning mills. The South is not rich enough to
do much weaving, but there is no reason why it should not convert a good
part of the great crop into yarns.... There is plenty of surplus money in
the South with which to establish spinning mills.... We do not refer now
to mammoth mills, but to little neighborhood spinning mills."[269]
The mills about Greenville are nearly all of considerable size. This is
due perhaps to the effect of the example of the failure of the Huguenot
and Campderdown mills, small ventures, both located within the city
limits, as contrasted with the success of Pelzer, built later, and in the
depths of the country. It is said to be the impression around Greenville
that the small mill is hard to finance; so far from considering the small
project suitable to the financial strength of the community in which the
plant is proposed to be located, the reason for the lack of favor for
small concerns was given the writer in the opinion that they could not
attract outside capital, and that consolidations had recently resulted in
South Carolina from this fact.[270] For different reasons, principally
considerations of managements, there is now a well discerned tendency in
the Carolinas, at least, back to the small mill.