Not a few Southern mills were projected by merchants, frequently small country store-keepers, as they would be called; but it is to be borne in mind that the proprietor of a general store in a rural community or in a small town in the South occupies a position very different from that of the small merchant elsewhere. The economy of the neighborhood pivots upon him--he is the agent of the fertilizer manufacturers, and extends, credit for fertilizers and food until the cotton crop is gathered; he probably markets the cotton when the bales are hauled. He is the link between the great sphere of business without and the little world of affairs within. What the country lawyer is as real estate broker and arbiter of landed fortunes, that, and a great deal more, is the country merchant in all other departments of material activity. Holding, as he did, the contacts of the community with moneyed interests without, it was natural that the merchant should often be the leader, and also natural that he should turn to his mercantile connections for assistance. One case will illustrate how this worked out. James W. Cannon was born at or near the little place of Concord, North Carolina. He early went into a general store as clerk, and through successive stages, largely aided by his attention to business and his civility, he came to own a general merchandise business of his own in the town. He was in the habit of buying brogans from the house of Albert Stone; cloth he got from Leo Loeb, and he had an arrangement by which he shipped raw cotton to William Wood and Son. He decided to build a cotton mill at Concord--really the first at the place belonging to the great period of establishment--and got some $60,000 in subscriptions to stock locally. This was not sufficient capital, $75,000 being aimed for. Mr. Cannon under these conditions went to Stone, to Loeb and to Wood and Son and explained his plans. The mill would enable the town of Concord to grow, and he could do a larger business with each of them. Whether moved by this reasoning, or influenced by the fact, that it was almost worth the amount of the subscription to keep Cannon's business and good will, each of the three firms subscribed to $5,000 worth of stock.[288] Judging from the statement made by an old gentleman who has seen the whole development of Mr. Cannon's interests, he has held to these former merchant-day connections, though he is now as far from country store-keeping as could well be imagined. After explaining that Mr. Cannon in the early days was merchandising and could get money from his mercantile connections at the North, he said that retired wholesale merchants of Philadelphia, New York and Boston have so much confidence in him that they give him any amount of capital he needs.[289]