For a reason which will appear in a moment, the same importance, from a financing standpoint, does not attach to the machinery manufacturers in their relation to the Southern cotton mills as immediately applies in the case of commission firms. There seems to be a strange diversity of opinion as to the extent of the participation of machinery manufacturers in the financing of the mills. A mill man of Anderson, South Carolina, said that the machinery people have played a larger part than the commission houses in the establishment of Southern mills; that the machinery business was at a standstill in New England at the time of the great activity in mill building in the Southern States, and the machinery manufacturers began to look about for mills to equip.[308] Another informant stated that the machinery manufacturers are not found to be very heavy stockholders; that the stock is sometimes not even in the name of the machinery manufacturing company, but is held by the president and directors of the company.[309] A third, whose testimony, however, may be questioned very seriously on this point, went so far as to say that cotton machinery manufacturers took no stock in the mills of the South to amount to anything; nobody asked them to take stock; the machinery was bought outright.[310] Whatever the extent of the participation of the manufacturers of the machinery in the building of the mills in which it was installed, their arrangement for payment seems to have included three means of reimbursements--stock, cash and time notes; a mill might have purchased machinery from several firms under such agreements.[311] It is said that those mills which bought their machinery for cash, rather than seeking to make the machinery manufacturers to greater or less degree a party to the venture, received rebates and many privileges and advantages, though the mill men were assured, particularly those projecting new plants, that the time payment method was just as advantageous to them.[312] While the fact might better find place in the discussion of the part played by machinery manufacturers and commission houses in the extension of plants, it may be mentioned here, and in conclusion of this particular topic, that Southerners projecting mills were sometimes encouraged, by the offers of machinery manufacturers to sell machinery for stock and on time, to make their plants too large.[313] The opinion was held by a well-informed man very close to the whole Southern industry that the influence of the machinery manufacturers has been good, except that they caused the mills to expand beyond wise limits; they have not exploited the mills otherwise.[314]