The Life Cycle of a Typical Piedmont Carolinas Cotton Mill Town

Volume 7, Issue 3, Spring2012

The Life Cycle of a Typical Piedmont Carolinas Cotton Mill Town

William Douglas Cooper Professor Business Information Systems and Operations Management Belk College of Business University of North Carolina at Charlotte Charlotte, NC, USA [email protected]

ABSTRACT

In this article the author traces the twentieth century evolution of cotton textile mill towns in the Piedmont Carolinas. A typical twentieth century mill town in this area was Dr. Cooper’s home town of Marion, North Carolina, and is the focus of the article. Unlike most mill town articles that focus on the mill village family, Dr. Cooper uses his experiences as a “town kid,” textile college professor, and operations vice president of three different textile firms to present a broad, integrated view of the textile mill towns of the Piedmont Carolinas and the political, social and economic forces that defined them during the twentieth century. In the article the author challenges the conventional wisdom, expressed by Sinclair Lewis and others, that the Carolinas’ cotton textile mills “exploited” their employees.

Keywords: textile mills, cotton, historical textile plants, textile villages

Introduction these industrial plants, Marion became one In 1844 at a crossroads in a central of North Carolina’s many “mill towns.” part of McDowell County, the town of Marion Manufacturing Company Marion, North Carolina was established as began operations in Marion, North Carolina the County Seat. Through the Civil War, as a cotton textile mill in 1910. During the Reconstruction, and more than the next half summer of 2011 the buildings of the old mill century, the town served the area farmers as were taken down. The structures were not the seat of government and as a place to buy imploded to generate an instantaneous pile and sell with an eye toward the of broken bricks but rather were removed replenishment of their needed supplies. The brick by brick. The demolition gave the first industrial plants of the Marion area effect of offering a deserved respect for the began to arrive in the first twenty years of history of the old structures that was earned the twentieth century with the Marion over a hundred years of being. The Manufacturing Company (1909), Clinchfield buildings housed cotton textile production Mills (1914) and Cross Mill (1916) textile that received national attention during the operations. These textile mills were joined late 1920s and early 1930 and is still in 1918 by a furniture operation, Drexel referred to in a variety of history Furniture Company. With the arrival of publications. Sinclair Lewis1 had some very

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negative things to say about labor issues at governor’s mansion by the governor of Marion Manufacturing Company in 1929, North Carolina. Because as late as the 1950s and in 2004 Lawing2 reprised some of the and 1960s mill towns were a class-based events of 1929 in his book, The Marion society, it is highly unlikely a mill kid could Massacre. These publications, and others have had similar experiences. In the pre like them, have over the years painted a World War II period, Marion, like the state’s picture of oppressive working conditions, other mill towns contained three, segregated, child labor, lack of personal freedom and populations. Marion contained a middle labor exploitation, all supported by a passive class of doctors, lawyers and merchants who political structure. In general, the author lived in the town and were dependent on the finds that his university students of the continued profitability of the mills, but current sound-bite generation have accepted wished to socially and geographically be a stereotypical negative impression about separated from both the mills and their mill the Piedmont Carolinas and their textile villages. The populations of Marion’s mill industry history that precludes a balanced villages were, generally, restricted to white understanding of the issues of the time. mill worker families. In addition, Marion, They also lack, he suggests, an like other mill towns, had a “colored” understanding of the dramatic changes that section where blacks, except for providing occurred in that industry in the post World services to the middle class of the town as War II era that are celebrated in Cooper’s domestics, janitors, etc. lived in separate work The US Textile Industry Renaissance isolation from the white communities. The of 1960-80.3 “correctness” of this separation had general 4 acceptance across the class consciousness of In his book, Linthead, Browning the typical mill town in the Piedmont writes of growing up in a Carolina mill Carolinas and was the case in Marion. While village in Easley, South Carolina with a fond some social barriers of the mill town were nostalgia that might cause the reader to beginning to be broken or were at least question the veracity and conventional becoming more flexible during the time of wisdom about living conditions and worker- Browning and myself, we were still, in the family exploitation expressed by Sinclair main, living in a class-based society. Lewis and others. As a person who grew up in the mill town of Marion, North Carolina, In his book4 Browning speaks to the went to high school with mill kids, played differences in mill village life between his varsity sports with them, visited their houses time when there was money to spend on a and counted them as friends, like Browning, television and the time of his grandparents I experienced similar feelings of fond who received company scrip that could only nostalgia as I watched the old Marion be spent at the company store. He saw mill Manufacturing buildings come down. life as never being as bad as it was portrayed However, while Browning and I are of the by northern writers, and as evolving for the same generation, his nostalgia and mine better between the time of his grandparents come from two distinctly different points of and his generation. As a youth observing view. Browning was a mill village kid and I the Marion mill village quality of life, I had was a town kid. My family was neither this same opinion. In later years my view of wealthy nor influential. My father owned a textile mill village life was colored by years small grocery store and as a town kid my of working in textile education, textile view of the mill village was as an outsider management, and textile industry consulting looking in. However, I could and did date during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s with the the mill president’s daughter and serve as an North Carolina State College of Textiles, escort at her debutant ball appearance. On Burlington Industries and numerous other one occasion at the major state debutant ball textile companies. During this period in Raleigh; our party was welcomed at the Burlington and others were attempting to

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turn the textile industry into a technology- livestock and infrastructure. Land was based, skilled-labor industry, where workers considered “real” property. Slaves, livestock drove their cars to a work place that and personal items were considered provided a healthy, worker-friendly “personal” property. Infrastructure contained environment. Not having been there in the the facilities, legal and social structure that days of Browning’s grandparents, I have a allowed the economic system to work. In hard time relating to the stereotypical, Churchill’s5 History of the English Speaking Sinclair Lewis, employee exploitation, Peoples he makes the point that “before the views of the cotton textile industry of the American Civil War of the six million white Carolinas. However, like Browning and his inhabitants of the ‘slave states’ about three grandparents, Sinclair Lewis and I were of or four thousand principal slave owners different generations with different views generally ruled the politics of the South as and different agendas and our opinions effectively as the medieval baronage had should be viewed in concert with the times. ruled England.” The wealth derived from the capital stock was allocated in a Without depending on the starting disproportional way to slave owning point, one can say that North Carolina and planters, as the owning of slaves generated its textile industry supply chains evolved synergistic profits for slave owners across together for well over one hundred years. A all available resources. However, North part of this evolution saw the rise and fall of Carolina contained a good number of the state’s mill towns and constituent mill yeoman farmers who could provide for their villages. The people in these towns and own family needs with either no or few villages were inextricably linked to the slaves. These yeoman farmers using, mostly, vagaries of the national U.S. textile and family labor had the good fortune of being apparel industries. The history of these somewhat self-sufficient in meeting their towns and villages was based in economic family needs from the ownership of changes that evolved slowly and then relatively small holdings of productive land rapidly over time. The rapid pace of post- along rivers, streams or creeks that provided World War II changes destabilized a for productive soil. In addition to the planter significant part of North Carolina’s and yeoman class, North Carolina contained economic, social and political infrastructure a good number of what historians call “poor and introduced the state to the coming whites” that were lacking in productive land, global economy of the twenty-first century. slaves or livestock and the slave-based To contribute to a better understanding of economic infrastructure gave this group this evolution and thus a better little opportunity to break out of a cycle of understanding of North Carolina’s history is poverty. Money was scarce and working for the intent of this paper. wages was a relatively rare event. In 1857

Helper6 had spoken to the issue of North Laying the Labor Infrastructure in North Carolina’s poor whites. His book pointed Carolina out that a labor market of slave labor gave To understand the development of a little-to-no opportunity for poor white labor labor infrastructure to support post Civil to compete for employment. Non-farm jobs War cotton textile production in the in the Piedmont Carolinas, both skilled and Piedmont Carolinas one needs to have some non-skilled, were dominated by slave- understanding of the southern ante-bellum owners who would “rent” their slaves for economic and political structure that specific projects, restricting the availability provided the legacy for industrial formation of non-farm labor outlets for poor whites. in the Piedmont Carolinas at the beginning Thus, lacking an alternative labor market, of the twentieth century. those without access to productive land, In 1860 North Carolina’s capital and/or lacking resources to work any land stock was contained in land, slaves, they might own, were relegated to a status of

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poverty. Helper’s6 book was considered Reconstruction in the South in 1877, incendiary and banned in North Carolina. It opposing forces within the Democratic Party should be noted that a good portion of these of North Carolina fought for control of the “poor whites” were Scots-Irish who had Party and with that control, the ability to been “pushed” by the infrastructure to non- define the future economic and social productive lands in the Piedmont and direction for the state. By 1900 one side in mountain sections of the Carolinas and in the struggle had emerged victorious and had their isolation had developed independent set the state on its twentieth century course. survival strategies. During the 1870 – 1900 period, the The outcome of the Civil War yeoman farmers of North Carolina became decimated the capital stocks of North convinced that the Democratic Party was Carolina as the stock price of slaves was unresponsive to their economic problems. reduced to zero. Livestock and infrastructure North Carolina farmers were experiencing capital had been consumed by the War. The chronic economic depression from national State and individuals faced oppressive debt. agricultural overproduction which generated In addition, new infrastructure laws falling prices for farm products and rising governing commerce, arriving during prices for the means of production. It was a Reconstruction, generated economic time of “free market” capitalism with uncertainty to the point that in 1870, it is fair pervasive, unregulated monopoly power for to say that North Carolina was in a state of capital owners. North Carolina’s farmers near economic chaos. Much has been were ill equipped to participate in this game. written to lay blame for the state of North Carolina’s Yeomen were forced to devastation the Carolinas and the South bear a significant and disproportionate share found itself. Too much power in the hands of the state tax burden via state real property of too few people is a way Churchill5 and taxes. Most businesses could escape others might explain the condition. personal property taxes on items such as However, in 1880 for many in the Piedmont stocks and bonds, and manipulate and mountains of the Carolinas, thoughts assessments on their own real property. In were more about survival than laying blame. addition, the railroads enjoyed almost The economic concept “sunk costs are sunk” complete exemption from taxation. comes to mind. It was time to move on. For However, sales of farms for unpaid taxes by those without access to resources, one can bankrupt North Carolina Yeomen were a argue that the outcome of the Civil War common occurrence and forced the farmers created the need for the cotton textile to accept whatever nonfarm work was industry in the Piedmont Carolinas as a available as a means of family survival. survival alternative. As historians argue the Those farmers that could escape bankruptcy pros and cons of the cotton textile industry found themselves in a state of perpetual debt in the Carolinas, one must accept the fact due to exorbitant credit costs. As high credit that its existence provided a rational solution costs kept the Yeomen in debt to the to a good number of problems for many of merchants, in order to pay the credit bill, the the post-Reconstruction and later farmer opted for producing a money crop generations of the Carolinas and the South. rather than pursuing a diversified live-at- home subsistence economy, as did the Much of the character of North majority of the state’s prewar Yeomen. Carolina’s twentieth century labor supply These conditions fostered a general hatred structure was defined during the very short, among the Yeomen for the policies and but critical, time that spanned the post Civil institutions that perpetuated their plight. War 1870-1900 period. Lefler and 7 How could it be that the pre Civil War Newsome in their chapter on The Industrial yeoman farming backbone of the state was Revolution in North Carolina discuss this being forced into a choice of extinction or a period in some detail. With the end of

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humiliating dependence on oppressive debt industrial environment. A system of mill financing? Thus, North Carolina’s yeoman villages was established that, while lacking farmers began to find common issues with in some relative quality-of- life features, was blacks and whites outside the traditional an improvement over the next-best Democratic Party political structure. This alternative for those laborers that found their coalition of former Democrats, with way into the mill villages. This mill village Republicans and recently freed blacks, led to system was maintained in the Piedmont the “farmers’ legislature of 1891.” This Carolinas for over one-half of the twentieth fusion of support for common issues created century. Mill towns and mill villages grew a liberal force in North Carolina that was a up around each other, creating mill towns threat to the ruling Democrats and a that, with their unique characteristics, competing vision for their future socio- became an important part of the Piedmont political-economic structure of the state. In Carolinas and the twentieth century culture opposition to the yeoman wing of the of the south. Democratic Party was a group of young

Democrats who called themselves “progressives.” This new wing of the Party The First Mill Villages saw the fusion of yeomen, freed blacks and Part of the political strategy of the Republican Party issues as a threat to their North Carolina Democratic Party in their plans for the “industrialization” of the state. white supremacy campaigns of 1898 and A post-Civil War strategy of the 1902 was to advance their vision of the “progressive” wing the North Carolina industrialization of North Carolina as a path Democratic Party was to make use of the to a positive economic future for the poor poor whites and postwar debt-ridden white people of North Carolina. In their yeoman farmers as a labor force to attract campaigns they advanced the concept of cotton textile industry production into the using the growth of the cotton textile Piedmont region of the Carolinas. It was industry as an element in a general program believed that the eventual success of that of social betterment that included the strategy would make it possible for North rehabilitation and protection of the state’s Carolina to maintain an economic policy of poor white people from the competition of “cheap” labor practices that would support restricted black labor. Lefler and Newsome7 the labor supply of the state’s mills and point out that the mill village was advocated landlords for well into the future of the as a social and economic structure that State. Cecelski and Tyson8, Gilmore9, and would serve the needs of white society as Ayers10 cover the success of the well as the needs of both industry and labor. Democrats’1898-1902 white supremacy The mill community was presented as a process of disciplined and gainful industrial political campaign that broke the fusion movement. They report on the methods used employment that would allow millworkers to break the political strength of North full equality within the white race. However, Carolina’s yeomen farmers and attain the in fact, the emerging reality of cotton textile disenfranchised of the state’s black voters industrialization was not so much driven by for the future. With the success of the white a desire for social betterment but by a desire supremacy campaign, North Carolina’s to stabilize a factory labor force in the blacks were, in effect, locked into the production of cotton textile products and to economic slavery of sharecropping and a preserve planter control of the black labor significant number of yeomen farmers lost force in agriculture. Here, both planters and their hope for a self-sufficient way of life in mill owners sought to maximize profits as a an increasingly mill dominated state. On the return on their capital. other hand, the state’s poor whites were Wood11 discusses the mill village as a provided an economic alternative in an concept based on mill employers adopting a

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family labor system and policies of mill supporting acceptable mill behavior. For village paternalism. The mill village most employees whose children had come evolved as an institution for socializing, from circumstances of little education, the stabilizing and controlling the mill’s labor possibility of obtaining some education for force. It accomplished this by becoming the some employee children was considered a center of the social, political, religious, recruiting incentive. Mill owners and educational and economic activities of the management agreed that some level of mill family. Mill paternalism was schooling was important to maintain a accomplished by having control over where productive work force. However, within the people lived, what they bought, what they general education-poor environment of learned and how they worshiped their God. North Carolina, during the early twentieth As the mills owned the houses, the company century, it was not an uncommon belief that store, the schools and the churches they too much education spoiled the worker. were able to institute a comprehensive Thus, in general, school was not a top welfare system that was designed to stabilize priority. Schools were places for children to the labor force and produce a class of go while their parents were working or when hereditary workers. At the turn of the the children were not needed in the mill. twentieth century the mill village had the Mill churches were a place to encourage support of government in North Carolina. “right-thinking” Christian, work and family, Government labor restrictions in support of responsibility values. mill employees were opposed by law makers Southern Cotton Textile Supply Chain on the basis of acceptance of the principle of Network Cost and Pricing Structure “individual freedom of determination.” Families had the option to accept mill The major production and distribution employment, or not, with any mill village nodes of the cotton textile supply chain requirements associated with that network can be generalized to include fiber employment. Thus, at the turn of the production, yarn forming, fabric forming, twentieth century thousands of destitute fabric treating and finishing, product farmers willingly accepted mill life as it was forming and product distribution. During the defined. Granted, these people had few first half of the twentieth century the nodes alternatives for quality of life improvements of production and distribution in southern other than mill work. But, mill work was cotton textile mills were organized around a considered a preferred alternative that most group of agent brokers and their associated employees considered a quality of life customers. Each of these agent groups improvement. In general, the labor force maintained a portfolio of mills that included a mixture of what historians call specialized in one or more of the production “poor whites,” and “mountaineers,” who had process nodes of the network chain. Each little-to-no productive land of their own, and agent group coordinated the products of its indebted yeoman farmers. Thus, mill owners clients with other agent groups to provide were able to exercise freely their own the various components needed to assemble discretion in determining mill village policy and distribute a final product. These agent within a local market environment for the groups defined material movement, recruitment of families to work in the mills. negotiated material transfer prices and One tool used in the recruitment of mill facilitated product flow through the workers was the existence of mill schools manufacturing-distribution supply chain and churches supported with mill funds. network. Many mill schools were wholly financed by Among manufacturing industries of the mill or, in some cases, mill funds would the first half of the twentieth century, cotton be used to supplement local tax textile production represented an economic appropriations. In general, mill schools and 12 model of near perfect completion. Weiss churches were used as tools for teaching and

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shows that cotton textile production firms the new cotton textile mills with the were price takers rather than price setters. tenderness of ownership as they imposed Profits were determined by a firm’s unit cost little to no social legislation to aid labor. structure. Cotton textile mills used relatively Although the capital requirements of little capital and great amounts of low cotton textile production were relatively skilled labor. Cotton textile technology for small compared to the variable cost yarn and fabric production was not complex structure, these requirements were critical to and affordable by relatively small capital effective competition in national markets. holders. Total fixed costs for the typical mill After 1880 the expansion of cotton textile were a small part of total cost at any but mill output required external capital (see very low levels of output. It was, in the Cooper and Dyer13). For the products of main, a variable cost industry. These Piedmont Carolina cotton textile mills to be variable costs included the prices of labor, able to compete on a national level they materials, energy and transportation. While needed state-of-the art textile machinery, one may think of cotton textile production and investment capital was in short supply during this period as labor intensive, in fact, in the postwar south. Also, investment by materials, energy and transportation northern owned capital frequently met with intensive would be a better characterization. opposition in the postwar south. Thus, a As late as the 1950s, the 1954 Census of typical strategy was for local entrepreneurs Manufacturers12 showed materials and to raise as much capital as possible locally, energy to process the materials ranging to provide for basic infrastructural facilities, between 60 and 70 percent of shipment and then ask northern textile machinery dollars for yarn and fabric products. Thus, manufacturers to provide machinery in cotton textile mill profitability for the first return for stock in the newly formed half of the twentieth century depended upon company. cheap materials (cotton), cheap energy to The demand for southern cotton mill process materials, cheap transportation to products was derived from the demand for move materials and a cheap supply of labor. final textile products whose markets were Any deviation in this cost structure by centered in the north. In selling yarns and individual mills would put the existence of fabrics the mills were represented by small those mills in harm’s way. groups of agent brokers located in New The industry cost structure was such York City. These agent groups were the that there was little to no advantage of large main sources of market information and the scale mills over smaller ones. Mills that main outlet of product sales for their mill employed only a few hundred people were product clients. Commission agents in New large enough to use the most advanced York and other commercial centers provided technology at each stage of the production working capital in return for stock and/or process. Thus, most of the mills in the cotton being granted the mill’s agency contract. In textile industry were small, and were many cases mill operations were financed by individually owned by families or small agents that would either take mill stock or local companies. These southern mill make short term loans against a firm’s owners had a distinct advantage in labor inventories and/or accounts receivable. costs over their northern counterparts. At the Thus, the cotton textile mills in the south beginning of the twentieth century northern were providing cheap raw material inputs, cotton textile mill labor rates were almost under highly competitive conditions, for double those in the south. These low wage additional value added production in the rates in the Carolinas and Georgia were north, where the sale of final textile and primarily due to a lack of alternative apparel products would take place. employment opportunities for labor. In 14 Basic economic price theory tells addition southern state legislatures treated one that the derived demand for any factor

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of production used in fixed proportions with during the late 1920s and throughout the other factors will be more price inelastic: New Deal period of the 1930s, the desire 1. The more essential the factor in from some corners in the north for social question, change in the south kept the threat of 2. The more price inelastic the demand unionism alive for mill ownership in the curve for the final product, south. In general, New Deal labor relations 3. The smaller the fraction of total cost that legislation did not pose a direct threat for goes to the factor in question, and production relations in the Carolinas or 4. The more price inelastic the supply elsewhere in the South. This was because curve of the other co-operating factors. industry in the south was protected by anti- union “right-to-work laws” that were passed Consider how essential the yarn or fiber by the state legislatures and could only be produced by a Piedmont Carolinas mill overturned in the political arena. It was well might be relative to the total final product understood that the south had enough supply chain. As agents could choose among political power at the national and state a number of yarn and fabric producers to levels that overturning these “right-to-work” include within their portfolio, no one mill laws was problematical. was essential to the final product supply chain. The demand for a factor was likely to Cotton Textile Mills and Electric Power be far more essential in the short run than in in the Piedmont Carolinas the long run. In the long run, substitutes for expensive factors became available and Though lacking in coal, iron, and consumers found other ways to meet their capital for the development of heavy, product needs. Now consider the fraction of mechanized industry, the Piedmont total product cost associated with the yarn Carolinas in 1880 had an abundant amount and/or fabric factor in question. Because of water to be used for power generation, an yarn and fabric costs are a significant abundant labor supply and proximity to the proportion of final product costs, any small cotton raw materials required for the increase in factor price would be an development of cotton textile product incentive for a given agent to choose an production. Prior to 1880 a major portion of alternative mill. These conditions Carolina’s cotton mills used water wheel contributed to the lack of potential power as a source of energy. This effectiveness of union organizations in a technology required location of the cotton textile mill environment during the production facilities literally on the banks of first half of the twentieth century. In a the streams and rivers that drove the water business of marginal returns to capital, small wheels. With advancements in steam increases in allocations of returns to labor technology, the use of steam power became would only drive capital to alternative uses. more economical than water wheel power In general, the two factors, essentialness and for cotton textile production, and was not as fraction of final product cost were confining in terms of mill location. Lefler significant components of the failure of and Newsome7 point out that after 1880 the cotton textile mill union organization during cotton mills of North Carolina moved the first half of the twentieth century. rapidly to the use of steam power. In 1880, Additional reasons for this failure can be about 16 percent of cotton textile mills used taken from the perceptions of mill workers steam power as their energy source and by that they were not being “exploited” and, 1900 that percentage had grown to about 64 given their economic alternatives, were percent. Steam power for the mill did, satisfied to continue employment under however, require a steam generating plant so current conditions. Wood11 speaks to the the mills still needed a source of water and point that while low wage levels were not coal for fuel. successfully addressed by textile unions

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Thus location near water as well as valley. All this put them in a unique position proximity to transport facilities for coal and to develop and promulgate the new the cotton raw materials were important technology. This new technology logistical factors. Another source of power dramatically created new opportunities for for the mills was introduced in 1898 when cotton textile mill profitability and growth in the Fries Manufacturing and Power the Piedmont Carolinas. Company installed a hydro-electric plant on For existing mills the adoption of the Yadkin River. This was the first the new electrical system technology was hydroelectric plant in North Carolina and as based on expectations of significant variable early as 1900 a small but potentially cost energy savings. To prove the worth of important two and one-half percent of the the new technology, the Duke family textile mill power was electric. invested significant capital in their own In 1905 the Southern Power cotton textile mills to show that electrical Company (now Duke Energy) was powered engines gave steadier, smoother chartered. Durden15 covers the 1904 to 1997 and more satisfactory machine speeds at history of the Duke Power Company and lower unit costs than did the existing steam speaks to the interaction between the J.B. technology. Because converting from steam Duke family and the growing cotton textile energy to electric energy required industry in North Carolina. The Southern considerable investment in the new Power Company was the product of the technology, new mills that started after Duke family who were about to use their about 1915-1920 had the advantage of a great wealth, gained in large part from being able to build their new facilities tobacco, to support a new technology that around the new technology rather than adapt would have a profound effect on North and their existing steam driven operations to the South Carolina cotton textile production. technology of full electric power plants. A The new technology would enable the significant outcome from the new industrialization of the Piedmont region of technology for hydroelectric power relative the Carolinas and give rise to the demand for to the development of cotton textile mills in cotton mills, and associated mill towns. This the Piedmont Carolinas was in the area of demand swept over the region from its logistics. Given the poor state of beginning to well within the twentieth transportation facilities in the Carolinas century. The new electric technology was before the 1920s, a central factor in the based in the idea of long distance development of cotton mill towns was the transmission of electric power at high ability to centralize production around a voltage. This technology offered the promise railroad transportation hub. Here, the of inexpensive variable cost power for the capability to provide for long distance mills and rapid industrialization of the transmission of electric power at high Piedmont Carolinas. But, to bring this idea voltage allowed multiple mills to of high voltage transmission over long concentrate around railway transport hubs distances to fulfillment, large amounts of without depending on location-specific capital were required to build electric power sources. Thus mills and their mill utilities. The great majority of private villages could be located close to investor attempts to provide electric power economical material and product transport ended with the investors in hock to the modes, while, at the same time, inexpensive manufacturers of expensive generators and energy could be exported from central turbines or to investment banks. However, power stations located at a distance. In effect the Duke family not only had the wealth the new energy technology was the perfect required, but, also, had access to the complement to cheap labor, facilities, and knowledge base and the water assets of transportation. The new technology had a Piedmont Carolina’s Catawba River and its profound synergistic effect of improving the

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efficiency, and thus, the cost structure, America’s Great Depression began across all cotton textile process variables, in the cotton textile industry at least a half and in so doing generated the need for decade earlier than for the American cotton textile mill towns. Durden15 reports economy as a whole. The national cotton that Charles Cannon of Cannon Mills once textile industry experienced severe business expressed the opinion that the development downturns in 1920, 1921 and 1924, and of Cannon Mills and the mill town of these downturns led to about fifteen years of Kannapolis, North Carolina, would never very low or deficit returns to capital. These have happened in the absence of the low or deficit returns were a product of a technology developed by the Duke family number of factors, including emerging post- and their Southern Power Company. World War I foreign competition, cotton raw material price variability, and the power The Piedmont Carolinas Cotton Textile imbalance between the commission agents Industry during the 1920s and 1930s that controlled sales and marketing of the The large-scale relocation of the finished textile products and the mills that U.S. cotton textile industry to the Carolinas produced the yarns and fabrics that provided Piedmont began in the mid-1920s. By the inputs for these products. However, the most end of the 1930s this area had replaced New fundamental cause of a lack of profits during England as the center of American cotton the period was chronic excess capacity in textile production. During this period the the mill products industry. Mill capacity had Piedmont Carolinas continued to have a expanded to meet the increased demand large supply of available, cheap labor, and needs of the World War I period, and this only limited labor market competition for expansion was still in place in the national this labor. The area’s cotton mill working industry in the face of significantly less class was politically and economically weak, post-War demand. Material and energy costs largely unorganized, and isolated, with few were outside the control of the mills, as were powerful political allies. In addition, there transportation costs, determined by market existed a relative absence of legislation prices. Thus, faced with excess capacity and restricting the conditions under which labor shrinking markets in an industry that mirrors could be employed. By the late 1920s, a an economic model of perfect completion symbiotic relationship had developed during the 1920s, cotton textile mill survival between the mills and their towns where was dependent on the factors of production banks, power companies, professional over which the mill had some control. These service providers and merchants were all included labor productivity, wage rates and caught up in the need for the local mills to the resulting product unit costs associated survive and prosper. As a result, these town- with these factors. Thus, in order for the based commercial institutions began to play mills to have economic survival in the 1920s sophisticated and organized political and and 1930s, they were forced to persuade, economic roles in support of the welfare of cajole, or coerce workers to accept larger the mill owners located near the town. Given work-loads and/or to work more intensively, the town-mill relationships, which included and to produce more with less. The term town-based investment support for the mills, given to the strategy of requiring workers to one could not be surprised that for any labor produce more with less was called the dispute between mill workers and owners, “stretch-out” and was a key to economic the town-side support would fall on the side survival. of mill management. Because the mill labor In the late 1920s and early 1930s force had few friends and little recourse for labor unions saw an opportunity to take its grievances, cotton textile mill labor in the advantage of the poor economic conditions Piedmont Carolinas was considered in North Carolina and its cotton textile vulnerable, by some writers, to potential industry. In the summer of 1929, textile labor exploitation.

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unions were busy in Marion, North Carolina Hill to give speeches in support of unions. trying to organize a number of its mills, These “educators” were joined by women including Marion Manufacturing Company. from Smith College in Massachusetts who Lawing’s2 work The Marion Massacre is the came to Marion in support of unions. Union definitive account of the 1929 labor troubles sympathizers across the nation sent money at Marion Manufacturing Company. While in support of unions. In addition, in October, working conditions were similar at Marion 1929, American writer Sinclair Lewis came Manufacturing and other mills around to Marion to report on the labor unrest at Marion, the conditions at Marion Marion Manufacturing Company. The mill Manufacturing in terms of tension between conditions he reported on were management and labor were considered to discomforting to his northern and be ripe for potential success in organizing midwestern readers who did not understand the workers. Unfortunately, those Marion the economic struggles of the American Manufacturing employees most involved south. According to the Federal Council of with the attempted unionization of the mill Churches, living and working conditions in were highly motivated by emotion and did Marion’s mills and mill villages were not have a real grasp of the potential considered “unbelievable.” Yet these economic consequences of their actions. conditions seemed perfectly normal to many From economic theory, one understands that poor farmers who had relatives working in the monopoly power derived from a labor cotton mills and who were considering union might be useful in developing a making themselves available for mill “balance of power” when dealing with an employment in hopes of improving their employer with market power. However, own circumstances. Over the long-run, most these same unions, when dealing with of the workers at Marion Manufacturing employers that had little-to-no market power Company were reluctant to accept unions as in a near perfectly competitive market, as the solution to their problems. In general, was faced by Marion Manufacturing, could most of the mill village families considered only generate a lose-lose end result. In this their quality of life substantially better than case, successful unionization likely means the one from which they had come. Most of that, not only are capital owners forced to the employees and their families considered move their capital to alternative uses, but in their lives to be comparatively comfortable. the process, the mill shuts down and the The mill had provided a new YMCA that workers lose their jobs. Educated union offered leisure time facilities that were organizers of cotton textile mills of the superior to any in the town of Marion. A 1920s and 1930s understood this economic number of mill employees had the ability to basic and, strategically, union organization purchase cars, trucks, and other consumer goals were more about reducing the long- goods. Working in the cotton mill was term power of political “right-to-work” laws considered easier work than running a in the south than the economic betterment of mountain farm. While some may have the cotton mill workers. Marion’s local considered their quality of life as business men had infused a great amount of “unbelievable”, most mill workers didn’t their own and other people’s money in the consider their conditions to be so bad. In the local mills and had no intention of letting end, the combination of private and public unions use disgruntled workers to do further opposition was enough to defeat the attempt damage to their already profit-poor to organize cotton textile labor in Marion, investments. The town and mill fight against North Carolina, during later attempts in the union organization of Marion Manufacturing 1930s. The Great Depression had begun in received significant national attention. The late 1929 and anyone who had a job was future president of the University of North glad to do whatever was required to keep it. Carolina, Frank Porter Graham, and playwright Paul Green came from Chapel

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Post World War II Textile and Apparel mill towns to maintain the pre-War status Supply Chains; 1950s and 60s quo during the 1950s and 1960s post-War The American textile and apparel era. While some degree of vertical supply chains that contributed massive integration did exist within the textile amounts of product to the Allies victory products industry during the 1950s and during World War II found themselves 1960s, by the mid 1970s about seventy undamaged by the War, even as most of the percent of all US textile and apparel world’s economies lay in ruin. In the production market share was controlled by absence of significant global competition the thousands of independent mills dealing with US Government adopted the economic each other in a dynamic manner to form policy of “full employment.” The short-term, ad hoc, supply chains directed by Employment Act of 1946 passed the US agent groups. These supply chains were Congress by an overwhelming majority and neither efficient nor effective. However, placed the US Government in a policy role given the national interest in keeping people of maximizing employment in the United employed and maintaining the status-quo in States. Given the economic trade-off the industry, these chain structures were relationships between, inflation, technology, accepted practice for doing business. In the and national employment levels, the US Post-World War II environment world-wide Government made its top priority keeping and domestic demand for US textile and the US work force employed. This policy apparel products was high, supply was had a profound effect on the textile mills of limited and supply chain optimization was the nation, as well as on its states and mill not on the front burner of US textile, apparel towns. It allowed the mills to maintain and other production/distribution firms. profitability during the 1950s and 1960s in Thoughts of supply chain optimization for the face of some significant structural the U.S. textile and apparel industries would problems that would eventually have to be not become serious until expanding foreign addressed. In fact, the policy postponed competition forced the issue in the 1970s. addressing these problems until the 1970s Indeed, the 1950s and 1960s were and 1980s. considered good times for mill towns such as those in Marion, North Carolina and Within the environment of the Browning’s4 Easley, South Carolina. 1950s and 1960s, the US textile and apparel industry was composed of thousands of small, under-capitalized firms using labor- The Burlington Industries - Milliken and intensive processes. Independent mills such Company Strategy of the 1970s and 1980s as Cross Mills, Clinchfield Mills, and Marion Manufacturing Company, all in During the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. Government began to assume that its Marion, North Carolina, produced yarns and fabrics as inputs for other independent mills, domestic economy had reached a point in those in turn produced yarns and fabrics for development such that further subsidization other independent mills, that in turn and lack of environmental regulation of U.S. produced processed fabrics that were used textile and apparel production in its various by other independent mills to produce final forms was no longer of prime national products for apparel, home furnishings interest. As the U.S. textile and apparel and/or industrial uses. This process industries entered the 1970s and 1980s, its continued to be coordinated by agents that supply chain structures were not adequate to worked with each other to make products survive the coming global economy. happen. In general the market structure of Hundreds of undercapitalized mills in mill the industry remained similar to that of pre- towns like Marion, North Carolina, and World War II. The post- War emphasis on Easley, South Carolina, were ill equipped to keeping people employed allowed mills and meet the new government standards

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regulating cotton dust, noise, waste international student clientele, were poised effluents, product flammability, etc. among to do scholarly things to aid the textile other personal and environmental social industry survival process. In a National costs. The mills were also not equipped to Science Foundation sponsored report16, the meet the rising energy costs of the 1970s investigators pointed to the supply chain and 80s. The agent-controlled industry structure as the key issue of weakness facing structure of the past was non-optimal in the competitive ability of the future U.S. meeting the growing demand for ever textile industry. increasing product mixes of customized In the mid 1970s, a few U.S. textile products of short life cycle that were being firms began to implement a survival strategy generated by new textile materials and the for the future. These well -capitalized firms technologies required to process these sought to beat the survival odds through the materials. The new world of textile product efficient and timely adoption of technology production could not tolerate the long lead and radically different supply chain designs. times and massive amounts of inventories These firms bet their future on a belief that associated with the supply chain the proper utilization of chemical, organizations of the past. mechanical and information technology, in By the mid 1970s it was well concert with a number of horizontally understood by a wide range of U.S. connected vertical supply chains optimized government, education and business for customer value, would allow long-term officials that the survival of the domestic survival for a small number of well U.S. textile industry into the 21st century structured, capital intensive textile and was going to be more than problematic. It apparel firms. By the mid-to-late 1970s two was further understood that sooner or later large textile firms, Burlington Industries and there would be a significant destabilizing Milliken and Company, had obtained a effect on America’s mill towns as the textile dominant position in the industry with this industry adjusted to the new realities of an strategy. Cooper’s paper17 presents the increasingly global economy. While most of Burlington Industries view of supply chain the mills in Marion, North Carolina limped strategy of the time. Writing in 1976 for the through the 1980s into the early 1990s, and U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Browning’s 4 Easley, South Carolina mill Industrial Economics, Hudak and survived until January, 1990, for most of the Bohnslav18 reported that these two firms, Piedmont Carolina’s mills and mill towns, Burlington Industries and Milliken and the handwriting was on the wall. The Company, had been able to capitalize on the coming structural changes of the U.S. textile emerging new technologies associated with industry generated a significant amount of textile machinery and man-made fibers, national interest and discussion. The using state of the art computer-based interested parties included the National systems, to gain a significant competitive Science Foundation, the Treasury advantage over other U.S. and international Department’s Office of Industrial textile firms. They pointed to the firms’ Economics, U.S. Departments of Commerce complex vertical and/or horizontal supply and Labor, etc. The presence of textile structures that had allowed for significant industry associations such as American gains in flexibility, diversification and Textile Manufacturing Institute (ATMI) and financial strength. Their study pointed to the others was pervasive at meetings to discuss fact that after a period of acquiring control the industry’s future. Business leaders gave of many small mill town mills and absorbing widely diverse opinions about what was these mills into their supply chain structure, required to promote future U.S. textile these capital intensive supply chain industry survival. Textile schools such as the structures were able to apply mass- one at N.C. State University, serving an customization production and information-

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based techniques in consolidating diverse mill policy. As the textile industry evolved textile supply chain activities across in technology and labor requirements and as multiple product lines into well integrated mills faced increasing competitive labor and optimally controlled, profitable supply markets, the traditional mill village operations. The Burlington began to outgrow its usefulness and no Industries/Milliken and Company longer served the best interests of the firm. experiment was based in the belief that the By the 1950s and 1960s, transportation natural, laissez faire, state of textile and improvements allowed workers to live at apparel production/distribution did not have greater distances from the mill, growth in to be labor intensive and of an agent-based the industry had slowed, and the provision ad hoc supply chain design of the past. The of company owned housing was no longer strategy was to develop a supply chain of deemed necessary for labor recruitment. capital, materials and information intensive Mill vacancies were increasingly filled by business with controlled flexibility. Here, experienced workers in the region rather Burlington and Milliken were betting that than from novice workers transferred from their horizontal connections of optimized, the farm sector as had been the case in the vertically integrated, single ownership past. The monopoly effects of the mill supply chain designs, coupled with the most village system dissipated as more housing productive production and distribution alternatives opened to potential mill workers technology available, would be superior to and the market for mill labor became more any alternative competitive supply chains, individual rather than family oriented. In domestic or foreign, that could be cobbled general, the balance of the benefits and costs together in the 21st Century. of mill owned housing began to fall on the side of the mills disposing of their mill For a number of complicated geo- houses. Textile mill workers and others political and economic reasons the spoke to the symptoms but not the central Burlington/Milliken strategy was not causes of the decline of the mill village. successful. The reasons for this lack of Grooms19 quotes Lois Yandle, a former success are beyond the scope of this paper 3 cotton mill worker, who spoke to the decline and are covered in Cooper . However, even of the mill village in her book20 when she if successful, the application of the said, Burlington and Milliken strategies would have further contributed to the decline of the “What really changed things was the war— mill village. For example, when the old when a lot of younger people who’d gone Clinchfield mill in Marion, North Carolina into the service came back they didn’t want and its mill village became a part of to go into the mills. They’d seen other Burlington Industries in the 1970s, a new things, different things.” production facility was built to house the 19 Grooms also quotes Walt Stafford a former most modern production technology in a Chadwick Mill employee when he said, clean, worker-friendly environment where skilled employees were commuting to work “After they sold the houses, people felt from their non mill village homes in their better because they owned their own homes automobiles. for a change. But then they closed the community centers, they quit playing ball,

things like that, things just changed and The Decline of the Mill Village people didn’t seem as willing to help out a neighbor as before, and the whole thing just Starting in the 1930s, but accelerating went downhill. It’s how I grew up so I miss after World War II, textile firms sold off it, but I’ve had a pretty good life and at least their company-owned housing. The I can remember how it was back then.” dissolution of this important institution represented a major break from traditional

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Browning4 comes close to the heart of the ownership. Large amounts of new issue when he speaks to the end of mill investment capital would be required for village life and the eventual closing of the existing textile mills to survive. Cooper3 mill of his family. points out that the great majority of textile companies in the mid twentieth century “The major change could have been the sale relied on internally generated funds for of the company-owned houses and, indeed, capital expenditures, which were in turn that was an important point in the evolution dependent upon, in some cases, less than of mill hill life. There came with that marginal retained earnings. In the 1970s, the development self-sufficiency pleasing to the American Textile Manufacturing Institute proud people of the mill hills, most of whom (ATMI) concluded that in many cases, had never owned either an automobile or a textile firms’ retained earnings could not home of their own. By the late 1950s, most even cover working capital needs, let alone of them had both and nothing ever again investments in fixed expenditures. One could be the same.” source of cost reduction and capital for “Long ago the company had built the houses investment was associated with the sale of in a successful effort to attract its work mill houses. However, for the typical textile force, mostly from the dirt farms of the firm, the sale of its mill houses could only South. But by the time we were well into the postpone the inevitable closing of the mill. cold war of the 1950s, good times had set in Some saw the sale of mill houses for what it and the work force was becoming more was, a symptom of an underlying economic mobile. The company’s reason for owning cancer. Others failed to put the two-plus-two houses to rent to its workers no longer together and hung around.Browning4 speaks existed.” to the fact that it was his generation to be the “But the mill didn’t begin changing with the first, in significant numbers, “to flee the coming of the ‘90s, or even with the ‘80s or spinning rooms and weave rooms of our ‘70s. We know now that it was changing parents and grandparents for other lifetime even as we were living in harmony with the vocations.” As he watched the closing of the humming of spinning frames and the rattle Easley Mill he wonders, if he had not left of the weave room.” the mill, “Where would a 52-year old doffer find a market for the skills he had polished Here, Browning seems to recognize that the for more than 30 years?”4 selling of the mill houses was a symptom of some more central issue that was in play even as he himself was enjoying “good Unification of Town-Mill Village times” in his mill village. Attitudes The core issue here was the Much has been written about the economic survival of the mill. In truth, the interaction between residents of mill towns established pre-World War II textile mill and surrounding mill villages. structure was living on borrowed time in the Tannenbaum’s21 general view of town-mill 1950s and 1960s. It was only a matter of village interaction in 1924 was expressed as: time until the U.S. full employment labor “…mill population is a world apart. It does support policies of 1946 would give way to not play with the community. It does not mix new directions, and the existing textile mill with it. It does not intermarry, it does not structure of the Piedmont Carolinas would work with it. The children do not play be required to be on its own. The challenges baseball together, and in one instance an and opportunities presented by the new attempt to establish a common camp had to materials, new technologies, and new be given up on account of opposition to government restrictions of the 1970s and having the other children associate with the 1980s would have to be faced by mill mill children. This is so general a fact in the

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mill section of the South that it is recognized mill kids did not have the background to join as a caste system. The mill people are at the the high school band but did dominate the bottom of the scale.” high school chorus. In addition, many mill 19 kids did join the high school clubs and Grooms quotes Yandle who spoke as a service organizations to the extent that the mill employee that: casual observer would have a hard time “…everyone who grew up there had an differentiating the mill kids from the town inferiority complex because we knew that so kids. There was significant interaction. many people who lived in other sections of However, from time to time there was a town looked down on mill workers. We were tension. In retrospect, I believe the tension all aware of that, but we still thought we was more about the parents and less about were as good as anybody else – that was the kids. part of the spirit of those mill villages, a My first and last formal dates in high certain pride.” “We were poor but we didn’t school were with the same mill village girl. think that much about it, we just made the On our first date I walked to the mill village, best of it. And that’s just how we were.” found her house, and met her parents. We Grooms19 points out that most mill workers walked to the movie, got popcorn and a stayed within their own mill villages. One Coke, saw the movie, then, walked back to mill employee is quoted as saying, her house. She was a very attractive girl “However, on occasion, with some who I would have wanted to continue to date trepidation they may make their way into the except for an “attitude” I received from my town to patronize stores of wealthier town friends after the date. Peer pressure suburbanites.” It was perceived that mill from my town-kid friends, while not workers were often looked down on by the strongly overt, was enough to make me townspeople. Some town stores even had a believe that I should confine my dating to special days reserved for mill workers to town-girls. As a novice freshman in high shop downtown, apart from the rest of their school, who was unsure of the proper social customers. Grooms19 quotes a Lewis rule relative to such matters, I complied. It “Skinny” Minus who said, is to my credit that by my sophomore year, I “You more or less stayed where you lived. had decided to date mill girls, whenever there was a mutual agreement between me We didn’t go to say Myers Park; we had no business over there just like they didn’t have and her. Although I felt the town/village tension with respect to boy-girl dating, I felt any business over here. Some people looked no tension at all in boy-boy relation ties with down their noses at cotton mill people, but we didn’t let it bother us, really we were a mill kids. Many of my best friends were the mill kids I played basketball, football and proud people.” baseball with. I was welcome in their mill In the 1950s my high school, Marion village houses and because of our bond with High School, located in down-town Marion, sport, I felt accepted in their mill village North Carolina, became a melting pot of environment. For my generation, the social mill kids and town kids. While I knew some barriers between town and mill village were mill kids before high school from our joint becoming more flexible but were not yet love of the Marion Marauders minor league gone. baseball team, my introduction to mill kids as a group was as a freshman when I While high school football and basketball teams became unifying forces discovered that most of the best basketball, drawing together the people of the town and football, and baseball players were from the mill villages. Since I was interested in the mill villages, so were the various baseball teams that were a part of the many playing all those sports, this was an important discovery. I discovered that most mill towns of the Piedmont Carolinas. Prominent in mill towns were the industrial

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league teams. During the more isolation While the social barriers between years of the 1920s and 1930s, individual town and mill village were becoming more mills had teams with their employees as flexible for my generation, they were hard to players. These teams not only provided overcome. This seemed to be the case for entertainment for the mill employees of the Browning4 when upon deciding to follow a mill village but also served as a device to career as a writer, his mother accused him of bond the mill employees in a sense of considering himself too good to follow in community. Mill workers would turn out by the footsteps of his parents and work in the the hundreds to watch their company’s team mill. In telling this story Browning sees take on a rival mill in their mill town or in a himself as being a part of a larger nearby town. During this time it was a movement, a movement to break the chain common practice for a mill to hire talented of mill work. His was the generation that baseball players who did light work in the broke the chain, and Browning and I were of mill between their “real job” of playing the same generation, just on different sides baseball for the mill. of the chain. While Browning was being successful as a sports writer, I was doing my During the late 1940s and early part trying to hold the textile industry 1950s these individual mill teams began to together. My first try was as a textile college consolidate into mill town teams. Mill towns professor teaching the capabilities of the like Marion, Gastonia, Shelby and new technology-based supply chain Lincolnton, all in North Carolina, each had management. My second try was as an professional minor league teams. Some of operations vice president for three different these teams were associated with major textile firms. Here, I had the honor of being league player development while others on the wrong side of two leverage buy-outs were independently owned and staffed with in five years, 1980-85. In his book4 when former and current mill players of the Browning asked “What does a 50-year old region. It was not uncommon to have older, spinner or weaver do when there is no more former major league players as a part of spinning or weaving to be done?” I counter these teams. In the late 1940s and early with the question, “What does a 50-year old 1950s these consolidated mill town teams operations vice president do when there is were an important source of town-mill no more spinning or weaving to be done?” village unity as both town people and mill The death of the textile industries not only people could develop a common sense of took down many mill-kids but town-kid vice community of town versus town as presidents as well! compared to mill versus mill. Wilt Browning, so often referenced in this paper Conclusion for his memoir about life in Easley, SC, also At the end of the twentieth and the wrote a book The Rocks; the True Story of beginning of the twenty-first century, much the Worst Team in Baseball History22 that of the textile industry of the Carolinas has as its focus one of these mill town teams literally picked up its machines and moved and the professional minor league teams it to Asia and other regions of the world. This played. One of the highlights of the book is exodus left a good number of the mill towns the night that the Granite Falls Rocks of the Piedmont Carolinas, like Marion, defeated the Marion Marauders. I remember North Carolina, a mere shadow of their once attending that game as a youth, and in thriving selves. Those of us who remember retrospect I remember that in addition to the towns otherwise have watched empty doctors, lawyers, mill executives and buildings, deserted streets, and a sense of merchants, I was surrounded by mill displacement become the rule rather than the workers from all of Marion’s mill villages. exception. What did this one-hundred year Here was a common bond in support of our mill town life cycle leave behind? Some of town’s team. the former mill towns have been able to

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adapt and prosper while others have not. The Carolina. Thus, it is fair to point to a case is often made that the cotton textile symbiotic relationship between mill village industry with the associated mill villages and mill town that existed for most of the served as a magnet for economic twentieth century in the Piedmont Carolinas development of the associated mill town where the fate of the town and its mills were both during and after the decline of textile heavily dependent one on the other. production. Grooms19 quotes a UNC At the beginning of the twenty-first Charlotte history professor, Dan Morrill, on century one can see a concentration of this point relative to the development of population around many of the former mill Charlotte, North Carolina. Dr. Morrill said, towns along the I-85 and I-40 corridors of “Textile workers generated the money that the Piedmont Carolinas. In addition to made this city rich and powerful. It’s that Charlotte, cities such as Burlington and simple. I don’t think the mill village people Greensboro, North Carolina and got the recognition at the time for being the Spartanburg and Greenville, South Carolina basis of the wealth of the new South and have been able to survive the loss of textile they don’t get the recognition today.” production and prosper as independent cities. The use of old mill buildings for new This view is supported in the same article by commerce, as well as the old unused Bren Martin, curator of the Thread of buildings left standing are a reminder of Change, Life in a Cotton Mill Village exhibit what was called a “mill town.” at the Museum of the New South in

Charlotte North Carolina: References “The textile industry was the major catalyst 1Lewis, Sinclair, Cheap and Contented for the growth of this region. It touched Labor, New York: Scripps-Howard News, almost every aspect of life in the area. 1929. Charlotte is now a major financial center because it was also a textile service center.” 2Lawing, Mike, The Marion Massacre, “As the industry grew, a lot of the owners, Wasteland Press, Louisville, KY., 2004. including those from surrounding areas, 3 Cooper, W. Douglas, The US Textile pooled their resources – support industries Industry Renaissance of 1960-80, Textile and their financial dealings, etc. and it led History, 42(1), 103-116, May 2011. to the growth of the city as a financial hub.”19 4Browning, Wilt, Linthead; Growing Up in For over one hundred years the mills a Carolina Cotton Mill Village, Down provided commercial opportunities for the Home Press, Asheboro, NC. 1990. production and distribution of things and 5Commager, Henry Steel, Churchill’s services. In addition land developers were History of the English Speaking Peoples, busy developing suburbs to accommodate Pgs(372-373),Greenwich House, New York, the lawyers, doctors, bankers, transportation 1983. and energy workers, merchants and other 6 commercial enterprises associated with the Helper, Hinton Rowan, The Impending town area of a typical mill town. Thus, with Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, Burdick the coming of improved roads connecting Brothers, New York, 1857. mill towns in the 1920s, by the 1920s and 7Lefler, Hugh T., and Newsome, Albert R., 1930s the Carolina Piedmont was dotted The History of a Southern State; North with any number of mill towns that Carolina, The University of North Carolina contained one or more mill villages and a Press, 1963. supporting commercial town at the hub. This was the case for Browning’s Easley, South Carolina and for Cooper’s Marion, North

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8Cecelski , David S., and Tyson, Timothy Needs) from North Carolina State School of B., Democracy Betrayed, The University of Textiles May 1977. North Carolina Press, 1998 17 Cooper W.D., Textile and Apparel Supply 9Gilmore, Glenda E., Agrarian Unrest and Chain Management Technology; The Urban Remedies: the Progressive Solution Burlington Industries Case and Beyond. in North Carolina, Unpublished Master’s Journal of Textile and Apparel, Technology Thesis UNC Charlotte, 1985. and Management, Vol.5, Issue 2, Summer 10 2006, pp. 1-22. Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South; Life After Reconstruction, Oxford 18Hudak, S.J., and Bonslav, P.T., “The University Press, 1992. Textile Industry; A Study of Capital 11 Investment, Technology and Other Factors Wood, Phillip J., Southern Capitalism; The Affecting Prescribed Capital Recovery Political Economy of North Carolina, 1880- Allowances of Textile Machinery,” 1980, Duke University Press, 1986. Published by the Office of Industrial 12Weiss, Leonard W., Economics and Economics, US Department of the Treasury, American Industry, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. February 1976. New York, 1962. 19Grooms, John, When the World Was Made 13Browning, Wilt, The Rocks; The True of Cotton, Charlotte Magazine, Vol. 3, No. Story Of the Worst Team in Baseball 9, pgs.36-44, Sept. 1998. History, Down Home Press, Asheboro, NC. 20Yandle, Mary Lois Moore, The Spirit of a 1992. Proud People, L.M. Yandle, Charlotte NC, 14Friedman, Milton, Price Theory (Published 1997. Class Notes), University of Chicago Press, 21Tannenbaum, Frank, Darker Phases of the 1961. South, Revised (1924), Negro University 15Durden, Robert F., Electrifying the Press, New York, 1969. Piedmont Carolinas; The Duke Power 22Cooper, W.D.,and Dyer, C.L., The Company 1904-1997, Carolina Academic Identification and Assessment of Press, Durham, North Carolina, 2001. Technological Obsolescence of Capital 16Cooper, W.D., Hamby, D.H., ShawM.R. Equipment in the Textile Industry. and Hard W.H., The Textile Industry Published by North Carolina State Productivity Workshop; Final Report – University School of Textiles, August 15, Grant APR77-01604 to National Science 1975. foundation (Research Applied to National

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