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Eager Hands: Labor for Southern Textiles, 1850–1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Tom E. Terrell
Tom E. Terrell
Affiliation:
University of South Carolina
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Abstract

Was there an ample supply of low-skilled, free labor in the antebellum Southeast to develop a textile industry producing coarser goods? Using county-level data from the 1850 and 1860 manuscript censuses and other historical sources, we found there was a surplus of low-skilled, free (mostly white) labor in Edgefield County, South Carolina, where the textile industry was firmly established before the Civil War. If Edgefield County was not a unique case, then potential investors in southern textiles were probably not restrained by an inadequate labor force. Moreover, our Edgefield study reinforces other analyses which indicate that many whites hovered on the margins of southern society even in its most prosperous decade before the Civil War.

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , March 1976 , pp. 84 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1976

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References

1 Broadus Mitchell's insistence that the southeastern textile industry “first showed itself and had its complete genesis about the year 1880” fits “New South” rhetoric better than historical reality. Mitchell, The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South (reprint ed., New York, 1968), p. 9. For contrasting views, see Lander, Ernest McPherson Jr., The Textile Industry in Antebellum South Carolina (Baton Rouge, La., 1969)Google Scholar; Williamson, Gustavos Galloway Jr., “Cotton Manufacturing in South Carolina, 1865–1892” (Ph.D. dissertation: The John Hopkins University, 1954), pp. 1–89Google Scholar. Griffin, Richard Worden, “North Carolina, the Origin and Rise of the Cotton Textile Industry, 1830–1880” (Ph.D. dissertation: Ohio State University, 1954)Google Scholar; Griffin and Harold S. Wilson, “The Ante-bellum Textile Industry of Georgia,” (Unpublished manuscript); Stokes, Allen H., “From Slavery to Jim Crow: Black Labor in the Southern Textile Industry, 1785–1914,” (Ph.D. dissertation: University of South Carolina, in process), chs. i-iiiGoogle Scholar. Griffin published some of his findings on North Carolina in two fine articles. Standard, Diffee W. and Griffin, Richard, “The Cotton Textile Industry in Ante-bellum North Carolina, Part I: Origin and Growth to 1830,” “Part II: An Era of Boom and Consolidation, 1830–1860,” North Carolina Historical Review, 34 (1957), 15–35, 131–164Google Scholar. Robert Starobin described some instances of slave labor in textiles, and he claimed that “by 1860 southern cotton and woolen mills together employed more than five thousand slaves.” Starobin, , Industrial Slavery in the Old South (New York, 1970), pp. 12–14, 140–141, 148–149, 164, 173–175Google Scholar. His estimate appears to be wide of the mark.

2 For a description of this growth, see the writings cited in fn. 1.

3 Stokes, “From Slavery to Jim Crow,” ch. iii, p. 17. The figures on Saluda and Athens are taken respectively from Lander, Textile Industry in Antebellum South Carolina, p. 40 and Griffin and Wilson, “Ante-bellum Textile Industry of Georgia,” ch. v, pp. 129–130. No figures for Salem could be found.

4 Ibid., ch. iii, 28; Griffin and Wilson, “Ante-bellum Textile Industry of Georgia,” ch. ii, 45. Lander also saw such a shift. Lander, Textile Industry in Antebellum South Carolina, 90–93.

5 Griffin and Wilson, “Ante-bellum Textile Industry of Georgia,” ch. iv, p. 14. For slave prices and hiring rates and for cotton prices, see Fogel, Robert M. and Engerman, Stanley, Time on the Cross: Evidence and Methods—A Supplement (Boston, 1974), p. 73Google Scholar; Conrad, Alfred H. and Meyer, John R., “The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South,” Journal of Political Economy, 66 (1958), 106.Google Scholar

6 Independent Monitor (Tuscalloosa, Ala.), April 22, 1846. Richard Griffin very graciously shared his notes from which this item was obtained.

7 Ms., U.S. Census, 1840, Population Schedule, Orange County, North Carolina, pp. 234–237 (Microfilm, North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina Library). Standard and Griffin, “Cotton Textile Industry in Ante-bellum North Carolina, Part II,” North Carolina Historical Review, p. 145.

8 Edgefield (S.C.) Advertiser, October 25, 1848; (Augusta) Daily Chronicle and Sentinel, June 1, 1851.

9 Olmsted, Frederick Law, A Journey in the Back Country, In the Winter of 1853–1854 (2 vols.; New York, 1907), vol. 2, p. 127.Google Scholar

10 Buckingham, James, The Slave States of America (2 vols.; London, 1842), vol. 1, p. 169.Google Scholar

11 Griffin and Wilson, “Ante-bellum Textile Industry of Georgia,” ch. iv, p. 29. Some men workers earned as much as $15 a week; women averaged $5.50 a week. In 1865, a Union army survey conducted around Augusta and as far away as Athens showed Augusta mill workers received the highest wages among workers surveyed. Wages ranged from a low of 35 cents a day to a high of $2.50 a day. P. M. Bigney (?) to W. G. Provost, Surgeon-in-Chief, Post Hospital, Augusta, Georgia, July 10, 1865: Graniteville Manufacturing Company Papers, Graniteville, South Carolina [henceforth GMC Ms]. The Graniteville Manufacturing Company has graciously made its papers accessible to scholars. The collection will soon be moved from the company premises to the University of South Carolina, Aiken Campus.

12 Griffin and Wilson, “Ante-bellum Textile Industry of Georgia,” ch. v, pp. 161–173.

13 Griffin, , “An Origin of the New South: The South Carolina Homespun Company, 1808–1815,” Business History Review, 35 (1961), 402–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stokes, “From Slavery to Jim Crow,” ch. v, pp. 21–24, ch. vii, pp. 12–42.

14 Southern Advocate (Huntsville, Ala.), December 3, 1851; (Augusta) Daily Chronicle and Sentinel, January 28, 1852; De Bow's Review, 22 (January, 1857), p. 111.

15 Until 1868, when the South Carolina Constitution was revised, counties were called districts.

16 D. D. Wallace, “A Hundred Years of William Gregg and Graniteville” (Unpublished manuscript, GMC Ms).

17 Gregg, , Essays on Domestic Industry: An Inquiry into the Expediency of Establishing Cotton Manufactures in South Carolina (Special ed.; Graniteville, S.C., 1941).Google Scholar

18 This brief history is based upon Gregg's Essays; Wallace, “William Gregg and Graniteville,” esp. pp. 1–44; Mitchell, Broadus, William Gregg: Factory Master of the Old South (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1928), esp. pp. 1–131Google Scholar. The quotation is taken from Gregg's Essays, p. 3.

19 Ibid., pp. 48, 106.

20 Gregg to Freeman Hunt, October 22, 1849: Merchant's Magazine, 20 (December, 1849), 671–672; GMC Ms, Dividend Record, Graniteville Manufacturing Company, compiled November 22, 1945.

21 Gregg to Lawrence, September 2, 1850, in Martin, Thomas P., ed., “Notes and Documents: The Advent of William Gregg and the Graniteville Company,” Journal of Southern History, 11 (1945), 421–422.Google Scholar

22 The population figures for the three counties in 1850 were:

Source: The Seventh Census, 1850 (Washington, D.C., 1853), p. 338.

23 Ibid., pp. 338–339; Compendium of the Seventh Census (Washington, D.C., 1854), pp. 302–307Google Scholar; Population of the United States in 1860; Eighth Census (Washington, D.C., 1864), pp. 128–129Google Scholar, Agriculture of the United States in 1860, Eighth Census (Washington, D.C., 1864), p. 128.Google Scholar

24 Population of the United States, 1860, p. 452. Smith, Alfred Glaze Jr., Economic Readjustment of an Old Cotton State: South Carolina, 1820–1860 (Columbia, S.C., 1958), p. 81Google Scholar. This distribution of land ownership was determined by analyzing the manuscript censuses for 1850 and 1860.

25 Advertisement entitled “Three Hundred Additional White Operatives principally girls, above the age of fourteen…,” GMC Ms. The 1860 census recorded a number of workers who were less than twelve years old.

By random sampling of the 1850 and 1860 censuses, the numbers of householders who could be considered job candidates for Graniteville were reduced to more manageable sizes (380 to 400). Then, after again carefully reviewing detailed census data, a number of householders were eliminated from the potential Graniteville work force. Thus, the numbers of households of potential workers analyzed were 358 (1850) and 318 (1860). The hypothetical number of Graniteville job candidates (911 in 1850, 609 in 1860) was determined by totaling the number of employable people living in households where the head of the household would have found Graniteville a necessary economic alternative.

26 Smith, Economic Readjustment of an Old Cotton State, pp. 19–44.

27 Lebergott, Stanley, “Wage Trends, 1800–1900,” in Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1960), p. 453Google Scholar. The findings on Graniteville househoders are based on Mss., U.S. Census, 1850, 1860, Population Schedule, Edgefield County, South Carolina (Microfilm, South Carolina Department of Archives and History). Joseph C. Saunders generously lent his notes from the censuses in Graniteville. The sharecroppers were found in Eighth Census, 1860, Products of Agriculture (Ms., South Carolina Department of Archives and History).

28 The Eighth Census, Proceeds of Industry, 1860, (Ms., South Carolina Department of Archives and History).

29 Merchant's Magazine, 20 (December, 1849), 671–672. Also, see fn. 38.

30 GMC Ms, Treasurer's Report, 1851, Graniteville Manufacturing Company, p. 12; Mitchell, Gregg, p. 60.

31 Charleston Mercury, March 23, 1848; GMC Ms, “Three Hundred Additional White Operatives”; DeBow's Review, 8 (January, 1850), 28; Caroline F. Ware, The Early New England Cotton Manufacture, A Study in Industrial Beginnings (reprint ed., New York, 1966), p. 199.

82 “Rules for Graniteville,” Graniteville Manufacturing Company Papers, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina [henceforth GMC SCL]; Mitchell, Gregg, pp. 79–80.

33 GMC Ms, Treasurer's Report, 1851, Graniteville Manufacturing Company, p. 14; Wallace, “Gregg and Graniteville,” p. 46; GMC Ms, President's and Treasurers Report, 1867, p. 12.

34 Thompson, E. P., “Time Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present, 38 (December, 1967), 56–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gutman, Herbert G., “Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America, 1815–1919,” American Historical Review, 78 (1973), 531–588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Mitchell, Gregg, p. 206; “Rules for Graniteville,” GMC SCL; Edgefield (S.C.) Advertiser, October 2, 1850; October 5, 1854; DeBow's Review, 8 (January, 1850), 27–28; Wallace, “Gregg and Graniteville,” pp. 182–183.

36 Ibid., p. 97; Mitchell, Gregg, pp. 61, 285; DeBow's Review, 11 (July, 1851), p. 130; Ware, Early New England Cotton Manufacture, pp. 272–277; Dublin, Thomas, “Women, Work and Protest in the Early Lowell Mills: ‘The Oppressing Hand of Avarice Would Enslave Us,’” Labor History, 16 (1975), 99–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 See Howard M. Gitelman's illuminating discussion about determining persistence from the manuscript census. Gitelman, , Workingmen of Waltham: Mobility in American Urban Development, 1850–1890 (Baltimore, 1974), pp. 23–49.Google Scholar

38 GMC SCL, James Gregg to J. G. Gibbs and Co., July 10, [1860]; GMC Ms, “Gregg to State Legislature,” n.d.; returns for weeks of July 21, 1849; April 9, 1853; January 26, 1861. The paucity and scattered nature of the wage records from the Graniteville Company in the 1850's make accurate comparisons with New England wages impossible. Textile workers in the South were widely reported to receive considerably lower wages than in the North. Certainly, such reports conform with Lebergott's findings; “Wage Trends,” American Economy in the Nineteenth Century, p. 453.

39 Olmsted, A Journey in the Back Country, vol. 2, p. 128.

40 Gregg, Essays, p. 106; Edgefield (S.C.) Advertiser, September 6, 1848; James H: Taylor, Treasurer, Graniteville Manufacturing Company quoted in the (Augusta) Chronicle and Sentinel, June 8, 1849.

41 See Fred Bateman and Thomas Weiss, “Profitability, Investor Response and Industrialization in the Antebellum Southern Economy,” (Unpublished manuscript, 1975).