Prior to the Civil War, textile manufacture was the most important American industry. The first American power loom was constructed in 1813 by a group of Boston merchants headed by Francis Cabot Lowell. Soon textile mills dotted the rivers of New England transforming the landscape, the economy, and the people. Initially, mill work was performed by daughters of local farmers. In later years, immigration became the source of mill "hands."
By the 1920s, the South eclipsed New England in textile production. Not only were Southern plants located closer to raw materials, but also Southern laborers were often desperate for work. Entire families labored together in the textile mills of Georgia and the Carolinas. As in New England a century before, cheap labor was essential to high profits.
Textile worker Fannie Miles remember her transition from farm to factory at the age of nine:
I was just nine years old when we moved to a cotton mill in Darlington, South Carolina, and I started to work in the mill. I was in a world of strangers. I didn't know a soul. The first morning I was to start work, I remember coming downstairs feelin' strange and lonesome-like. My grandfather, who had a long, white beard, grabbed me in his arms and put two one-dollar bills in my hand. He said, "Take these to your mother and tell her to buy you some pretty dresses and make 'em nice for you to wear in this mill." I was mighty proud of that. |
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Often, workers moved between farming and mill work. John William Prosser described his situation in the 1920s:
I figured we could do better at a cotton mill, so we moved to Darlington, South Carolina. I got a job that paid ten cents an hour, and the boys picked up a little work every now and again. But I guess I had the movin' habit by that time, and we moved from one place to another. We'd sharecrop for a while, and then we'd rent. I'd work at a sawmill, and then blacksmith again, till we settled down and come to Columbia. "Ain't It So, Corrie?,"
February 6, 1939.
American Life Histories, 1936-1940
