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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2009
The southern textile mill village has received little empirical attention. I summarize the results of ongoing research using the records of the Courtenay Mill of Newry, South Carolina. There is evidence that stable family life was rewarded, mill housing was used to create dependence, and locally recruited workers recieved less pay than those from other areas. I conclude with a discussion of the possible causes of the local operative earnings differential and indicate other areas for future research.
1 The Olympia Mill of Columbia, S.C., is now closed, yet Olympia is still a distinct section of the city. The violent social divisions documented by Carlton, David L. in Mill and Town in South Carolina, 1880–1920 (Baton Rouge, La., 1982), pp. 135–70, have faded. Nevertheless, there are occasional reminders that differences remain. A proposal to close down the Olympia Elementary School was recently overturned by a local school board. The decision was influenced not so much by objections from Olympia parents, but rather by the parents of a neighboring area of town, whose school the Olympia students were to attend.Google Scholar
2 See for example, McHugh, Cathy L., “Earnings in the Post-Bellum Southern Cotton Textile Industry: A Case Study,” Explorations in Economic History, 21 (01 1984), pp. 28–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “The Family Labor System in the Southern Cotton Textile Industry, 1880–1915” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1981);Google ScholarWright, Gavin, “Cheap Labor and Southern Textiles before 1880,” this JOURNAL, 39 (09 1979), pp. 655–80, and “Cheap Labor and Southern Textiles, 1880–1930,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 96 (November 1981), pp. 605–29;Google ScholarCarlson, Leonard A., “Labor Supply, Skills, and Location of Southern Textile Mills, 1880–1900,” this JOURNAL, 41 (03 1981), pp. 65–71;Google Scholar and Terrill, Tom E., “Eager Hands: Labor for Southern Textiles, 1850–1860,” this JOURNAL, 36(03 1976), pp. 84–99.Google Scholar
3 A detailed description of the Courtenay Mill records and presentation of the empirical results summarized in this paper can be found in Phillips, William H., “Textile Mill Villages and the Earnings of Southern Textile Workers,” (unpublished manuscript, 1984) which can be obtained from the author.Google Scholar
4 Ryan, Marguerite A., “Mill Village: Newry is a Pocket of Past,” Columbia (S.C.) State, May 18, 1980.Google Scholar
5 Abner-Courtenay Mill Archives, College of Business Administration, University of South Carolina. Minutes of the Board of Directors, 1893–1904.Google Scholar
6 Carlson, Leonard A., “Labor Supply, Skills, and Location of Southern Textile Mills, 1880–1900,” this JOURNAL, 41 (03 1981), Statement of the Condition of the Courtenay Manufacturing Company, 1895–1903.Google Scholar
7 The oríginal mill had 75,000 feet of floor space and was able to hold up to 17,000 spindles and 425 looms. It was improved and expanded several times in its early days, and by 1912 was operating with 25,344 spindles and 624 looms. In 1921, a second ten-hour night shift was added, and the village was roughly doubled to accommodate new employees. Finally in 1940, the mill scrapped and replaced obsolete spindle stock and expanded to 648 looms. Details are contained in: Report by William Courtenay to the Board of Directors, September 1, 1894;Google Scholar Letter from Ramseur, R., President of the Courtenay Manufacturing Company to Mr. W. G. Finley, September 26, 1935; and Annual Reports filed by the Courtenay Manufacturing Company with the South Carolina Department of Labor, 1919–1942. All of the above are located in the Abner-Courtenay Mill Archives.Google Scholar
8 Mitchell, Broadus, The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South (Baltimore, 1921);Google ScholarChen, Chen-Han, “Regional Differences in Costs and Productivity in the American Cotton Manufacturing Industry, 1880–1910,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 55 (08 1941), pp. 533–66;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDoane, David P., “Regional Cost Differentials and Textile Location: A Statistical Analysis,” Explorations in Econmic History, 9 (Fall 1971), pp. 3–34;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Galenson, Alice Carol, “The Migration of the Cotton Textile Industry From New England to the South, 1880–1930” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1975).Google Scholar
9 Canlton, Mill and Town in South Carolina, chaps. 1–2.Google Scholar
10 Doane, David P., “Regional Cost Differentials and Textile Location: A Statistical Analysis,” Explorations in Econmic History, 9 (Fall 1971), p. 47. From its early days, the Newry Mill had an auxiliary steam engine to provide power when the river was too low. Electric power was added in 1935. Information regarding the mill's power sources is contained in its Annual Reports filed with the South Carolina Depatment of Labor, 1919–1942, located in the Abner-Courtenay Mill Archives.Google Scholar
11 McHugh, “The Family Labor System,” pp. 17–19; Carlton, Mill and Town in South Carolina, pp. 113–15, 151; and Galenson, “Migration of Cotton Textile Industry,” chap. 7.Google Scholar
12 Galenson, “Migration of Cotton Textile Industry,” chaps. 3, 5; and Doane, “Regional Cost Differentials and Textile Location,” pp. 6, 20–22.Google Scholar
13 Carlton, Mill and Town in South Carolina, chaps. 4–5. In South Carolina, a child labor law prohibiting the employment of children below the age of 12 was passed in 1903. The age limit was raised to 14 in 1916, and statewide compulsory education was implemented in 1919. The sixty-hour work week dates from 1907.Google Scholar
14 The Newry Mill went to forty-hour work weeks, overtime, and a mandatory working age of 16 in the early 1930s during the era of the National Recovery Administration. The transition is documented in the mill's Annual Reports filed with the South Carolina Department of Labor, 1919–1942, and in its Bi-Annual Census of Manufactures Reports filed with the U.S. Department of Commerce, 1921–1939. Both of the above are located in the Abner-Courtenay Mill Archives. Social Security was implemented in 1936, while minimum wages were set in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.Google Scholar
15 For two very different explanations of this, see Gilman, Glenn, Human Relations in the Industrial Southeast (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1956)Google Scholar, and McLaurin, Melton Alonza, Paternalism and Protest: Southern Cotton Mill Workers and Organized Labor, 1875 –1905 (Westport, Conn., 1971).Google Scholar
16 Herring, Harriet L., Passing of the Mill Village (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1949).Google Scholar
17 For example, the number of employees on the payroll roughly doubled between 1919 and 1941. During this same period, the estimated population of the mill village only increased from 800 to 900, despite a doubling in the number of mill houses. See the mill's Annual Reports filed with the South Carolina Department of Labor, 1919–1942, located in the Abner-Courtenay Mill Archives.Google Scholar
18 Stokes, Allen H., “Black and White Labor and the Development of the Southern Textile Industry, 1800–1920” (Ph.D. diss., University of South Carolina, 1977);Google Scholar and Wright, Gavin, “Black and White Labor in the Old New South,” in Bateman, Fred, ed., Business in the New South: A Historical Perspective (Sewanee, Tenn., 1981).Google Scholar
19 Potwin, Marjorie A., “Cotton Mill People of the Piedmont: A Study in Social Change” (Ph.D diss., Columbia University, 1927);Google Scholar and Herring, Harriet L., Welfare Work in Mill Villages: The Story of Extra Mill Activities in North Carolina (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1929).Google Scholar
20 See Carlton, Mill and Town in South Carolina, pp. 55–81, for an elaboration of the pressures on mill builders for leadership and “public philanthropy.”Google Scholar
21 Lahne, Herbert J., The Cotton Mill Worker in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1944);Google Scholar and Tippett, Tom, When Southern Labor Stirs (New York, 1931).Google Scholar
22 McHugh, “The Family Labor System.”Google Scholar
