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Chapter Seven
Cotton Mills In New South
Charlotte
Dr. Dan L. Morrill
University of North Carolina at
Charlotte
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The Democrats delivered on their
promise of improving the economy of Charlotte and Mecklenburg
County. The 1870s and 1880s witnessed vigorous commercial and
industrial growth in Charlotte, so much so that the town began
to eclipse the rest of Mecklenburg County in terms of economic
importance. “Everything about Charlotte seems to be on a big
boom,” observed a visitor in the 1880s, “and everybody seems to
be in good spirits at the prospects.” Charlotte became known as
the “Queen City,” a nickname more in keeping with its
aspirations for economic prowess than its earlier monikers of
“Hornet’s Nest” or “Cradle of Independence.” As in the 1850s,
effective leadership was fundamental to this process. During
the final quarter of the nineteenth century a talented
assortment of ambitious entrepreneurs moved to Charlotte to join
local businesspeople in taking advantage of the town’s strategic
location and its excellent railroad connections.
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Daniel Augustus
Tompkins |
Edward Dilworth
Latta |
Two South Carolinians were
paramount in making Charlotte the major commercial and
industrial center of the two Carolinas. They were Edward
Dilworth
Latta
and Daniel Augustus
Tompkins. David Ovens , a
native of Kingston, Ontario who came to Charlotte in 1903 as
manager of the local shop operated by the S. H. Kress Co.,
singled out New South industrialist D. A. Tompkins
as the principal reason for
Charlotte's impressive rate of growth in the late 1800s, calling
him a "brilliant engineer." "It was he," Ovens insisted, "who
led the way in persuading people from distant points to come
here and invest capital in the establishment of factories and
mills." "Then there was Mr. E. D. Latta," Ovens continued, "who
gave us our first electric street railway, gas and electric
lights."
Edward Dilworth
Latta
moved from New York City to
Charlotte and established E. D. Latta and Brothers, a men's
clothing store, in October 1876. No doubt the enterprising
haberdasher was attracted by the vigorous economic climate in
Charlotte and the prospects for making money. Latta's impact on
this community, however, was to go far beyond that engendered by
his clothing business. Until his departure in May 1923, when he
moved to Asheville, Latta played a pivotal role in the
transformation of the city from a modest commercial center of
7,094 inhabitants in 1880 into an industrial and financial
metropolis of the Piedmont in 1920, boasting a population of
46,338. In large measure, Latta was typical of the new class of
investors, industrialists, and businessmen who arose in North
Carolina and the South following the Civil War. As exponents of
a "New South," such men became convinced that future wealth in
the region lay not in traditional farming methods but in
industrialization, urbanization, and scientific agriculture; and
they took advantage of the new economic opportunities afforded
by the growth of manufacturing and the rise of sizable urban
areas.
Daniel Augustus Tompkins was an
ardent participant in the New South movement of the post-bellum
era. He arrived in Charlotte in March 1883. A native
of Edgefield County, South Carolina, Tompkins had earned a
degree in civil engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute in
Troy, New York in 1873, had been a chief machinist for the
Bethlehem Iron Works in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and had decided
to return to his native region so that he might encourage and
assist the development of industry and the diversification of
agriculture.
Having secured a
franchise from the Westinghouse Machine Company of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania for the selling and installing of steam engines and
other machinery, Tompkins selected Charlotte as the location of
his enterprise, which opened on March 27, 1883. He
considered moving to Columbia, South Carolina, but chose
Charlotte instead because of its central location in the two
Carolinas and because of its superior railroad connections.
On May 17, 1873, the
Carolina Central Railroad Company
had acquired the right of way and had undertaken the task of
completing a continuous track from Wilmington to Rutherfordton.
This job had been completed on December 15, 1874. By 1873, the
Atlanta and Charlotte Airline Railroad had finished laying
track between Charlotte and Spartanburg, South Carolina and on
to Atlanta. In 1884, Tompkins established the D. A. Tompkins
Company. This enterprise was
"at the forefront" of machinery manufacturing for the southern
textile mills, offering mills "a local alternative to their
dependence upon northern suppliers," writes historian Brent
Glass. The Augusta Chronicle described Tompkins as “the
man that put Charlotte on the map for cotton mill machinery.”
D. A. Tompkins remained in Charlotte until his death in 1914 and helped build
a virtual cotton mill empire in the Tar Heel State. He became a
director of A. and M. College (now North Carolina State
University) at Raleigh and was instrumental in establishing the
textile department there. He was the author of a number of works
on cotton mills and textiles, most notably Cotton Mill:
Commercial Features, as well as a two-volume history of
Mecklenburg County. He also owned three North Carolina
newspapers, including the Charlotte Observer , which he
purchased in 1892. “The one thing I wanted the paper for was to
preach the doctrines of industrial development,” said
Tompkins. In July 1894, Tompkins joined with other wealthy
businessmen in Charlotte in establishing the Southern
Manufacturers' Club . Puffing on cigars and drinking fine
brandy whiskey, he and the other members of the town's
privileged elite would gather in their opulent headquarters
building on West Trade Street and "do business." As were the
other powerful industrialists of his type and time, Tompkins was
committed to laissez-faire capitalism and opposed public reforms
for better industrial working conditions including the
regulation of child labor. He was also a devoted defender of
what he called “Anglo Saxon values,” a code name for White
Supremacy.
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Cotton was brought to the Charlotte
Cotton Platform for shipment to others cities. |
In keeping with cotton being its
principal cash crop, Mecklenburg County did become a major
center of textile manufacturing in the second half of the
nineteenth century. “New ideas of life have taken firm hold of
the South,” Tompkins proclaimed, “and to succeed and prosper, we
must spin cotton.” Mecklenburg County had two cotton mills
before the Civil War. The Catawba Manufacturing Company opened
in 1848 in the Steele Creek community of southwestern
Mecklenburg. Its owner, William Henry Neel , was a prominent citizen, having
been a County Commissioner, a member of the Steele Creek
Presbyterian Church , an officer in the local militia, and a
successful cotton farmer.
Neel's imposing Federal style home still sits atop a
hillside just west of Shopton Road. Neel operated a grist mill
near what is now Withers Cove on Lake Wylie and placed some
spindles in this facility and produced yarn. The output was
modest. The plant closed before the end of the Civil War. No
physical remains survive. The other and more important
ante-bellum textile mill was the Rock Island Mill , established
in 1848 by Charlotte businessmen R. C. Carson , John A. Young ,
and Z. A. Grier
. It too is gone.
The first facility in Mecklenburg County devoted exclusively to
the spinning of cotton fiber was the
Glenroy Cotton Mill .
Founded by E. C. Grier and his son, G. S. Grier , the mill was
located about half way between Matthews and Providence
Presbyterian Church , in southeastern Mecklenburg County. It
contained 350 spindles and produced bale yarn. It was
established in 1874 and operated for approximately eighteen
months. The building was demolished in 1899.
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The Charlotte
Cotton Mills covered an entire block. |
The
founder of the initial cotton mill in Charlotte was Robert
Marcus Oates , a
native of Cleveland County and a Confederate veteran who also
served on both the County Commission and the Charlotte Board of
Aldermen. “He was strong in his convictions, conservative in his
ideas, and these two characteristics together with his mental
ability and correctness of life made him a tower of strength to
the community,” declared a Charlotte newspaper. Named the
Charlotte Cotton Mills , the plant opened in December
1880 and went into full operation the next year. The
Charlotte Observer , an ardent backer of industrialization
even before Tompkins bought it, anticipated that the mill would
“add much to Charlotte's material prosperity . . . . and some
predict that it will be the means of bringing similar
enterprises into operation.” Most of the workers were women.
"The opening of the Charlotte Cotton Mill represented the
beginning of a new industrial era in Charlotte's history,"
writes historian Janette Greenwood. Parts of the Charlotte
Cotton Mills still stand at West Fifth and North Graham Streets.
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John Cross, a Mecklenburg County
farmer, takes his cotton to market in 1907. |
D.
A. Tompkins
built and equipped three cotton mills in Charlotte in 1889 –
the Victor , the Ada , and the Alpha . Two of the three
buildings survive, the Ada and the
Alpha . Called “hummers” because of the noise produced by
the spinning and weaving machines, the new mills appeared at the
edges of town along railroad lines. Tompkins did not like sites
in the hearts of cities. “The proximity of lawyers . . .
promotes law suits,” he declared, and a “mill in the country can
operate its own store and thereby get back some of money paid
for wages.” It is important to note that Northern capital
played no role in financing the great majority of Charlotte's
first cotton mills. They were home-owned and home-operated.
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The Atherton Mill is in the
background. |
In
1892, Tompkins joined with three other local industrialists, R.
M. Miller , R. M. Miller, Jr ., and E. A.
Smith , in picking the southern end of
Dilworth ,
Charlotte’s first trolley suburb, as the place to erect the
only cotton mill in Mecklenburg County that he owned and ran,
although he did operate a cottonseed oil plant nearby. The
Atherton Mills began operations in January 1893, with 5,000
spindles manufacturing yarn goods. “There's no doubt about it,
things are ‘humming’ in the Queen City, and ‘humming’ to the
tune of lively progress,” declared Tompkins’s Charlotte
Observer .
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Upper Left: Hoskins Mill. Upper
Right: Mecklenburg Mill. Lower Left: Elizabeth Mill.
Lower Right Chadwick Mill. |
After 1900, entire mill villages
containing more than one factory began to appear on the
outskirts of Charlotte. E. A. Smith , a native of Baltimore and part
owner of the Atherton Mills , organized the Chadwick and
Hoskins mills in Charlotte near Rozzelles Ferry
Road, and by 1907, was head of the Chadwick, Hoskins, Calvine
(formerly Alpha ), and Louise mills, and the Dover Cotton Mill
in nearby Pineville. When these factories consolidated into the
Chadwick-Hoskins Company in 1908, it was the largest textile
firm in North Carolina. "The new Hoskins Mills, at Chadwick, a
western suburb of the city, is nearing completion, and when
completed will be one of the best and handsomest manufacturing
plants in the South,” reported the “boosterish” Charlotte
Observer in
November 1903.
Charlotte’s largest textile mill village was
North Charlotte
, the
centerpiece of which was the
Highland Park Manufacturing Company Plant No
3 ,
designed by Stuart W. Cramer , who had first come to Charlotte
as an engineer for the D. A. Tompkins Company. Erected at the
former site of the municipal water works, the imposing brick,
electric-powered mill, containing 30,000 spindles, 1000 looms,
and employing 800 workers, opened in 1904. The Mecklenburg Mill
(1904) and the
Johnston Manufacturing Company (1913) were also located in North Charlotte, as
were houses for the workers. All three mill buildings are still
standing.
Textile employees, mostly white yeomen farmers and their
families who had migrated to the city in search of jobs,
typically labored ten to twelve house a day Monday to Friday and
five hours on Saturday. One mill worker recalled a routine
day’s work for her mother.
After a
hard shift of breathing in cotton lint, her ears ringing from
the constant "bangin" and "slappin" of the motor belts, and the
eternal never ending "swishin" of the bobbins and thread, she
often worked late into the night hours at our own home. Still
tired from the previous day's work, she would crawl out of bed
at 4:30 a.m. the next morning, cook breakfast and head out to
the mill to begin another shift.
When asked about books, one Mecklenburg mill hand answered that
he had no time to read. “We have to go to work at fifteen
minutes to six and work till seven in the evening,” he
explained. A worker in neighboring Gaston County
complained bitterly about the impact of mill life upon the
laboring people. “In a few years, unless we get shorter
hours in cotton mills, you will see a State full of dwarfs and
invalids,” he warned.
New South industrialists vigorously opposed
any efforts by outside groups to improve the lot of textile
workers. A particularly dramatic encounter arose between
Tompkins and Methodist minister J. A. Baldwin . Baldwin visited the Atherton
Mill Village in 1898 and was appalled by the disease,
malnutrition, and overall poverty that he insisted existed
there Tompkins responded by telling the preacher that the
plight of textile workers was of their own making. They are "of
roving dispositions, are shiftless, and improvident," he
insisted.
D. A. Tompkins used the so-called “rough rule” in assigning
families to his mill houses, meaning that a mill worker was to
be supplied for every room in the house. Rent ranged from
75 cents to one dollar per day. In a letter he wrote to a
textile official in Patterson, New Jersey, Tompkins defended his
practice of not placing closets, bathrooms or hot water in his
mill houses. He explained that the majority of his workers
had grown up in rural areas, where such “modern improvements”
were unknown. “Sometimes they would object to ordinary
clothes closets,” he reported, “on the pleas that they were
receptacles for worn out shoes and skirts that ought to be
thrown away and destroyed.”
On balance, the evidence suggests
that the D. A. Tompkins
Company administered its
workforce with a tight fist. “I heartily approve discipline and
good order in my organization,” Tompkins declared. Although
examples of paternalism did exist, such as awarding a prize of
five hundred dollars annually for the best flower and vegetable
gardens, the overall impression is that the mill families
followed a daily routine dominated by hard work and long hours.
“Tompkins’ philosophy,” a biographer wrote, “was blind to the
needs of humanity in a society which was being increasingly
industrialized.”
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Atherton Lyceum |
D.
A. Tompkins
took advantage of the fact that it was not until 1903 that the
General Assembly of North Carolina enacted a child labor law,
prohibiting the employment of children less than twelve years of
age. He did build a school, the Atherton Lyceum , and imported
his sister from Edgefield, South Carolina to teach fundamental
quantitative and verbal skills to the mill children and their
parents. Despite his patriotic pronouncements, Tompkins
compelled his workers to labor on the Fourth of July, at least
until July 4, 1907, when he acquiesced to the suggestion
advanced by the superintendent of the Atherton Mills and
sponsored a picnic at the Catawba River , where his employees were served
sandwiches and lemonade.
A series of momentous developments in
the physical evolution of Charlotte occurred in 1890-91.
Edward Dilworth Latta , native of Pendleton,
South Carolina, former student at Princeton University, and
owner of a clothing manufacturing plant in Charlotte since the
early 1880s, joined with five associates on July 8, 1890, to
create the Charlotte Consolidated Construction Company , locally
known as the Four C’s . Like Tompkins, Latta was an
enthusiastic advocate of what historian Paul M. Gaston has
termed “the New South Creed.” Accordingly, like many Southern
leaders who attained adulthood during the decade of intense
poverty that followed the Civil War, Latta insisted that his
native region must discard the past and seek to emulate much of
the industrial and urban society of the North. Grounded
philosophically in the tenets of Social Darwinism, Latta
believed that the South should marshal its talents and resources
and beat the Yankees at their own game. “We must go forward or
retrograde – there is no resting place with progress,” he
contended.
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The
Central Hotel on the Square was a favorite spot for New
South leaders to meet and eat. |
As president of the Four C’s ,
Latta superintended the activities preparatory to the opening of
Dilworth , a suburb containing 1635 lots and located on the
former fairgrounds and adjacent parcels to the immediate south
of the city. Uppermost on his agenda was the installation of an
electric streetcar or trolley system. Charlotte had obtained a
horse-drawn or mule-drawn streetcar system in January 1887, but
Latta became convinced that only the new-fangled electric
streetcar could provide the kind of reliable service Dilworth
would require. Thomas Edison , who had established a laboratory
in the former United States Branch Mint to investigate how
electricity might be used to extract gold from low-grade ore,
visited in Latta’s home and probably played a part in persuading
his host that Charlotte needed a trolley system.
Not surprisingly, the Edison Electric
Company was awarded the contract to
construct the electric streetcar system for the Four C’s on
February 11, 1891. Soon thereafter, C. E. Collins , an Edison
official, arrived in Charlotte to oversee the job. Work began
in March and terminated on May 18, 1891, when the first trolley
departed from the intersection of Trade and Tryon Streets and
headed toward Dilworth . The Charlotte News reported
that a “great and jolly crowd” assembled to witness the event.
The Morning Star of
Wilmington described the reaction of the public to the placement
of the entire system into operation on May 20, 1891, the opening
day of the land sale in Dilworth. “The streets and yards fairly
swarmed with people, each hurrahing and waving as the car passed
along. Bouquets were sent to adorn the cars with,” the
newspaper continued, “and every one was wild with joy.”
On March 14, 1891, the Charlotte
Consolidated Construction Company
began a series of daily advertisements that appeared for a year
in the Charlotte News . They provide a fascinating
insight into the mindset of Edward Dilworth Latta and his
associates. These men, who congratulated themselves on being
visionaries “before whose eyes the future hangs no veil,” looked
upon Dilworth as a symbol of urban maturity that would galvanize
local support for a program of unceasing growth and expansion.
Above all else, they wanted their streetcar suburb to serve as a
beacon that would guide and direct the citizenry in a crusade to
transform Charlotte into a commercial and industrial center of
the New South.
Convinced that Charlotte stood “on the threshold of a big boom,”
Latta and his associates characterized their undertaking as the
“inaugural movement in the march of improvement” that would
enable Charlotte to become “aglow with the spirit of
enterprise.” Dilworth and its attendant trolley system, they insisted, would place
“the monument of progress where once stood lethargy and rot.”
“Ere long,” they predicted, “the pick, the hammer and the trowel
will join the chorus of the spinner and the loom and the sweet
music of enterprise will be heard all around.” Latta and his
associates stated that they had “no doubts about the
possibilities of Charlotte. We have anticipated her doubling,
yea trebling her population in the near future,” they
proclaimed. “If we all follow unitedly in the wake of the 4C’s,
we will build a city where we now have a town,” said one
enthusiastic supporter.
One cannot discount the significant and
beneficent impact that New South leaders like D. A. Tompkins
and Edward Dilworth Latta had
upon the economy of Charlotte and its environs. Certainly, both
men had their admirers. One biographer, George Winston, calls
Tompkins “a Southern Franklin, growing in poor soil and
enriching the soil he grew in.” He was, says Winston, “full of
zeal to help mankind by teaching men to help themselves, he was
a rare combination of worker and philosopher, of student and
teacher, of economist and philanthropist.” The drive, foresight
and ambition of Latta and the men like him changed forever the
nature of the South. The Charlotte Observer was
correct in its 1925 eulogy when it characterized Latta as the
“builder of a city. . . . He gave the town its first impetus,
and he kept it going until the day it went forward on its own
accord.”
Although former yeoman
farmers often had to endure severe working conditions in the
textile mills of the late nineteenth century, nobody held a gun
to their heads and forced them to accept positions in the
plants. Workers migrated to the mill villages because life was
often better for them there than on the impoverished farms they
left behind. Undoubtedly, there was a need for social and
political cohesion if the South was to recover from the ravages
of the Civil War. “The rebuilding of the Southern States after
the Civil War was an achievement of no less magnitude than the
War itself,” declares Winston. Admittedly by means that would be
unacceptable by today’s standards of public behavior, the
Democratic Party did provide essential leadership in North
Carolina and throughout the South in the closing decades of the
nineteenth century. Still, at least in this writer’s opinion,
some aspects of the legacy that men such as Tompkins and Latta
left behind is troubling, especially with respect to racial
attitudes. That truth was to become painfully obvious in the
1890s. More about that later. |