The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1899-09-30

lorger tobacco area, every tobacco town
in North Carolina would have thriving
factories and instead of selling tae
weed to be manufactured elsewhere, It
would convert the weed into the manu-
| factured product in the towns near the
| tobacco fields.
What the tobacco trust has done
| for tobacco manufacturing, the cotton
mill trust will do for cotton mill man
ufacturing. 1t may get the foreign
| trade. or more of it than we now en-
| ioy. but it will be obtained at the sac
| rifice of individual mill building and
independent enterprises. Instead OF
MULTIPLICATION of mills, dotting all parts
of the cotton section and giving an I'M
petus to business of all kinds in many
towns. we will have a few large CEN
tres where great mills will give en-
ployment to many people, thus centraliz-
ing the cotton mill industry of the
South.
There is another aspect of the trust
in cotton mills that is to be deplored
Up to this time in the South most of
the actual managers of the cotton mills
have been their owners, at least In
part The personal contact between en-
ployer and employee has preserved
pleasant relations and prevented fric-
tion. The employer has known the
employee, they have touched elbows,
they have felt that they had common
same church, and in sickness, in
trouble, in politics, in all those things
that tell of the brotherhood of man,
they have felt fellowship that as a
rule has made the Southern mill towns
free from those labor troubles that
have afflicted the balance OF the world.
With the ownership of them all, or
enough of them to control, In the hands
of trust, all that pleasant relation
ship passes away. For time the
same men may be in control but after
while new men will come as man
ayers who have no ideas except to obey
their superiors and to earn big divi-
dends. The men and women will feel
and truly-that they are employed by
machine that has no heart, only a
pocket-book. With the passing of the
small cotton mills into the hands of
a trust, will come new day when the
operative will know not so much OF
his employer as he knows OF the me-
chine which he is paid to run.
There is still another phase which
will impede the progress of the young
men who are looking forward to ca
reers in cotton mills. Many of them
hope, instead Of being employees .all4their
lives, after thoroughly learning the
business, to be at the head Of MILL
Under present conditions, with the
steady extension of mills, the young
man with head for business and a
hand trained in mechanics, may hope
to join in with small capitalists and
build mill of which he can be Il di-
rector or manager. There are many
young men whose ambition in this di-
rection has been realized. If the mills
are not swallowed up by trust, why
by like ambition? Recently in Char
lotte Mr. Dresser has resigned as SUI
perintendent of a cotton mill to help
organize ii company that will establish
a factory with a capital of $250,000.
Is the open door to be closed to such
young men by the monoPolizing OF the
business by a trust with capital of
an hundred million dollars?
The above are reasons against the
trust that appeal particularly to min
men--owners and operatives-and the
youth of the South looking toward an
Industrial career with the ambition OF
effect OF cotton mill trust on these
classes is to be deplored, but there is
an even more serious question involv-
ed-one that would affect every man,
woman and child in the cotton States.
Does anybody suppose that capitalists
wculd put an hundred million or more
dollars in cotton mill trust unless they
saw opportunities for making big money
out of the investment? Is 1t not rea-
sonably certain that the men behind
the proposed trust have plan by
which they can make more money than
the ordinary dividends that they would
get from the safe management Of the
mills to be purchased? Let us sec.
Not great while ago, Mr.. Searles, a
leader of the sugar trust, resigned from
that trust to take the presidency of the
round-bale cotton compress company. 1t
was in its infancy and apparently prom
ised no great return. 1t became known
shortly after the round bale machines
were put in operation that the company
would not sell them at any price, but