Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1922-01-11
The Development of the Tex
tile Industry in South
Carolina.
BY NJ. B. Tucker, Office Manager of
the Addison Mills.

7 South Carolina may owe much to
Tits statesmen, but you will agree af-
tier you have read this article by Mr..
Tucker that it owes even more to
Ithose business men of vision who
worked so hard and overcame so
many obstacles to establish the cot
ton manufacturing industry in the
South. Editors Note.
South Carolina holds the enviable
distinction of being the leading tex
! tile manufacturing state in the South,
and the second in the Union, exceed
led only by Massachusetts,.
The first cotton mill in the state
was built in 1s45 by William Gregg
Fat Graniteville, Aiken county, and
contained 5000 spindles and 800
|looms. He was the nephew of Jacob
Gregg, who had in 1910 established
fthe first cotton mill in the South near
Monticello, Georgia. Gregg was a
snlan of keen intellect and foresight,
This wisdom being shown in collec-
stion of essays on Domestic Indus
try" which sets forth the possibili-
tiles and advantages of cotton manu-
Efacturing in the South which is strik-
ingly uncanny. Just prior to writing
these essays he had visited the manu-
Featuring districts of the northern
4tates.
4 The vein of practical good sense of
these essays is shown in the preface,
5shen he refers to his visit to north
sern factories, as follows: "When I
Jaw bags of our cotton arrive in
Shose mountainous districts, which
;aad been packed in the interior of
Youth Carolina, and wagoned over
Miserable, bad roads (in some in
Chances one hundred miles) to Ham
surg or Columbia; thence transport
I'd 136 miles by railroad to Charles
Sfon, where it is sold, after being sub
lnitted to the charge of drayage,
commissions, and perhaps
thes ilppe New Sserk
to undergo similar charge asshere's
it is purchased by one of those manu-
facturers and again reshipped to
Hartford, ana from the last named
place, making dangerous and diff
cult passage up the Connecticut river,
is landed, and again hauled in wag-
ons some thirty or forty miles, over
mountainous roads, and having reach
ed it's final destination (at double its
original cost, is manufactured into
coarse cloth. Going over the same
ground again, it reaches New York,
where it is reshipped to Charleston,
and finds it's way back again into the
interior of our state. / repeat, when
1 saw these things, and knowing, as
I do, the rich resources of South Car
olina, and the facility with which cot
ton could be turned into cloth by la
Dor around US, which might be ap-
Piled to it without detriment to other
pursuits it be expected that
/ write without using strong terms"
In this remarkable memoir are ex-
pressed the very reasons why South
Carolina has reached the present i'm
portant place in the textile industry.
Would it not be splendid if William
Gregg could come back to see South
Carolina in 1921, only seventy-six
years later, with it's 800 cotton mills,
containing 100000 spindles, con-
suming nearly million bales of cot
ton annually, an investment of one
hundred and forty million dollars, an
annual output in finished products
valued at quarter of billion dol
lars, these mills employing 10000
people, who receive payroll of $7O,-
100000 annually?
A retrospective glance shows very
little progress toward developing the
industry before the Civil War, owing
to the difficulties of transportation,
marketing and financing, there being
only five mills in the state in 1860.
During the war and the following re-
construction period, state of forced
lethargy prevailed until. about 1880.
Then with the renaissance of the
South, politically and economically,
there began an earnest and active pc
riod of building mills, which contin-
ues unabated up to the present. Du-
ring this period of great development,
there lived one outstanding figure, to