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The Transformation of Cotton Marketing in the Late Nineteenth Century: Alexander Sprunt and Son of Wilmington, N. C., 1884–1956*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

J. R. Killick
J. R. Killick
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Economic History, The University of Leeds
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Abstract

Historians of the New South will find in Professor Killick's essay, based on the business archives of an important fin-de-siécle and early-twentieth-century cotton marketing enterprise, further powerful proof that the real story can only come from informed, sympathetic studies of what private men of affairs were accomplishing behind the dust storm of political demagogy that marked most public utterances, North and South, on southern problems in this era. Real entrepreneurship sprang up to give the marketing of the cotton crop a directness and an efficiency that ineffectual antebellum southern leaders had only dreamed of. This torch of enterprise was successfully passed, moreover, from a dying family firm to a more modern corporate organization, headed by even more skilled marketers who had learned well the lessons of their predecessors and were well prepared to flourish in the vastly changed post-1929 world. The stereotype of the prolonged backwardness of the South after 1877 is further discredited in this essay, which, significantly, is written from the far side of the Atlantic, where marketing of the cotton crop was always the most important aspect of its history.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , Summer 1981 , pp. 143 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1981

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References

1 Woodman, Harold D., “Sequel to Slavery: The New History Views the South,” The Journal of Southern History, XLIII (1977), 523–554CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fite, Gilbert C., “Southern Agriculture since the Civil War: An Overview” Agricultural History, 53 (1979), 3–21.Google Scholar

2 Woodman, Harold D., King Cotton and his Retainers: Financing and Marketing the Cotton Crop of the South, 1800–1925 (Lexington, Kentucky, 1968)Google Scholar is mostly concerned with the interior marketing system.

3 Killick, John R., “The Cotton Operations of Alexander Brown and Sons in the Deep South, 1820–1880,” The Journal of Southern History, XLIII (May, 1977), 169–194.CrossRefGoogle ScholarRothstein, Morton, “Antebellum Wheat and Cotton Exports: A Contrast in Marketing Organization and Economic Development,” Agricultural History, 40 (1966), 91–100Google Scholar, gives the traditional point of view.

4 Bouilly, Robert, “The Development of American Cotton Exchanges, 1870–1916” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Missouri, 1975), 28–38.Google Scholar

5 Ransom, Roger L. and Sutch, Richard, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation (Cambridge, England, 1977), 12–13, 106–170.Google Scholar

6 The records of Alexander Sprunt and Son are in the Manuscript Department of the William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. As is evident in the text, the records are very uneven. The firm kept little of its general correspondence, but did retain a considerable number of files on particular topics. There is also a good set of account books.

7 McKee Evans, W., Ballots and Fence Rails: Reconstruction on the Lower Cape Fear (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1966), 176–210.Google Scholar

8 Alexander Sprunt and Son to the Hon. Judson Clements, Interstate Commerce Commission, Washington D.C., November 6, 1908.

9 Ibid.

10 Sprunt, James, Information and Statistics respecting Wilmington, North Carolina: Being a Report by the President of the Produce Exchange, Presented to its Members, April 1883. (Wilmington, N.C., 1883), 143–145.Google Scholar

11 Minutes of the Meetings of the Stockholders and of the Board of Directors of the Champion Compress and Warehouse Company, June 6, 1878.

12 Sprunt, Information and Statistics, 144.

13 James Sprunt, A Tribute from the City of Wilmington (Wilmington, N.C., 1925), 39; Minutes of … the Champion Compress, April 9, 1911.

14 Minutes of … the Champion Compress, September 13, 1892.

15 Alexander Sprunt and Son to the Hon. Judson Clements, November 6, 1908.

16 James Sprunt, A Tribute, 24–25; Registers of British Ships entering the Port of Wilmington, North Carolina, during the years 1873–1910. Returns of the British Vice-Consul to the Foreign Office. James Sprunt was British Vice-Consul in Wilmington for much of his commercial life.

17 Annual General Meeting of the Champion Compress and Warehouse Company, July 3, 1881; Minutes of … the Champion Compress, 1878–1911, Vol. 150.

18 Sprunt, Information and Statistics, 98.

19 Sprunt, James, Chronicles of the Cape Fear River (Raleigh, N.C., 1914), 501.Google Scholar

20 Registers of British Ships entering Wilmington, 1873–1910; Registers of Ships and Cargoes, 1897–1915, Vol. 144.

21 W. H. Sprunt: Notebook, 1887, on businessmen in North Carolina and South Carolina, File 6083.

22 Alexander Sprunt and Son to the Hon. Judson Clements, November 6, 1908.

23 File 6000, Private Letterpress Book, 1893–1900 (especially correspondence with Messrs. Laird and Gray of New York). Laird and Gray were the New York agents of the Canadian Bank of Commerce.

24 Ibid., October 7, 1893.

25 Ibid., September 12, 1896.

26 James Sprunt, A Tribute, 35.

27 Alexander Sprunt and Son to the Hon. Judson Clements, November 6, 1908.

28 John D. Sprunt, Alexander Sprunt's third son, represented them in London in the 1870s and early 1880s and according to William Sprunt's son, Dr. Douglas H. Sprunt of Memphis, Tennessee, very likely involved them in damaging timber speculations.

29 Addition, dated April 15, 1886 to partnership agreement of April 16, 1884.

30 Alexander Sprunt and Son to Messrs. Laird and Gray, New York, April 1, 1893.

31 Correspondence and other papers, December 1903 — May 1904.

32 Alexander Sprunt and Son to John Milligan, Liverpool, October 21, 1904. File 6051, “Private Letter File, 1904–1905 (Especially correspondence with Liverpool agent).”

33 Partnership Agreements, June 4, 1904 and June 3, 1908.

34 Alexander Sprunt and Son to John Milligan, February 14, 1905. File 6051.

35 Alexander Sprunt and Son to J. Milligan, October 21 and October 29, 1904. File 6051.

36 File 6327, “Notes and correspondence from trip to Europe in May-July, 1922, by Alexander and W. H. Sprunt.” The following paragraphs are mainly based on this journal.

37 See Sprunt Vol. 189, Letter Books of the Bremen Branch, especially between the branch and Frederick Huth & Co., and the German Bank of London, 1909–1911, and Vol. 190, especially between the branch and König Brothers, London, 1909–1913.

38 Alexander Sprunt and Son to the Hon. Judson Clements, November 6, 1908.

39 Ibid.

40 William H. Sprunt, Le Havre, to James Sprunt, Wilmington, June 7, 1922. File 6327.

41 See File 7319, “Houston property, 1912,” and regular comments in Sprunt, Vol. 1, Minutes of Meetings of Stockholders and Board of Directors of Alexander Sprunt and Son, 1919–30.

42 This paragraph is mostly based on a Supreme Court case, Alexander Sprunt and Son Inc., et al. v. United States, 281 U.S. 249 (1929). The case involved the effect of railroad rate differentials in Texas on cotton shipments.

43 The Houston branch made profits of approximately 1.8, 0.5, 0.1, and 0.6 million dollars in 1922, 1927, 1928, and 1929 respectively, but losses of 0.4, 0.5, and 0.8 million dollars in 1924, 1925, and 1926.

44 James Sprunt, A Tribute, passim; I am indebted to Dr. Douglas H. Sprunt of Memphis, Tennessee, for character portraits of his father and uncle.

45 Information from Douglas H. Sprunt.

46 Sprunt, Vol. 120, Register of Cotton Buyers, 1897–1921, lists between 75 and 100 cotton buyers nearly every year between 1900 and 1914.

47 Garside, Alston H., Cotton Goes to Market: A Graphic Description of a Great Industry (New York, 1935), 187–205.Google Scholar

48 This account of the McFaddens is based on several undated typescript memoranda in the historical file in the firm's offices in Memphis, Tennessee, which describe its major branches and activities, and on Dixon, Roger L., The Cotton Bonanza, 1870–1950, By a Participant, 1908–1960 (Privately printed, Dallas, Texas, 1973).Google Scholar

49 For Anderson-Clayton, see Garwood, Ellen Clayton, Will Clayton: A Short Biography (Austin, Texas, 1958)Google Scholar, Fleming, Lamar, “Growth of the Business of Anderson-Clayton & Co.,” Tinsley, James A. ed., in Texas Gulf Coast Historical Association Publications Series, 10 (1966)Google Scholar, and several unpublished typescript histories of the firm in their offices in Houston, Texas.

50 By contrast, some of the Sprunts' profits went into unrelated activities, such as a cattle ranch in North Carolina, a peach farm, and trade in sugar and tobacco.