Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T09:27:59.074Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cheap Labor and Southern Textiles before 1880

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Gavin Wright
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Labor costs historically have been decisive in determining the location of cotton textile production. Despite an apparent advantage in wage rates, however, the southern industry did not achieve sustained relative progress before about 1875. This study argues that in most times and places the region did not have “cheap labor” before this date. What matters is not just the level of wages in any year, but the quality of labor attracted at this wage and the geographic scope of the labor market within which firms operate. The scope of the labor market depends in turn on property rights and incentives toward recruitment activity.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 1979 , pp. 655 - 680
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Bolles, Albert, Industrial History of the United States Third Ed. (Norwich, Connecticut, 1881), pp. 411–12.Google Scholar

2 Mitchell, Broadus, Rise of Cotton Mills in the South (Baltimore, 1921), p. viiiGoogle Scholar. Mitchell, who remains intellectually active in the 1970s, can take satisfaction from the fact that his 1921 book has not yet been displaced as a general history.

3 The most explicit statement is Terrill, Tom E., “Eager Hands: Labor for Southern Textiles, 1850–1860,” this Journal, 36 (March 1976), 84–99Google Scholar.

4 See Guelman's, Howard “Comment on Paper by Terrill” pp. 100–01Google Scholar: “It is not at all clear that the availability of labor was a critical factor in the location of the textile industry.…” See also Morris, Morris D., “The Recruitment of an Industrial Labor Force in India, with British and American Comparisons,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2 (Apr. 1960), 305–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Interpretations of pean and Japanese experience frequently assign labor supply a more essential role. See, for example, Mokyr, Joel, Industrialization in the Low Countries 1795–1850 (New Haven, 1976)Google Scholar; leberger, Charles P., Europe's Postwar Growth: The Role of Labor Supply (Cambridge, Mass., 1967)Google Scholar.

5 The best published cost analysis, which uses 1890 cost data, is Doane, David, “Regional Cost Differentials and Textile Location: A Statistical Analysis,” Explorations in Economic History 9 (Fall 1971), 3–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar . An older study that is still informative is Chen, Chen-Han, “Regional Differences in Costs and Productivity in the American Cotton Manufacturing Industry, 1880–1910,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 55 (Aug. 1941)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The most accessible articles are Griffin, Richard W., “Cotton Manufacturing in Alabama to 1865,” Alabama Historical Quarterly, 18 (Fall 1956), 289–307Google Scholar; Standard, Diffee W. and Griffin, Richard W, “The Cotton Textile Industry in Antebellum North Carolina,” North Carolina Historical Re view, 34 (Jan. and Apr. 1957)Google Scholar; , Griffin, “The Origins of the Industrial Revolution in Georgia: Cotton Textiles, 1810–65,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 42 (Dec. 1958)Google Scholar; , Griffin, “Poor White Laborers Southern Cotton Factories, 1789–1865,” South Carolina Historical Magazine, 41 (Jan. 1960), 26–40Google Scholar Subsequent articles appeared in a journal originally titled Cotton History Review, subsequently Tex tile History Review, which survived from 1960 to 1964. See also Lander, Ernest M. Jr, The Textile In dustry in Antebellum South Carolina (Baton Rouge, 1969)Google Scholar.

7 Blicksilver, Jack, Cotton Manufacturing in the Southeast: An Historical Analysis, Studies in Business and Economics, Bulletin No. 5, Georgia State College of Business Administration (Atlanta, 1959), p. 28.Google Scholar

8 , Morris, “Recruitment,” p. 317Google Scholar . Morris's work on the Bombay textile labor force involved a much more detailed analysis. See The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India (Berkeley, 1965)Google Scholar.

9 Lemert, Ben F., The Cotton Textile Industry of the Southern Appalachian Piedmont (Durham, N.C., 1933), p. 58.Google Scholar

10 , Lander, The Textile Industry, p. 91.Google Scholar

11 , Mitchell, Rise of Cotton Mills, p. 173.Google Scholar

12 Miller, Randall, “Daniel Pratt's Industrial Urbanism: The Cotton Mill Town in Antebellum Alabama,” Alabama Historical Quarterly, 34 (Spring 1972), 26Google Scholar , quoting Mim's 1886 history of Prattville.

13 , Morris, Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force, p. 202Google Scholar . A lucid analysis of the determination of “supply price” for different family members appears in Mazumdar, Dipak, “Underemployment in Agriculture and the Industrial Wage Rate,” Economica, 26 (Nov. 1959), 328–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 U.S. Commissioner of Labor, Report on Condition of Women and Child Wage-Earners Vol. 1, (Washington, D.C., 1910), p. 314.Google Scholar

15 Saxonhouse, Gary, “Productivity Change and Labor Absorption in Japanese Cotton Spinning 1891–1935,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 91 (May 1977) 195–219CrossRefGoogle Scholar . This article is the major supporting evidence for the significance of labor force characteristics in productivity change.

16 A number of recent contributions to the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity have stressed this dimension. See particularly Hall, Robert E., “The Process of Inflation in the Labor Market,” Brook-ings Papers on Economic Activity, 2 (1974), 343–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vroman, Wayne, “Worker Upgrading and the Business Cycle,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1 (1977), 229–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar . An early analysis along these lines is Reder, Melvin W., “The Theory of Occupational Wage Differentials,” American Economic Review, 45 (Dec. 1955), 833–52Google Scholar.

17 , Lander, The Textile Industry, p. 90Google Scholar; Starobin, Robert, Industrial Slavery in the Old South (New York, 1970), p. 155Google Scholar . Lander finds “little variation between the 1820s and the 1850s” in textiles. Star-obin makes the same claim for the entire period 1800-61, but his supporting citations are extremely heterogeneous and (as he notes) do not include textiles.

18 Mazumdar, Dipak, “Labour Supply in Early Industrialization: The Case of Bombay Textile Industry,” Economic History Review, 26 (Aug. 1973), 477–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar . See also Uselding, Paul, “An Early Chapter in the Evolution of American Industrial Management,” in Cain, Louis P. and Uselding, Paul J., eds., Business Enterprise and Economic Change (Kent, Ohio, 1973), p. 77Google Scholar.

19 Pencavel, John, “Wages, Specific Training and Labor Turnover in U.S. Manufacturing Industries,” International Economic Review, 13 (Feb. 1972), 53–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 See, most recently, Vedder, Richard K., Gallaway, Lowell E. and Klingaman, David, “Discrimination and Exploitation in Antebellum American Cotton Textile Manufacturing,” Research in Economic History, 3 (1978), 217–62Google Scholar , in which the authors attempt to measure “exploitation” without distinguishing the firm's labor supply curve from the industry's.

21 See “Notes on the 170th Anniversary of the Manufacture of Cotton in the United States, 1790–1860,” Cotton History Review, 1 (July 1960), 83–87Google Scholar.

22 , Lander, The Textile Industry, p. 5.Google Scholar

23 , Griffin, “The Origins of Southern Cotton Manufacturing, 1807–1816,” Cotton History Review, 1 (Jan. 1960) 5–12Google Scholar; , Lander, The Textile Industry, pp. 6–12Google Scholar.

24 Herring, Harriet L., “Early Industrial Development in the South,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 153 (Jan. 1931), 3–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thompson, Holland, From the Cotton Field to the Cotton Mill (Freeport, New York, 1971; first published 1906), p. 25Google Scholar; Tompkins, David A., “The Mountain Whites as an Industrial Labor Factor in the South,” in The South in the Building of the Nation (Richmond, 1909)Google Scholar.

25 , Mitchell, The Rise of Cotton Mills, p. 40.Google Scholar

26 Clark, Victor S., History of Manufactures in the United Stales, 1607–1860, Vol. 1 (New York, 1929), opposite p. 536.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., p. 537. The figures on household manufactures in 1810 are collected most conveniently in Rolla Tryon, Milton, Household Manufactures in the United States, 1640–1860 (New York, 1966; first published 1917)Google Scholar.

28 Clark, p. 541. A detailed account of the Spartanburg migration may be found in A History of Spartanburg County, compiled by the Spartanburg Unit of the Writers Program of the Works Progress Administration in the State of South Carolina (Spartanburg, 1976; first published 1940), pp. 73–80Google Scholar . See also Lander, The Textile Industry, Ch. 2.

29 Watkins, J. L. states: “The war and the embargo … gave a great impetus to cotton manufacturing in the country, and the domestic consumption increased, to more than 600,000 bales, or nearly 70%.” King Cotton (New York, 1969; originally published 1908), p. 14Google Scholar . The precise dates and sources for this statement are unclear, but it appears to be based on examination of residuals between production estimates and exports; in terms of pounds, such residuals come to 74 percent for both 1813 and 1814. Hammond, citing Woodbury's 1836 report, which in turn cites an 1816 House Committee Report (not accessible to me at this time), puts U.S. consumption at 31.5 million pounds in 1815, less thanhalfofthe 1814–15 crop. This percentage appears to be too low, however. A conservative application of Zevin's estimates of the annual increase of total output in New England, using Gallatin's 1810 estimates as a base, implies that Ne w England consumption must have been over 50,000,000 pounds by 1815. See Hammond, M.B., The Cotton Industry (New York, 1897), p. 242Google Scholar and Appendix; Woodbury, Levi, Secretary of the Treasury, Report on Cotton, Executive Document, 1st Session, 24th Congress, No. 146 (March 4, 1836), pp. 40, 42Google Scholar; Zevin, Robert, “The Growth of Cotton Textile Production after 1815,” in Fogel, Robert and Engerman, Stanley, eds., The Reinterpretation of American Economic History (New York, 1971), pp. 123–24Google Scholar . According to Woodbury exports to France rose to 10.25 million pounds in 1813 but fell to 1.75 million pounds in 1814 (p. 30).

30 The appropriate deflation of the cotton price in Figure 1 is difficult, but employing Cole's index of Charleston prices other than export staples does not alter the pattern displayed. See Cole, Arthur H., Wholesale Commodity Prices in the U.S. (Cambridge, Mass., 1938), pp. 160–61Google Scholar.

31 Preyer, Norris, “Southern Support of the Tariff of 1816—A Reappraisal,” Journal of Southern History, 25 (Aug. 1959), 306–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Quoted in ibid., p. 314.

33 Alexander Field, James, “Sectoral Shift in Antebellum Massachusetts: A Reconsideration,” Explorations in Economic History, 15 (Apr. 1978), 146–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 The best known illustration is Ulrich Phillips's graph of slave prices in four markets, in Life and Labor in the Old South (Boston, 1929), p. 177Google Scholar . Phillips's figures have now been superseded by the work of Fogel and Engerman using probate data, and Laurence Kotlikoff using New Orleans sale price data; the results available thus far confirm the picture of a well integrated regional slave market. See Kotlikoff, “The Structure of Slave Prices in New Orleans, 1804 to 1862,” Economic Inquiry (forthcoming).

35 See my analysis in The Political Economy of the Cotton South, pp. 119–25.

36 Layer, Robert G., Earnings of Cotton Mill Operatives, 1825–1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), p. 18Google Scholar; Lebergott, Stanley, Manpower in Economic Growth (New York, 1964), pp. 98, 547Google Scholar . Lebergott presents evidence that for several firms, wages declined between 1824 and 1832 (p. 130).

37 History of Wages in the United States from Colonial Times to 1928. Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin No. 604 (Washington, D.C., 1929), pp. 106–07Google Scholar . See also Nickless, Pamela, “Changing Labor Productivity and the Utilization of Native Women Workers in the American Cotton Textile Industry, 1825–1860,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Purdue University, 1976, pp. 36–37Google Scholar.

38 Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin No. 604, pp. 93–94.

39 Griffin, “Poor White Laborers,” p. 31.

40 Lander, Ernest, “The Development of Textiles in the South Carolina Piedmont Before 1860,” Cotton History Review 1 (July 1960), p. 96.Google Scholar

41 , Griffin, “Poor White Laborers,” p. 29.Google Scholar

42 Cases are discussed in Preyer, Norris, “The Historian, The Slave and the Ante-Bellum Textile Industry,” Journal of Negro History, 46 (Apr. 1961), 71–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; , Starobin, Industrial Slavery, pp. 12–14Google Scholar; Miller, Randall, The Cotton Mill Movement in Antebellum Alabama (New York, 1978), pp. 149–53Google Scholar; Jones, Charles C., “Pioneer Manufacturing in Richmond County, Georgia,” Textile History Review, 5 (July 1964), 79–81Google Scholar; Stokes, Allen, “Black and White Labor and the Development of the Southern Textile Industry,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of South Carolina, 1977, pp. 51, 61, 114Google Scholar.

43 Buckingham, J.S., The Slave States of America (London, 1842), p. 113.Google Scholar

44 , Miller, “Daniel Pratt's Industrial Urbanism,” p. 22, quoting a statement byGoogle Scholar, DeBow. Cf. Hunt's Merchant Magazine, 22 (Jan. 1850,) p. 581Google Scholar.

45 , Standard and , Griffin, The Cotton Textile Industry, p. 140Google Scholar; , Preyer, “The Historian,” pp. 73–74Google Scholar . The Rocky Mount owner “was informed by the planters in 1851 that with the price of cotton rising the slaves were needed in the fields.”

46 , Preyer, “The Historian,” p. 80Google Scholar; , Lander, The Textile Industry, p. 90Google Scholar; , Terrill, “Eager Hands,” p. 86Google Scholar . Starobin's claim that 5000 slaves were working in textiles in 1860 is quite far off (Terrill, ibid., p. 84).

47 See the comments of Charles Lyell on the white-only policy at Columbus, , Georgia. Second Visit to the United States, vol. 2, (New York, 1849), pp. 236–37Google Scholar.

48 Mitchell, Broadus, William Gregg: Factory Master of the Old South (Chapel Hill N.C., 1928), p. 23Google Scholar; , Preyer, “The Historian,” p. 77Google Scholar.

49 Compare the analysis of urban slavery in Goldin, Claudia, Urban Slavery in the American South 1820–1860 (Chicago, 1976)Google Scholar . The essential difference is that the argument presented here does not rely on assumptions about technical substitutability in production.

50 , Griffin, “The Origins,” p. 369.Google Scholar

51 The higher percentage of females at Hamilton might seem to point in the opposite direction. This is not necessarily the case, however, because age-earnings profiles typically show that girls are more productive than boys below the age of 16. Even when the aggregate southern workforce had swung heavily toward males (after 1900), young girls were given more responsible and demanding jobs than young boys.

52 , Mitchell, William Gregg, p. 109.Google Scholar

53 DeBow's Review, 8 (Feb. 1850), p. 139.Google Scholar

54 Hunt's Merchant Magazine, 20 (Dec. 1849), 672.Google Scholar

55 , Lander, The Textile Industry, pp. 60–61.Google Scholar

56 Briggs, Martha Tune, Mill Owners and Mill Workers in an Ante-bellum North Carolina County, unpublished Master's thesis, University of North Carolina, 1975, Ch. 3. Tom Terrill informs me, however, that at Graniteville the majority of heads of household were farmers or mill workers.Google Scholar

57 Huertas, Thomas, “Damnifying Southern Economic Growth, 1840–1860,” this Journal, 39 (March 1979), 87–100.Google Scholar

58 , Starobin, Industrial Slavery, p. 188.Google Scholar

59 In 1850 the Scientific American wrote that “Coarse goods can be manufactured cheaper at the South, and with the great number of factories now in operation [in the southern states], how can it be expected that our northern manufacturers can long keep the field against them—they cannot do it.” Quoted in Dunwell, Steve, The Run of the Mill (Boston, 1978), p. 158Google Scholar.

60 Ginger, Ray, “Labor in a Massachusetts Cotton Mill, 1853–1860,” Business History Review, 28 (March 1954), esp. 74–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 See my discussion in The Political Economy of the Cotton South (New York, 1978) pp. 150–54Google Scholar.

62 In Phillips, Ulrich B., ed., Plantation and Frontier (Cleveland, 1909), p. 339Google Scholar.

63 (New York, 1965), esp. Chs. 8 and 9. Many contemporary comments stressed fears of the political consequences of extensive free labor immigration, which may indeed be more important. See Memminger's letter to Hammond (Apr. 28, 1849)Google Scholar , in Martin, Thomas P., “The Advent of William Gregg and the Graniteville Company,” Journal of Southern History, 11 (Aug. 1945), 413Google Scholar ; also Spratt's letter to Perkins (Feb. 1861), in , Phillips, Plantation and Frontier, pp. 176–77Google Scholar.

64 See, for example, Berthoff, Rowland T., “Southern Attitudes Toward Immigration, 1865–1914,” Journal of Southern History, 17 (Aug. 1951) 328–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, E. Russ, “Louisiana's Public and Private Immigration Endeavors: 1866–1893,” Louisiana History, 15 (Spring 1974), 153–73Google Scholar; Loewenberg, Bert James, “Efforts of the South to Encourage Immigration, 1865–1900,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 10 (Oct. 1934), 363–85Google Scholar.

65 Evidence on rates of return and overall Southern manufacturing performance in the 1850s may be found in Fred Bateman and Weiss, Thomas, “Manufacturing in the Antebellum South,” in Research in Economic History, 1 (1976), 1–44Google Scholar.

66 , Blicksilver, Cotton Manufacturing in the Southeast, pp. 31–32Google Scholar; Smith, Robert Sidney, Mill on the Dan (Durham N.C., 1960), pp. 103–04Google Scholar.