Existing comment:
Mill Life:
"And I come to the mill"
"... it just got to where those old hills were worn out up there. You couldn't make a living on it, hardly. And I told my father, 'I believe I can find a place where I can make a better living.'" -- Martin Lowe, 90-year-old retired mill worker.
White-speckled cotton fields covered the land. Piedmont streams surged with untapped power. Thousands of sharecroppers yearned for a better life. South Carolina held great potential for the textile industry.
There were only a few textile mills in the state before 1860. But in the decades after the Civil War, many Northern manufacturers came south.
Between 1880 and 1920, thousands of white farmers were drawn to the mills. No longer did they follow the shifting rhythms of the seasons. They marched to the regular summons of the factory bell.
With the mills came the mill towns. Manufacturers created these villages to give their workers a sense of community and to encourage them to rely on the company.
But the rise of the textile industry meant little to the newly-freed blacks. The mills gave them only unskilled jobs, work no one else wanted. |