USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: North Carolina since 1860, Volume III > Part 32
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Wheat cultivation, prior to the outbreak of the war in Europe was falling off in almost every county of the state and there was a heavy shortage every year. The value of the crop in 1910 was nearly $4,500,000. Hay and forage, while in- creasing, were far below the needs of the state.
Sweet potatoes carry the distinction of being the one crop in which the state has ever taken first rank in the Union, having held that place from the census of 1870 to 1917, in which year both South Carolina and Alabama passed it. The value of the crop of 1910 was more than $4,000,000.
Largely because of the trucking industry, the total value of vegetables and berries has steadily increased. The trucking industry has been of tremendous value and importance, par- ticularly in the East. It is a development of the last thirty-
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WASHINGTON DUKE'S FIRST TOBACCO FACTORY
ONE OF THE PRESENT DUKE TOBACCO FACTORIES AT DURHAM
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
five years and was really the first upward movement in agri- culture after the war.
Fruit-growing on a large scale is also a new thing and the apple orchards of the west and the peach orchards of the Sandhills region show the possibilities in the state. The mar- ket value of orchard fruit, grapes, and nuts was more than three and a half million in 1910.
The wealth created by agriculture in North Carolina is twice as much each year as that of all the other industries combined. The crop-producing power of the state in 1910 was $24.84 per acre. The agricultural produce of 1915 was worth $94,000,000 more than the aggregate resources of all the banks in the state. Taking the tax value of all property in 1914 as a basis we reach the striking fact that agriculture cre- ates every three and one-half years as much wealth as all that the state has been able to accumulate during its entire history. But the per capita production is small, only about $169 and wealth is poorly retained. The per capita farm wealth in 1910 was only $322 and only four states in the Union took a lower rank. In per acre crop producing power the state far outranks Iowa, which leads the United States with a per cap- ita wealth in farm properties of $3,386, and Oklahoma which leads the South with $830. It is evident that the difference is not due to agriculture so much as to methods of agriculture.
The difference lies in the crop system of the states men- tioned. The situation in North Carolina is due to the almost exclusive use of cotton and tobacco as a basis of credit to farmers and absence of sufficient working capital, the want of foresight on the part of a large body of the more ignorant and thoughtless class of negro tenants, the prevalence of the renting system, the indifference or approval of supply mer- chants who want a profit, familiarity with cotton and tobacco, and a system of short term rentals. In other words North Carolina is largely committed to the one-crop system and cot- ton and tobacco have too long ruled agriculture. A vast amount of ready money comes in from them but it is spent almost at once in paying for the western beef and pork, butter and cheese, grain and forage, meal and flour which have been advanced.
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
In 1909 sixty-eight cotton-growing counties bought $97,- 000,000 worth of bread, meat, and hay alone. The same story in less degree was and is true of the tobacco counties. These things tell the story of the past half century. The future is secure provided the one-crop system is abandoned and diversi- fied farming replaces it, with the chief emphasis upon the food crops. There were scattered manifestations of a possible ten- dency in that direction prior to 1914, and the influence of the world war and the imperative necessity of food production, it is to be hoped, will educate the farming class away from the slavery in which they have too long lived. It will be a fortu- nate day for the people of the state when King Cotton and King Tobacco are dethroned and lose their power which from the beginning has meant only slavery with the evils which the word implies.
The story of the industrial development of North Carolina is quite remarkable. Here, as in agriculture, cotton and to- bacco are enthroned but, in sharp contrast, their sway is en- tirely beneficent and has meant in almost all respects progress and prosperity. As yet they are without rivals in the indus- trial field.
North Carolina was always well adapted naturally and through the instincts of its people to industrial endeavor. But slavery stifled industrial development and while in 1860 there were 3,689 manufacturing establishments, there was only a total capital of a little more than nine and a half million dollars. The total number of employes was 14,217, of whom 2,111 were women, and the combined wages amounted to something over two and a half million dollars. The total value of products was $16,678,698. Nearly all these establishments were small affairs in the nature of hand trades and neighbor- hood industries and there were but few factories in the entire state, the figures given including turpentine, plants, grist mills, shoemakers' shops and the like.
Bladen, thanks to turpentine plants of which it had nearly 500, led the state in number. Alamance led in capital invested with $728,750. New Hanover, also because of turpentine, led in value of products with a total of $1,377,717 as also in num- ber of employes, 695 in all. Turpentine, with 1,526 plants
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
with a combined capital of $2,053,226, producing a product valued at $5,311,420, led in number of establishments, capital invested, and value of product. Of establishments which can properly be called factories, there were in the first place ninety-seven tobacco manufacturing establishments with com- bined capital of $646,730, employing 1,361 hands, earning $164,460 in annual wages and making a product valued at $1,117,099. Rockingham, with twenty-five factories, Gran- ville with sixteen, and Caswell with eleven led with consid- erably more than half the capital, hands, wages, and value of the product. Alamance, Stokes, and Person came next. Next in importance were thirty-nine cotton mills with a capital of $1,272,750, which consumed 5,500,000 pounds of cotton, had 41,884 spindles and 761 looms, employed 1,764 hands, of whom 1,315 were women, with total wages of $189,744 and making a product valued at $1,046,047.
The state stood second in the South and eighth in the Union on value of product. Cumberland with seven mills, and Ala- mance and Randolph with five each, led among the counties, having more than half the total capital and employes, paying more than half the wages, and making nearly half the total value of product.
The other factories worthy of mention were 335 lumber mills, all but 5 saw-mills, 7 small woolen mills, 6 small paper mills and 25 small iron works.
In 1863 the federal troops burned the cotton mills at Rocky Mount and in 1865 Sherman's troops destroyed the five mills in Cumberland while Stoneman's raid accounted for a mill in Caldwell. The close of the war found most of the rest with worn-out and obsolete machinery and generally in bad condition. This was of course true of all other indus- tries. Consequently it may be said that the industrial devel- opment of the state begins with 1865. Several cotton mills, notably the Holt mill in Alamance began work almost at once, but cotton mill development, requiring as it did much capital and trained labor, was very slow for more than a decade.
The leading place of the state in naval stores was lost just at this time and that industry has since been of decreasing im- portance. The way was open, however, for tobacco manufac-
Vol. III-25
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
turing which required much less capital, a much smaller body of trained labor, and which had the best raw material in the world at the very door of the factory. Naturally, no other industry grew so rapidly.
For two decades after the war Virginia had an easy pre- eminence but North Carolina moved up steadily. The pause of the Union army near Durham for Johnston's surrender familiarized a vast number of Northern soldiers with the to- bacco of that section and began the new tobacco industry in the state. Two plants soon assumed importance. W. T. Blackwell commenced the manufacture of his famous "Bull Durham" brand which profited most by the advertisement in the name of Durham. Washington Duke, an Orange County farmer, returned from the Confederate army and at once saw the great opportunity. He began the manufacture of smoking tobacco on his farm in a log cabin, 16 by 18 feet in size. In 1873 he built a three-story factory in Durham with a floor space of 40 to 70 feet and employing fifteen hands. In 1875 he had to add to this and the rapid expansion of his business began with "Duke's Mixture" as the chief reliance. A few years later the manufacture of cigarettes was commenced, ac- companied by one of the earliest of the great advertising cam- paigns. The cigarette factory soon became the largest in the world, as the Blackwell factory was for smoking tobacco.
The name of Durham and the success of the two Durham brands led to the establishment of other factories, including some for the manufacture of plug tobacco, and Durham may be said to have been built up around the tobacco industry thus started. At other points factories were being built. Winston became an important manufacturing center early and con- tinues so, the most important plant there being the great Reynolds' establishment, which is one of the largest of its kind in the world. The period of rapid increase came after 1880. Fifty factories were built in 1884 alone. In 1885 North Carolina was manufacturing 8 per cent of the total tobacco output of the United States and 5 per cent of the cigarettes. In 1890 the percentage had risen to 9 and 23 respectively. By 1905 the state's percentage of the total was 18 but of the cigarette production had fallen to 3. The total value of the output
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
through the period increased steadily, reaching $7,000,000 in 1895, $13,000,000 in 1899, $28,000,000 in 1904, $36,000,000 in 1909 and nearly $58,000,000 in 1914, in which year the state led the United States in the manufacture of chewing and smoking tobacco. In 1917 Winston, which led the cities of the state in manufacturing, having a tenth of all the manufactur- ing capital in the state, passed St. Louis as a tobacco manu- facturing centre and took the first place in the country in the industry. The federal tax has multiplied ten times since 1890, the capital employed twenty times and the output forty times. A fourth of all the chewing and smoking tobacco consumed, a seventh of all the tobacco products made in the United States are manufactured there.
In the same period the number of establishments de- creased. From the close of the war until 1890 was a period of expansion. In 1870 there were 111 factories which in- creased to 126 by 1880. Competition was severe and in 1890 the number had fallen to 107. In 1896 there were 242, Forsyth leading with sixty-three followed by Surry with thirty-four and Rockingham with twenty-one. Consolidation with the crushing of competition then began and in 1899 there were only ninety-six, which had decreased to fifty-five in 1904 and thirty-six in 1914. The capital invested which was only $7,000,000 in 1899 reached $36,000,000 in 1904, dropping to $23,000,000 in 1909. The number of employes has increased steadily.
In 1870 there were thirty-three cotton mills in the state with a combined capital of $1,030,900, operating nearly 40,000 spindles and 600 looms and consuming 8,500 bales of cotton. The industry grew slowly during the following decade and did not begin to come into its own until the eighties. The number of mills had decreased by 1875 to thirty-one, but the spindles had increased to 54,000. In 1880 there were forty- nine mills with 92,000 spindles and 1,800 looms. Capital had more than doubled, being nearly $3,000,000 and the consump- tion of cotton had reached almost 24,000 bales. In spite of much discouragement from outside the state, expansion now began. Cotton and tobacco had brought ready money into the state, some of which was invested in new mills or in the
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t
R J REYNOLDS & COS
16/5
S FACTORY
R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Winston-Salem
Erwin Cotton Mills, Durham
CHARACTERISTIC INDUSTRIAL PLANTS
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
enlargement of old ones. Little outside capital came in dur- ing this period, but the profits of the mills were reinvested, and while some mills failed the majority succeeded. Most of the mills were small. By 1890 there were ninety-one mills with 337,800 spindles, 7,300 looms, $10,775,100 capital, con- suming 107,100 bales of cotton. The labor situation which had been bad was now largely settled by the movement to the mills from the farms in consequence of the economic and finan- cial depression of the nineties. The mills were prosperous and in 1895 the number had reached 184 with. 989,093 spin- dles, 24,624 looms and a cotton consumption of 374,220 bales. The number dropped to 177 in 1899 but the spindles and looms increased substantially.
The next decade saw a still greater increase. In 1909 there were 281 mills with nearly 3,000,000 spindles. The value of the product was $29,395,948 in 1899, and $77,832,077 in 1909. In 1916 there were 306 mills, with a capital of more than $100,- 000,000 operating 3,988,098 spindles and consuming 1,067,288 bales of cotton. The value of the product $85,815,100. In that year North Carolina was leading the United States in number of mills and in the amount of cotton consumed. It was behind Massachusetts alone in the value of the product and behind Massachusetts and South Carolina in the number of spindles.
The mills are located in considerably more than half the counties in every section of the state though they are centered in the central section. Gaston leads in number of mills and spindles, having more than half a million of the latter, fol- lowed by Cabarrus, with more than a quarter of a million, Mecklenburg, Guilford, Durham, Rockingham, Alamance, Rutherford, Richmond, and Stanly. Although many of the earlier mills began operations with poor and often with sec- ond-hand machinery, the mills of today are splendidly equipped, many of them with the latest types of machines.
The limits of space forbid a longer discussion of the de- velopment of the textile industry. The subject cannot be left, however, without the statement that the influence of the cotton mill has been one potent for good in the state, materially and socially. There are problems connected with it, notably that
Washington Duke
--
D. A. Tompkins
Edwin M. Holt
INDUSTRIAL LEADERS
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
of child labor, which will have to be settled, but the same prob- lems confront the state from other angles than the cotton mill. Child labor, the general impression to the contrary not- withstanding, is a matter far more intimately connected with the farm than with the factory.
Next in importance to cotton and tobacco manufacturing are the lumber and woodworking industries. North Carolina has a larger variety of commercial timber trees than any other state. Yellow pine, cypress, gum, and juniper in the East, walnut, cherry, holly, locust, chestnut, maple, hemlock, spruce, beech, ash, dogwood, white pine, poplar, hickory and the oaks in the Piedmont and Mountain sections are the most important. The superb forests invited exploitation in the period immediately following the Civil war and at first this was largely confined to the pine forests. As the supply waned, cypress and juniper assumed importance and the hardwood forests of the Piedmont and Mountain sections attracted attention. So sawmills multiplied and a most profitable in- dustry was developed, accompanied by the most shameful and improvident waste and lack of all thought for the future. The reckless deforestation of the mountains and uplands have re- sulted several times in most disastrous floods. In spite of the years of this sort of thing, North Carolina still has a tre- mendous forest area of great value. In 1914 there were 2,952 sawmills and lumber plants in operation.
In 1879 the working of the hard woods commenced on a small scale, chiefly the manufacture of shuttle blocks and the like. In 1889 the development of the furniture industry be- gan, centering at High Point, which today ranks next to Grand Rapids only, in the United States, in the production of furniture. It still holds a safe pre-eminence in the state although other towns now have important factories. There were in 1914 109 furniture factories and 167 other wood- working plants. These, combined with the lumber industries, employed nearly 50,000 people and turned out a product val- ued at more than $57,000,000.
Between 1880 and 1890 cotton seed oil mills were started and were immediately successful. The product was valued at half a million dollars in 1889, more than two and a half million
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
in 1889, nearly four million in 1904, and more than fifteen mil- lion in 1914.
The manufacture of fertilizer began in North Carolina in the eighties. By 1899 there were eighteen factories, which increased to twenty-seven in 1904, to thirty-four in 1909, and to forty-one in 1914. The value of the product in the latter year was more than ten and a quarter million dollars.
The industries thus far discussed, in value of products, comprise 83 per cent of the total in the state. There are nu- merous other smaller industries but the state, while making a splendid beginning, has still, comparatively speaking, only a small number. It is still largely dependent on the outside world. Greater diversity will doubtless come and the tre- mendous development of water power now beginning will assist mightily in the process. In 1912, not taking into con- sideration small sites of less than a thousand horsepowers, there was estimated to be in the state a potential minimum of 578,000 horsepowers. The installed capacity at the same time was 110,203, the third largest in the South. Eighteen corporations owned 27 per cent of the potential horsepower, while 45 per cent of the water-power developed and under construction was controlled by the Southern Power Company. In 1915 two companies controlled more than 75 per cent of the developed power and more than 66 per cent of the total power.
The development of the mineral wealth of the state has been on the whole slow and relatively unimportant. Two hundred and ten, or more than two-thirds of the varieties of minerals in the world, are found within its borders but not in great quantity. Building stone, clay products, mica, and gold are the four leading mineral industries, producing almost six- sevenths of the total. North Carolina leads the United States in the production of kaolin, found in Jackson, Macon, Swain, and Mitchell, and of mica, in the production of which Mitchell leads, followed by Yancey. The gold produced is about nine- tenths of all east of the Mississippi but it amounted in 1916 only to $126,000.
One more industry must be mentioned. The vast extent of water in the sounds and rivers of North Carolina furnish a natural resource of the highest importance in both salt and
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
fresh water fish. The industry has long been important. But the state has never adequately protected its marine wealth, which has been recklessly exploited and squandered. The industry in the upper sounds as a consequence has been to a great extent destroyed. The whole matter has been the play- thing of politics and selfish interests and the question has never been approached as one of state-wide concern, interest, or importance. The annual value of the products is close to $2,000,000.
Tremendously important as an adjunct of agriculture and industry has been the bank development in the state since 1865. In 1860 there were sixteen banks with a total capital of $9,408,470 and deposits of $1,831,598. All of these banks were destroyed by the war and the repudiation of the war debt, but in the autumn of 1865 two national banks were established. Ten years later there were thirty banks with combined capital of $4,000,000 and deposits of $250,000. In 1889 there were sixty-nine with the total capital increased less than $500,000, but with more than $8,000,000 on deposit. The later growth is shown in the table.
Year
Number
Capital
Deposits
1899
117
$ 5,711,910
$16,757,855
1907.
129
12,318,276
58,931,155
1915
476
20,190,483
88,404,895
The hopeful things at the close of the last census period in North Carolina industrial development were that among thie thirteen Southern states, it led in the average number of wage earners, in primary horsepower employed in manufacturing, in annual wages paid, a total of $46,038,000, in value added by manufacture, in number of cotton mills, in value of prod- ucts, in variety of cotton goods produced, in furniture fac- tories, in the manufacture of tobacco, and in the use of raw material from its own doors.
It cannot be doubted that in one sense the industrial de- velopment of the state has just begun. But certain it is, how- ever, that no future development and growth can so quicken and revolutionize the people of the state as that already ac- complished has done, nor, be it said, render so high a service as tliat contributed to the remaking of the prostrate state which emerged from the civil war.
CHAPTER XVIII
RAILROAD DEVELOPMENT SINCE 1860
In 1860 there were less than nine hundred miles of railroad in North Carolina. Of the roads the most important were the North Carolina, opened in 1856, running 224 miles from Goldsboro to Charlotte; the Wilmington and Weldon, opened in 1840, running between the points named, with a branch six- teen miles long, opened in 1849, between Rocky Mount and Tarboro; the Raleigh and Gaston, opened in 1844, running ninety-seven miles from Raleigh to Weldon, and the Atlantic and North Carolina, opened in 1858, connecting Goldsboro with Morehead City, ninety-five miles away. The other roads were the Wilmington and Charlotte, partly constructed; the Wilmington, Columbia and Augusta, which had sixty miles in the state; the Atlantic, Tennessee and Ohio, running from Charlotte to Statesville, forty-five miles away; the Western, opened in 1860, from Fayetteville to Egypt, a distance of forty-three miles ; the Seaboard and Roanoke, connecting Wel- don and Portsmouth, Virginia, opened about 1850, which ran for twenty-two miles in the state; the Petersburg road, con- necting Petersburg with Garysburg, about ten miles of which was in North Carolina; and the Charlotte and South Carolina, opened in 1852, which connected Charlotte with the South Carolina Railroad at the state line eleven miles distant. All these roads were poorly equipped and, under the strain of war, all suffered severely, even before the advent of federal troops brought intentional injury which was well-nigh destruction.
During the war little building of railroads was possible. Some grading was attempted on the Wilmington and Char- lotte, and the Piedmont road was built in 1862, connecting Danville, Virginia, with Greensboro. This was a military road built at the urgent request of the Confederate govern-
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HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA
ment to afford a new line of communication between the armies in Virginia and the South.
At the close of the war the Department of Military Rail- roads of the United States seized the Raleigh and Gaston, the Wilmington and Weldon, the Atlantic and North Caro- lina and a part of the North Carolina, and during the period of military occupation an extensive work of repair and im- provement was kept up on all of them, greatly to their benefit, at a total cost of more than two and a half million dollars.
In spite of the poverty of the people, plans were made for a large extension of railways, the war having sharply em- phasized their importance to the whole community. The legislature of 1866 passed acts in aid of the Western North Carolina, which had been chartered in 1855 and which had reached a point eleven miles east of Morgantown in 1860.
The frauds and scandals of reconstruction connected with railroads failed to destroy public belief in the necessity of railway extension. It did make state aid unpopular, but every legislature saw the chartering of a number of private com- panies. In 1869 the Western North Carolina had reached Old Fort, but the construction of the road across the mountains was an immense task and little more was accomplished for some time.
In the decade which followed the construction of many short lines and sections was accomplished and the way paved for later consolidation and extension. The Atlanta and Char- lotte Air Line, with forty-three miles of road in the state, was completed in 1873. The Northwestern, opened from Greens- boro to Winston and Salem in the same year, continued to extend towards Wilkesboro, 100 miles away, which it did not, however, finally reach until 1890. The Chatham road, which had received rather an evil name in Reconstruction, became the Raleigh and Augusta Air Line in 1871, and was completed from Raleigh to Gibson, 107 miles away. In 1886 the Pitts- boro branch to Moncure was opened. The Suffolk and Caro- lina, from Suffolk, Virginia, to Montrose, a distance of thirty- four miles, and the Jamesville and Washington, twenty-two miles long, were opened in the same period.
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