Question

I WILL MEDAL!

how did textile factories improve the economy of SC.

Answer 1

Despite its industrial gains, overall the South remained essentially an economic colony of the North, supplying the raw materials for northern industries. The South initially wanted northern capital and investments to “kick-start” the economy but never escaped this paradigm. Southerners became agents and executives for northern corporations rather than owners or principals of their own businesses. Industries did diversify in South but remained little more than branch plants, factories, or chain stores for businesses headquartered in the North.

Seizing the industrial spirit and taking advantage of the South’s major cash crop, southern capitalists began a campaign to bring cotton mills to the region. In the antebellum period the center for textile manufacturing had been New England, and its mills continued to make cloth throughout the post-Civil War period but by 1910, New South industrialists successfully captured the textile mill industry. Described as “extraordinary,” the rate of textile mill growth in the South jumped from 161 in 1880 to 239 by 1890 to 400 in 1900. The main four southern states that had textile mills—North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama—took advantage of Appalachian river water sources to power the plants, but those same rivers, some rushing off the mountains into the Piedmont, later provided hydro-electricity. The first factory to operate with electricity in the United States opened in the South.