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A History Of Mississippi Cotton Mills
and Mill Villages
By Narvell Strickland
October 1998
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter I: First American Cotton Mills
Chapter II: Early Mississippi Mills
Chapter III: Post Civil War Mills: 1865-1898
Chapter IV: Mill Campaigns: 1870s-1890s
Chapter V: Twentieth Century Mills: 1898-1953
Chapter VI: Independent Mills
Chapter VII: Sanders Industries Mills
Chapter VIII: Magnolia Mill Reopens: 1932
Chapter IX: Nation-wide Textile Strike: 1934
Chapter X: Mills & Village: Depression Years
Chapter XI: Mills & Village: War Years-1953
Bibliography
Vita
Tables
1. Mississippi Cotton Mills: 1906
2. Sanders Cotton Mills: 1932
3. Mississippi Cotton Mills Closed: 1910-1942
To
Tyler, Myles, Laura Ash,
Anna Rourke, and the memory of Brian
First printed February 1995 under
title A History of Mississippi Cotton Mills and The Sanders Magnolia Mill
Village. October 1998, revised and reprinted under title A History
of Mississippi Cotton Mills and Mill Villages.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My interest
in the history of Mississippi cotton manufacturing started in February 1993
when, by chance, I was browsing in the Magnolia, Mississippi public library
and happened to pick up some material prepared for the town's 1956 Centennial
Celebration. As I thumbed through it, I was shocked that there was
no mention, not a word, regarding the Magnolia Cotton Mill. The mill,
with its village of 105 houses, provided the economic base for the small
town from 1903 to 1953 and, in fact, kept the community alive through the
difficult depression years of the 1920s and 1930s.
I then
visited the library at nearby McComb, the largest library in Pike County,
Mississippi, with similar results. The library had no material on
either of the town's two former cotton mills -- the McComb Cotton Mill and
the Berthadale Cotton Mill -- which together employed nearly eight hundred
workers during the depression years of the 1920s and 1930s. After
checking with libraries at other former twentieth century cotton mill towns
-- Batesville, Columbus, Kosciusko, Meridian, Moorhead, Natchez, Port Gibson,
Shuqualak, Starkville, Stonewall, Tupelo, Wesson, West Point, Water Valley,
Winona, and Yazoo City -- it began to appear that almost nothing had been
written about the revival of the Mississippi cotton textile industry after
its destruction during the Civil War, except for a few passing references
in general histories of the state.
By then,
I had decided to research and record some of the history of the Mississippi
textile industry. Before starting, I reviewed my thoughts with Dr.
Roman Heleniak, Dr. Michael Kurtz, Dr. Billy Wyche, Professors of History
at Southeastern Louisiana University, and Dr. John Hebron Moore, noted author
and former Professor of History at the University of Mississippi,
who had done some study of antebellum textile history. I am indebted
to them for their encouragement, support, and direction. Dr. Wyche was
especially helpful as he spent considerable time reviewing my material and
making valuable suggestions along the way. As it turned out, my research
ignited an insatiable interest in the history of Mississippi cotton manufacturing
and forms the foundation for this book. That interest, I should add,
may have already been present (but dormant) because of my experiences as
a youth, growing up in Mississippi mill villages at Tupelo, Winona, Kosciusko,
Meridian, and Magnolia in the late thirties and early forties.
I am
deeply grateful to Elene Hutson, Wesson, Mississippi librarian, for sharing
with me her collection of papers, newspaper articles and photographs relating
to the Wesson Cotton Mill and its founder; Dorrit Varnado of Magnolia, Mississippi
for letting me review the Charles K. Taylor Papers; the Stonewall Cotton
Mill for the material from its archives about the history of the mill;
Marja Lynne Mueller, Reference Librarian, Special Collections at Mississippi
State University, for her interest, assistance, and direction; and Pike
County, Mississippi Courthouse employees, Rodney Barr and Lucy Lowery,
for their assistance in reviewing county land conveyance records.
In reviewing
mill village life, the book draws heavily on my personal experiences as
a youth, growing up in the late thirties and early forties in the several
Mississippi mill villages mentioned earlier. But the greater source,
by far, was the several individuals who shared with me accounts of their
lives in Mississippi mill villages from the early twenties to the early
fifties, especially the Depression and World War II years. I spent
many hours with them, meeting with some on several occasions. It is
a history they were happy to review and eager to see recorded; they encouraged
my research and participated by reviewing the material and making comments
along the way.
O . L. Anderson Jr.
Jewel Rushing
Evelyn (Rushing) Bridges
Jewell (Ellzey) Rushing
Dr. Trelles Case
Johnnie Carl Rushing
Jewel Case
Susie (Counsell) Rushing
Ella (Pugh) Chadwick
Frank Shaw Sr.
Guy Compton
Beulah Mae (Bird) Simmons
Bernice (Rushing) Daugherty
Paul Smith
R. Gene Davis
Thelma (Grafton) Sterling
Fred Hardin
Betty (Shaw) Strickland
J. W. Herring
Ruby (Herring) Strickand
Ethel Mae (Dickinson) Hyde
Ernest Strickland Jr.
Alton Lea
Robert Sullivan
William Phurrough
Willa Dean Sullivan
James Rushing Jr.
Inez (Strickland) Wilkerson
I am
also grateful to the many librarians and archivists at Jackson, Kosciusko,
Meridian, McComb, Mississippi State University, Mississippi Department of
Archives and History, Oktibbaha County Heritage Museum, Tupelo, West Point,
Wesson, and Winona who graciously extended themselves to be helpful.
Finally, my wife, Betty Jean, deserves special mention for her encouragement
and patience in traveling with me to visit former Sanders mill villages
(or sites) at Kosciusko, Magnolia, Meridian, Starkville, Natchez, West Point,
Winona, and Yazoo City; former non-Sanders villages at Wesson, McComb, Stonewall,
and Tupelo, Mississippi; and finally a former mill village at Albemarle,
North Carolina where a few Mississippi textile workers had migrated to
in the late nineteen twenties and early thirties.
INTRODUCTION
Cotton textile
manufacturing is generally recognized as one of the most important industries
in history, dating back thousands of years before the Christian era -- to
6,000 B.C. in Mexico and Peru and to at least 3,000 B.C. in East Africa
and Southern Asia. From the beginning and continuing for centuries,
cotton was spun and woven into cloth by hand until England, in the late
1700s, developed textile machinery that was to revolutionize cotton manufacturing
and provide the impetus for the Industrial Revolution. The advances
required coal for fuel and iron for the new machinery; the increase in coal
and iron mining required improvements in transportation; and the transportation
requirements in turn brought about the development of railroads and steamships.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the various specializations had intermeshed,
with the achievements of one contributing to the success of the other,
and suddenly the world's first industrial revolution was underway.
In the
1820s, cotton manufacturing crossed the English Channel into Belgium to
start the industrialization of continental Europe. By the 1840s, it had
leaped the Atlantic to spearhead the beginning of the Industrial Revolution
of New England which in turn brought about the Factory System and the Corporation.
The introduction of Eli Whitney's cotton gin in 1793, James Watt's steam
engine in 1776, Fulton's steamboat in 1807, Stephenson's locomotive in 1825,
Cyrus McCormick's reaper in 1831, the Howe-Singer sewing machine in 1854,
and Sir Henry Bessemer's converter in 1858 made essential contributions
to the revolution. The new devices lowered the cost of producing cotton
clothing, creating a worldwide demand for it, and in the process, freed
farm workers to enter the newly created factories.
The resulting
increase in cotton manufacturing created a corresponding need for cotton,
and the South began to invest virtually all of its capital and labor in
cotton growing plantations. Big planters began to make great fortunes
by raising cotton with slave labor, and Mississippi quickly developed an
economy based on cotton growing and soon led the country in its production.
Later cotton textile manufacturing began to move closer to the cotton fields,
and by 1880 the Industrial Revolution of the South was under- way.
Initially, most of the mills moved from New England to the Piedmont regions
of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia because of the availability
of water power. But in spite of the state’s shortage of water power,
Mississippi participated in the movement with the advent of the then developing
electrical power.
The cotton
textile industry has perhaps been studied as much as any industry in history,
and this is particularly true of cotton manufacturing in England, continental
Europe, New England, and the Piedmont states of Georgia, North Carolina,
and South Carolina. Hundreds of books, dissertations, theses, and
magazine articles have examined the mills and their villages from several
points of view, historical, economical, and sociological. But after
exhaustive research, this writer has not found a single book devoted to
the history of cotton textile manufacturing in Mississippi. While it
fell short of igniting an industrial revolution, cotton textile manufacturing
in Mississippi was extensive relative to other industry and paved the way
for the state's industrialization that finally came with World War II and
the 1940s.
My purpose
with this book is to review and record some of that history to prevent its
loss. It will examine the historical development of cotton textile
mills in the state: the few antebellum mills, the post Civil War mills,
the several turn of the century mills, the Sanders Industries conglomerate
of mills in the first half of the twentieth century, and finally its demise
in the 1950s. Special attention will be given to the five most influential
men in the history of Mississippi cotton textile manufacturing. They
were Colonel James Wesson who built the state's first successful mechanically
powered cotton mill at Bankston in 1848, and after it was burned by Federal
troops in 1864, the mill at Wesson in 1867; Captain William Oliver who,
in the 1870s and 1880s, guided the Wesson mill in its phenomenal growth and
to nation-wide fame; T. L. Wainwright who, from 1875 to 1921, brought the
Stonewall mill from near bankruptcy to one of the state's greatest industrial
success stories; and finally James Sanders and his son, Robert, who established
and operated a conglomerate of Mississippi cotton mills in the first half
of the twentieth century, from 1911 to 1953.
Along
the way, it will highlight Mississippi mill village life and living conditions
from the 1920s to the early 1950s -- especially villages at Magnolia, Kosciusko,
Meridian, Starkville, and Tupelo -- and the impact of the nation- wide textile
strike of 1934 and the Tupelo mill strike of 1937. Along with my
own, it will draw on the personal experiences of the several individuals
who shared their experiences with me. Life on the Magnolia mill village,
purchased by Sanders Industries in 1932, is reviewed in greater detail
than the others, but I hasten to add that living conditions there were typical
of those at other Sanders villages and illustrate the struggles of Mississippi
textile workers in general during those difficult years.
The Industrial
Revolution of the South, spearheaded by the rapid south- ward movement of
cotton textile manufacturing in the 1880s, was slow to come to Mississippi.
The state and its people were reluctant to break away from its agricultural
economy, but some twenty-five cotton textile mills did at least introduce
the industrialization that finally came with World War II and the 1940s.
But in spite of its slow start, the cotton textile industry played an important
role in the state's history. It acted as a bridge, during the first
half of the Twentieth Century -- especially the 1920s and 1930s--between
the farm and the factory, with people cautiously shedding the shackles of
colonial farm life and moving in the direction of an urban activity promising
greater income, better working conditions, and improved living and social
conditions. Of those who made the move, very few ever returned to
labor as sharecroppers or tenant farmers, for despite the low wages and
long hours, cotton mill life generally represented a marked improvement
over conditions in the country.
For a better perspective of the
role played by Mississippi in cotton manufacturing, we will start with
a brief review of the first American cotton mills.
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