The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South

THE FIRST FULL-LENGTH ACCOUNT of the advent of the cotton-textile industry in the region, The Rise of Cotton Mills in the South immediately defined industrialization in the rural South upon its publication in 1921. Its influence was widely felt by southern intellectuals and shaped the interpretation of southern industrialization in many ways. Broadus Mitchell's idealistic chronicle of the southern textile industry founders reads as a progressive's endorsement of a southern industrial "revolution from above," to elevate the South from its economic and cultural doldrums. Mitchell viewed industrialization as necessary for southern progress and believed that its benefits to the South ultimately reached far beyond its profits to mill owners. In a lengthy introduction, David L. Carlton further explores the life and economic philosophies of Mitchell - giving a sturdy framework to this history and reinforcing it as a valuable assessment of a historical moment.