Nothing so clearly dominated the landscape of the post -- Civil War South as the region's cotton textile mills. They were new and imposing -- bulky, redbrick factories with towering smokestacks and belfries -- and many southerners viewed them in light of the struggle to rebuild their war-torn economy. Beginning in the 1880s and with increasing speed thereafter, cotton mills sprang up in towns and small cities throughout the hilly upcountry, a section of the South previously known for its self-sufficient yeoman farmers and its economic isolation. As the textile industry boomed, the South's economic core shifted from the Plantation Belt to the emerging urban centers of the upcountry, and by the mid-1920s the productive capacity of Dixie's cotton mills exceeded even that of New England. The rise of the mills marked the advent of large-scale manufacturing in an overwhelmingly rural and agricultural world and reflected a fundamental transformation in southern life -- a transformation as much social as economic. The owners and managers of the early mills were mostly local merchants and financiers who had no previous experience running factories or employing large numbers of workers. The millhands were country-bred southern whites, most of whom had
-xxi-
