Business & Finance: South vs. New England

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Over the past decade, the Southern cotton mills have grown rapidly in proportion to the older New England industry. Under existing conditions many advantages to the South lay in this steadily growing competition. The Southern mills were nearer the raw material; cheaper and more tractable mill sites and more American labor are to be had there, too. In addition, the laxer laws as to child labor, which is a large factor in the low-grade spinning industry especially, are more lax South than North of the Mason and Dixon line.

Now news comes of much large-scale building of cotton mills in the state of North Carolina; also of the dismantling of cotton machinery at Lowell, Mass., for shipment to Lyman, S. C. Undoubtedly the low-grade cotton industry will soon be dominated by the Southern mills; nevertheless the high-grade industry will probably remain in the older New England centers.

A principal reason for the comparative gains made by the South in cotton mill operations has been the continual and expensive trouble with foreign radical labor groups in the New England mill towns. In fact, it is to a large extent Massachusetts capitalists and architects who are now building the Southern mills.