For many years, North Carolina was a leading textile-making state, specializing in cotton.The fortunes of North Carolina’s textile industry illustrate how industries can grow and shrink. Factors such as geography, competition, changing tastes, and changing technology have all contributed to the industry’s ups and downs.
North Carolina has many rivers, most of which are not good for transporting products. But in 1813, this was not a problem for Michael Schenk, the first builder of a textile mill in North Carolina. All he needed was flowing water! And the Atlantic Fall Line, which runs north and south through North Carolina, is a natural place for mills because the water moves down fast toward the coastal plain and there are many waterfalls.
Schenk built his dam in Lincoln County. Unfortunately, the dam broke, but a new dam and mill were constructed nearby in 1816 by Schenk and his partner, Absalom Warlick. By 1840, North Carolina had 25 textile mills. That was still few compared to the state of Rhode Island, which had 119 mills in 1832. But the number of mills was growing. Owners began to create “mill villages”—little towns near, but not inside, major cities. Mill owners provided housing and some other services.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, James Watt, building on the work of others, had invented a steam engine in 1769, and after extensive improvements, his steam engine was installed in an English cotton mill in 1789.[1] North Carolina’s first steam-powered textile mill, Mount Hecla Mill, was built in Greensboro in 1834. With the use of steam engines, mills could be located almost anywhere. They didn’t have to be built next to a river or stream.
Soon, New England, the leading location for textile mills, was losing business to southern states like North Carolina. In the 1880s, writes David Koistinen, wages in the South were 30 to 50 percent lower than in New England. Unions had begun to organize workers in New England, in some cases resulting in labor turmoil. In North Carolina, although an effort was made by the Knights of Labor, “In no instance did any union achieve recognition or enjoy sustained success during this period,” writes historian Brent D. Glass.[2]
And regulation was tightening in the North, raising costs. “By the 1870s, despite the opposition of manufacturers, [Massachusetts] had restricted child labor and the workweek of minors and women and mandated regular factory inspections,” says Koistinen.[3] Coal for steam engines was more expensive in the North, and North Carolina was closer to cotton plantations.
The Industry Grows
These facts, along with a growing economy, made textiles big business in North Carolina for more than 150 years—from its start in 1813 to the 1980s! In 1899, North Carolina State University started a textile education program. It taught students—many of them future mill managers—how to spin yarn, design cloth, weave it, and dye it. The university also conducted research on new technology to improve machines, how to make better dyes, and other ways to improve the industry and lower its costs.
In the 1920s, problems arose. Rayon, a material made from wood pulp, became popular, so fewer people wanted cotton clothing. And women began to wear shorter skirts and more streamlined dresses—so their clothing didn’t need as much cloth.
Another problem was that textile mills had expanded dramatically during the First World War (1914–1918). During the war, soldiers required a lot of cotton textiles—for clothing, bedding, and backpacks. But when the war was over and not as many textiles were needed, mill owners could not sell all the textiles they could produce, except at low prices. Some mills couldn’t pay off the debts for their wartime expansion. Some mills went out of business.
Yet, in many respects, the industry was moving ahead. in 1923 North Carolina became the largest textile producer in the country, easing out Massachusetts—but competition among the state’s many small manufacturers kept prices low. Textile mills resembled the classic economic case of a “price-taker” industry: The market share of each mill was so small, and its output so similar to its competitors’, that it couldn’t set prices. It had to respond to market demand. During this period, a group of textile manufacturers made the first serious effort to control production in order to keep prices up.They formed the Cotton Textile Institute, which tried to get its members to maintain higher prices by limiting production.
Then, during the Great Depression (1930–1939) the situation grew worse. Many people were out of work and weren’t buying new clothes. In 1933, Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which gave the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt power to regulate wages, production, and hours for all industries. The government created a Textile Industry Committee to regulate the industry, presumably to keep up prices.
Although initially wages did go up a little, the committee was quickly taken over by mill owners, who, as indicated above, had formed their own association, the Cotton Textile Institute. “[T]he individual appointed to chair the Textile Industry Committee, lawyer George Sloan, was also the spokesperson of the Cotton Textile Institute, the industry’s trade organization,” writes Jonathan Martin. “Consequently, consumers and workers were not represented in the Textile Industry Committee’s deliberations.”[4] Mill owners, working jointly, began to reduce workers’ hours to save money. This led many textile workers to join a union, the United Textile Workers.
There had already been some isolated strife in the industry. In 1929, a bitter fight between workers and management at the Loray Mill in Gastonia, North Carolina, had resulted in two deaths. But in 1934, textile workers throughout the South went on strike for three weeks. But they could not force the companies to raise wages or to allow employees to work a full week. In fact, President Roosevelt urged them to return to work. They did, without any improvement in wages.
The Second World War boosted the industry substantially, as it increased production for soldiers’ clothing and equipment. And, unlike the period after the First World War, the post-war years became a “boom time”—a period of growth throughout the United States. Many people had sacrificed during the war and now they wanted new things, such as stylish clothes, and they had the money to pay for them. Thus, North Carolina’s textile industry had some more good years.
From the 1950s
But even as early as the 1950s, some people could see that the industry was not going to continue its boom forever. Producers in other countries started competing. First, countries such as Japan and China stopped buying many textiles from the United States—and then they started exporting them to the U.S. Because those countries were poorer, their workers were willing to work for lower pay. Their competition made it harder for the textile companies to make money.
Even so, North Carolina’s textile industry continued to be healthy. Workers accepted the wages even though they were not all that high. Some companies specialized in profitable sectors, moving from strictly textiles (spinning yarn or weaving cloth) to making apparel products (that is, through vertical integration):
- Cannon Mills was the world’s leading manufacturer of towels in 1914; it continued in its business of towels and bedding until it was sold to Fieldcrest in 1985; then its facilities in Kannapolis, North Carolina, were sold to Pillowtex in 1997. However, Pillowtex closed down in 2003 in a massive one-day layoff of more than 4,000 people.
- The Hanes Corporation started as Shamrock Hosiery Mills in 1901 (producing men’s socks). When nylon was invented in 1938, Hanes recognized its potential. Hanes became the world’s largest producer of women’s stockings. In 2024, Hanes, now HanesBrands, is still a publicly traded company.
- Burlington, which started in 1923 (a shaky time for the industry), grew partly by buying up troubled companies (horizontal integration). Initially, it specialized in rayon, but then expanded its products. In 1952, according to Brent D. Glass, Burlington “had grown into the largest producer of synthetic textiles in the world.“[5] Yet it struggled in the 1990s, and in 2003 it filed for bankruptcy. It was subsequently purchased by WL Ross and Co.
New research from North Carolina State University helped mill owners make better machines and more attractive products. But the foreign competition did not disappear. “Between 1975 and 1985, more than 800 mills closed nationwide, and employment in North Carolina’s textile mills fell from an all-time high of 293,600 in 1973 to 211,300 in 1986,” write Brent D. Glass and Kelly Kress.[6] And a 2024 statement by the Economic Partnership of North Carolina says that the textile industry (including nonwovens, fabrics based on plastic) today has just 35,000 workers. [7]
Meanwhile, the Wilson College of Textiles at NC State University continues to work in the textile field. Among other things, it studies nonwoven fabrics (made from plastic fibers), tests materials for their protection against fire and chemicals and their “comfort performance,” and provides continuing education for industry personnel.
In the photograph, young women are working at Catawba Cotton Mill in Newton, North Carolina., early in the 20th century. Image courtesy of the National Child Labor Committee collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.