| he Alabama cotton textile industry originated when planters and others established more than a dozen mills in the antebellum period. Although limited by the slave economy and poor transportation, several of the factories were very successful and marketed a wide variety of fabrics.;Important changes set the stage for the growth of Alabama cotton mills after the Civil War. New arrangements for growing, financing, and marketing cotton, and an expanded rail system, gave rise to numerous towns. A new middle class that emerged in these towns--composed of merchants, lawyers, bankers, and professionals--played the key role in building postwar cotton mills.;Alabama's middle-class townsmen were never able to organize large mills. They began, therefore, a series of campaigns to attract northern capital and mills as a means of promoting their towns' growth. These efforts were very successful. During the last decade of the century, the state's textile industry exhibited the highest growth rate of any in the nation. Alabama's expansion during this decade was aided by economic difficulties in the New England industry, the growth of the export market for cheap coarse cotton fabrics, extremely low wages, and legislative encouragement of mill establishment as a means of relieving economic distress.;The middle-class townsmen introduced a new element into the industrial picture--absentee ownership. By the end of the century, most large cotton mills were either branch factories of northern firms or largely financed by outside capital. Seventy-one percent of the total subscription in Alabama cotton mills after the Civil War was from the North. The medium-to-small size mills in the state were organized and built by local individuals.;Alabama's planters did not oppose industrialization. The profitability of growing cotton, not planter ideology, limited planter participation in antebellum cotton mill ventures. No legislative or constitutional limitations to industrialization were ever enacted in Alabama. As early as 1846, Alabama had a general incorporation law with limited liability provisions. This law, modified in 1876, permitted the expansion of corporation capitalization up to... |
