REVIEW:

H-NET  BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Southern-Industry@h-net.msu.edu (March 2007)

Beth English. _A Common Thread: Labor, Politics, and Capital Mobility in
the Textile Industry_. Politics and Culture in the Twentieth-Century
South Series. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2006. x +
236 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN
978-0-8203-2628-3.

Reviewed for H-Southern-Industry by Melanie Shell-Weiss, Department of
History, The Johns Hopkins University

Moving Capital and Labor in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century America:
New Approaches to Southern Labor and Industrial History

As her title so aptly suggests, Beth English's _A Common Thread: Labor,
Politics, and Capital Mobility in the Textile Industry_ weaves together
the histories of labor, politics, and industrial development in a way
that is both compelling and insightful. Beginning with an overview of
why the New England textile industry became a mainstay of the
northeastern economy, she moves swiftly to hone her sights on the town
of Chicopee, Massachusetts. Home to the Dwight Manufacturing Company, a
major textile producer, Chicopee industrialized early. Dwight family
monies, with support from wealthy Boston friends and acquaintances,
built up railroads and opened canal lines. They also erected a host of
kindred plants and facilities across the city. By the 1850s, Chicopee
had become one of Massachusetts's leading industrial centers.

But none of these economic developments occurred in isolation from the
larger social and political context. State policies across New England
focused on limiting child labor, which many factory owners perceived as
"hostile" to industrial development. Reduction in available raw
materials during the Civil War took its toll on northern manufacturers,
too. As the South worked to rebuild in the 1870s, new community, state,
and regional incentives, coupled with a targeted marketing campaign,
soon drew capital southward. For the Dwight family, this meant Alabama
City, Alabama. "Northern people will meet with no jealousies or
indignities," one Alabama-based publication promised. "The animosities
of the war are all buried and forgotten ... man is esteemed according to
his moral, intellectual and industrial worth--not for his political
sentiments" (p. 42). Coupled with an attractive set of facts and figures
about the state, these advertisements proved one powerful enticement.

Decisions by state legislatures, however, secured the match. "Why, then,
did the Dwight Company build its branch factory in Alabama, the only
southern state with recently passed hours and age restriction
legislation, rather than in North Carolina, South Carolina, or Georgia?"
English asks. "What swayed the Dwight Company's decision ...were actions
taken by the Alabama legislature in 1894" (pp. 48-49). That year Alabama
became the first state to repeal its child labor laws. And it did so at
the urging of officials from the Dwight mills. In 1895, Dwight Mills
began construction of their first mills in Alabama City. By 1927, the
company had closed its Massachusetts operations altogether.

On its surface this chain of events will surprise neither historians of
labor nor those of twentieth-century industrial development. But as with
so many things, the devil is in the details. It is here that English's
analysis and research really shines. The book is beautifully written.
The prose is concise with not a single word wasted, moving the narrative
along at a good clip. It is also this narrative that makes the book both
compelling and pathbreaking.

Historians have long pointed to the relocation of capital southward,
with the textile industry as one of the most studied examples. But
English focuses on the "why" and sets the industry itself as her frame.
This allows her to equally straddle North and South, and the push-pull
factors that shape the movement of capital between the two. At the same
time the Dwight family was building their first plant in Chicopee,
southerners like South Carolina's William Gregg were calling for major
transformations to the South's economic base. By prioritizing events on
both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, English thus avoids the pitfalls of
other works that pair enterprising and money-hungry northern
industrialists with a demolished South that is only too happy to comply.
This is a history that respects both sets of regional actors and actresses.

English also pays careful attention to context. It is not just the
actions of company owners and state legislators that she examines, but
the efforts of labor organizers and choices made by everyday men and
women within these communities. Child labor laws emerge as a central
part of this history. This in itself sets English's book apart from the
many others in this field. She demonstrates well how the choice of union
organizers to focus their efforts in the northeast, even as the textile
industry was moving south, only accelerated this movement and allowed
long-standing patterns of low wages, long hours, and mass employment of
children to proliferate well into the twentieth century. Her research
throughout is impeccable, drawn from sources that span several state
archives and historical societies, local public libraries, the American
Textile History Museum, Southern Labor Archives at Georgia State
University, Southern Historical Collection at the University of North
Carolina, as well as National Archives branches in both Washington, D.C.
and Atlanta. Like her historical subjects, English's research spans
North and South, as well as national, state, and local settings.

Shifting consumption patterns also get their due. As hemlines rise, the
demand for fabric goes down. Changing tastes also dictate what is
produced, be it heavy wool, cotton, muslin, silks, or high-tech
materials like polyester. While some New England plants began looking
toward diversification in the 1890s, technology--and the expense of
updating machinery--remained a decisive factor for manufacturers as
well. As English so aptly puts it, "The ability of Massachusetts textile
mills to remain viable despite state-mandated age and hours standards
shifted from being an intraregional to an interregional concern" (p. 32).

Race, gender, and nativity, meanwhile, provide a critical backdrop to
this history. Arguments about who is best suited to do this type of work
surround the movement of capital southward. Among the many advantages
claimed by southern boosters was the prevalence of large volumes of
native-born, white workers. African American workers were excluded from
consideration early on because they were considered "unfit" for this
type of work. For capitalists, the reliance on family wages among poor
southerners was equally attractive. As English clearly shows, debates
over child labor were complex and nuanced. On the one hand, the labor of
children was essential to family economic stability. On the other, few
middle-class reformers or even state legislators saw it as either
desirable or the sort of thing they wanted to advertise as being among
the state of Alabama's industrial advantages. Dwight Mills thus became a
particular target of reformers. Because it was headquartered in
Massachusetts, reformers could point their fingers north rather than
risk undermining an already fragile situation at home. From her
narrative emerges a complex picture of how work is defined along lines
of ethnicity and gender, and how interregional tensions shaped the
ensuing political and social debates.

If I have a single complaint with this work it is that I enjoyed it so
much and found it so compelling that I wish that it were longer. As
English notes in her introduction, the late nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century migration of the textile industry to the Piedmont and
states like Alabama was but the first step in a process that soon
extended even farther south, to the Caribbean and Latin America, and
ultimately around the globe. Her nuanced and clearly written analysis
illuminates the factors that shaped this migration, as well as its
effect on local communities. She opens her book with a quote from Kofi
Annan. Her "conclusion" is less a final word than a way forward. "As the
scope of corporate operations has shifted over time from local to
regional, from regional to national, and from national to international,
so have the difficulties that workers face in effecting change," English
writes. "[A] better awareness of the capital mobility processes that
have occurred in the past offers invaluable clues to the pitfalls to
avoid and to the strategies that may promise success in the future" (pp.
181-182).

English should also be credited for avoiding academic jargon and the
trappings of words like "transnational" and "globalization," which have
become popular but overused. Her attention to description and
terminology is acute and in every way strengthens this very solid work.
By avoiding these more trendy terms, English makes a powerful case: the
movement of capital is not just a post-1960 phenomenon, but it owes its
roots to these nineteenth- and early twentieth-century developments.

For all of these reasons, _A Common Thread_ is a must-read for
historians and scholars of contemporary labor and industrial
development. Exceptionally well written, this book's fast-paced
narrative and compelling style will appeal equally to undergraduate and
graduate students. There is not a doubt in my mind that this work
deserves a place on the shelves of historians of labor and working-class
history, the U.S. South, women's and gender history, business and
economic development alike.





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