o the country a constant stream of cheap labor, polyglot, and
lacking in homogeneity, and consequently slow at first to unionize and
strike. This characteristic brought another in its train--a lack of
stability, and a proneness to transiency. The second result was hardly
less important. It meant that though labor was relatively plentiful, much
of it was unskilled. This lack of skill put a premium upon quantity
production, and led to efforts to develop automatic machinery and
labor-saving devices of all kinds. It compelled most American
manufacturers to specialize upon the coarser kinds of yarns and cloths,
made in simple weaves and patterns, in the making of which the minimum
amount of skilled labor was required.

Native Stock
in Southern Mills

Conditions in the South were somewhat different. From the beginning, the
employes here have been almost entirely of native stock. They came from a
class which previously had little opportunity for any employment of a
regular character outside of farming. When the mills were built these
folks were given, for the first time, an opportunity for continuous
employment. Whole families entered the mills, fathers, mothers and
children serving in different or in the same departments. The South at
first specialized on ducks, twills, denims, and such coarse work. Now,
however, there is a growing tendency to diversify the product. The reason
is found in the increasing capability of the workers, many of whom have
by now spent many years of their lives in the mills, and whose fathers
before them were operatives. Unless present conditions change and the
South becomes the mecca of immigrants--a development probably less likely
now than in the years before the war--there seems to be a strong
possibility that a class of operatives, rivalling eventually in skill
those of the English mill towns, will be developed. The stock is the
same, and the latent capabilities are all there. The determining factors
will probably be the economic changes of the next few years.

A remaining factor in the organization of the mill is the size of the
individual plant, the number of spindles and looms it contains, the
number of workers employed, etc. It is in just this particular that some
of the most characteristic developments of the American industry are
found. About the time of the Civil War, the average New England mill had
less than ten thousand spindles. Today the average is probably between
fifty and one