Eager Hands: Labor for Southern Textiles, 1850–1860

Tom E. Terrell

The Journal of Economic History, 1976, vol. 36, issue 1, 84-99

Abstract: Was there an ample supply of low-skilled, free labor in the antebellum Southeast to develop a textile industry producing coarser goods? Using county-level data from the 1850 and 1860 manuscript censuses and other historical sources, we found there was a surplus of low-skilled, free (mostly white) labor in Edgefield County, South Carolina, where the textile industry was firmly established before the Civil War. If Edgefield County was not a unique case, then potential investors in southern textiles were probably not restrained by an inadequate labor force. Moreover, our Edgefield study reinforces other analyses which indicate that many whites hovered on the margins of southern society even in its most prosperous decade before the Civil War.

Date: 1976
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