Michael J. Gagnon. Transition to an Industrial South

Transition to an Industrial South chronicles Athens, Georgia, from its antebellum founding into “the prototype of the typical New South mill town” by 1870 (p. 208). Michael J. Gagnon employs significant local archival research to conclude that Athens was a southern model of industrialization that created small, rural factories to maintain the social hierarchy. Impelled by the 1820s tariff crises and by drops in cotton prices, Georgians turned to industrialization for independence but did not experience its deleterious impacts as did the North. The text provides an interesting case study of a diverse antebellum South, although it does not place itself within the recent scholarly literature. Five long chapters explore the development, and “marketing strategies,” of the five greater Athens cotton factories, their crude textiles, ancillary businesses, and the different levels of personnel (unsurprisingly light on the lowest ranks); Athenians' benefits from the cultural attractions of the University of Georgia, desire for respectability through improvement, and “greatest success” (p. 135) in reform with industrialist-led scientific agriculture; the interconnected nature of businesses, industrialists, and, by the 1840s, their families; and finally, the huge 1860s wartime profits that allowed for subsequent industrial reinvestment. Beyond the excellent source base of Athenian newspapers, Gagnon tackles the limits of census data but could question some sources more—boosterism does not necessarily represent success, nor does an 1865 pardon application prove a Georgian had supported the Confederate States of America (CSA).

Census · Economic history · Georgian · Hierarchy · Independence (probability theory) · Industrialisation · Newspaper · Political science · Sociology · Tariff · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law