Industrialization

From the late nineteenth century through most of the twentieth century, the textile industry dominated South Carolina manufacturing. It employed…

Poor transportation facilities made the industry of greater importance locally, with farm implements forged from the backcountry domestic pig and bar iron in the earlier period.

After some initial teething, the company quickly proved highly prosperous, producing shirting and sheeting that sold well in markets as far away as Philadelphia and New York. Graniteville was also unusual in that it employed the labor of free white laborers, mostly women and teenaged children, at a time when most southern manufacturers used the labor of black slaves.

Putting his industrial gospel into practice, Gregg and several partners secured a charter from the South Carolina General Assembly in December 1845 to establish the Graniteville Manufacturing Company. The Graniteville factory commenced operations in 1849 and quickly became one of the most successful textile factories in the entire South.

The General Textile Strike in South Carolina sprang out of old grievances and fresh hopes. For years mill people worked long hours for low wages in lint-filled factories. Beginning in the 1920s, mill owners, pinched by increased competition, raised workers’ machine loads without increasing their pay. Workers called this the “stretch-out,” and fought back.

The twenty-two-mile canal opened in 1800 and for the next fifty years allowed planters to ship cotton, rice, and timber to Charleston. By the mid–nineteenth century, however, railroads virtually eliminated the need for the inland waterway, and swampy vines reclaimed the canal.

Bowater opened its first U.S. facility in Calhoun, Tennessee, then set its sights on constructing a massive paper and pulp mill at Catawba in York County, South Carolina. In order to bring Bowater to South Carolina, Governor George Bell Timmerman called a special session of the General Assembly in June 1956, during which he urged legislators to amend state laws in order to encourage the English company to locate in the state.

Spartanburg County won a major recruiting battle over BMW’s first non-Bavarian factory on June 23, 1992, when the company chose Greer over approximately 250 other localities around the world. BMW’s decision was hailed both locally and internationally as the crowning achievement of the South Carolina Piedmont’s campaign for international industrial recruitment.

Brick from the Guignard plant were used in many of Columbia’s historic buildings, including the Confederate Printing Plant at the corner of Gervais and Huger Streets.