southern initiative and southern capital

Grover Maddex's house is for sale, 1613 Woolen Mills Road

In its own small way, the Charlottesville Woolen Mills helps to prove the fallacy of Mitchell's thesis. Ante-bellum in origin, it was revived in 1865 by Southern initiative and Southern capital. A period of notable prosperity preceded 1880 and the foundations had been already firmly laid. When the mill expanded suddenly in 1882 and absorbed Northern capital, it was purely the result of an accidental fire. Except for that event, the company would probably have waited many years to launch out on a program of expansion. Just as in 1865, destruction proved in the end to be an incentive for successful growth and innovations. --Harry Poindexter

New South?

Mitchell's concepts have been attacked on two fronts. Avery Craven, for example, has shown that Southern industrial interest dated at least to the 1850's and was primarily a reaction to Northern anti-slavery crusades. On the other hand, C. Vann Woodward denies the validity of placing any rigid date on the growth of Southern industry and maintains that no revolution occurred. The expansion of business which characterized the New South made little change in its proportion of the nation's manufactured goods. In 1913 as in 1860 the South had a colonial economy, subservient to Northern investments and transportation and producing mainly items whose final value was due mostly to processes performed outside the South.--Harry Poindexter