From the interview, there is the instance of a 12,000 spindle mill; not one of the most successful in Gastonia, which made $2,500 the week previous.
While the mill expected to make 125 per cent. net profits for 1916 is said to be exceptional, a number of mills were, as near the end of the old year as November 28th, expected to show from 75 to 100 per cent. net profits for 1916, the writer was told that it would be a pretty poorly managed plant that did not clear the lower percentages.[392]
A burly, forceful man in middle life, who has risen from foot pedlar to mill president, said with frankness: "I am making more money than I know what to do with. I am ashamed to take it!" He showed me the statements of the orders for product with which his four mills would be kept busy for the next four or five months. He expected to clear $60,000 on the output of each plant for this period.[393] Mr. Robinson, previously quoted, recognizes that the cotton mills at Gastonia are more prosperous than those of any other section of which he knows.[394] Not even early in the period, when mills were first building, did they make such profits as now, is the opinion of an old manufacturer at Gastonia.[395]
The foregoing citation of the earnings of various mills at various points of time in the period since their establishment has served to exhibit the general movement of profits. At the outset, most conditions were favorable to large gains--there was little competition, labor was most plentiful and cheap, the lack of advantageous marketing facilities was to some degree offset by purely local demand for the product, and the deficiencies of management tended to be neutralized by the presence of physical advantages which disappeared when a more advanced development increased the size of plants, widened the area from which raw cotton was drawn, and extended the market for product. It is said repeatedly that in those days any fool could make money in cotton manufacture in the South.[396]
With the closing years of the second decade of the mill growth, most of these advantaging circumstances were fading before the increase of competition. Their very success was proving fatal to the mills. They had ceased to be local affairs. When outside influences came in--commission and machinery men--new and difficult problems had to be faced. The factories were assuming the physical proportions which they were bound to assume, and which it was right they should assume, but they ran ahead of the development in the textile industry, and in the South of expertness of management, business resourcefulness and economic outlook. The spirit could not keep up with the flesh, and the mind lagged behind the body.