Work in a cotton mill promised not merely fair wages but what was coveted even more--companionship.
During the period of most rapid growth in the textile industry, agriculture, or at least agriculture as practiced by this class, was unprofitable.

During the decade from 1890 to 1900 the price of all kinds of farm produce was exceedingly low, and the returns in money were very small.

Even though a farmer more farsighted than the average did produce the greater part of his food on the farm, his "money crop"-- cotton or tobacco--hardly brought the cost of production.

The late D.A.Tompkins, of Charlotte, North Carolina, a close student of cotton, came to the conclusion, about 1910, that cotton had been produced at a loss in the South considered as a whole, at least since the Civil War.

Many farmers, however, were in a vicious economic circle and could not escape.