Tobacco and textile industries in relationship to Durham's economic growth
Hill continues his earlier discussion about the development of Durham as a center of commerce. Here, he focuses specifically on the centrality of the tobacco and textiles industries to Durham's economy. Hill recalls, however, that while he was growing up, Durham was looked down upon within the state, although these industries were making Durham an important industrial center throughout the South.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with George Watts Hill, January 30, 1986. Interview C-0047. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
Old Wash Duke lived out in what is
now the Duke Homestead on the northern portion of Durham. They had the
tobacco barns. And he started in about, as I said last time, building
the hogsheads and so on, had a belly on them so that they could roll
them to Wilmington to ship the tobacco to England. But the troops that
were stationed here just west of Durham two or three miles out at the
end of the Civil War, broke into the tobacco barns and stole the
tobacco. That's how the tobacco business got started. They
scattered all over the United States, then they wrote back for some of
that "good Durham tobacco,"
basically chewing tobacco, in those days. And Washington Duke and his
two sons were smart enough to take advantage of the opportunity that
they started and so forth and out of that grew the tobacco
industry - American Tobacco Trust, Liggett,
Philip-Morris, and what have you, Lorillard, and so forth.
But Durham was a small community except for the tobacco and textiles and
eventually Mr. Wright came into the picture. He had something to do with
the American Tobacco Company and he also was helpful in developing the
Bon Sac cigarette machine to make cigarettes by machinery whereas they
had been rolled by hand. They brought a bunch of Spaniards over here to
roll them by hand. They didn't have any cigar manufacture
because that was a different type of tobacco; that was Kentucky. And
they called the tobacco "Virginia" tobacco for some
reason, God only knows. But it was basically North Carolina tobacco all
the way through, brightleaf.
- JAMES LEUTZE:
-
Sounds like a Virginia plot.
- GEORGE WATTS HILL:
-
Well, it was very typical of Virginia. They'd take the full
credit for everything. North Carolina in those days was known as
"a vale of humility between two mountains of conceit,
" - Virginia and South Carolina. Of course, South
Carolina had been settled a long time ago and Virginia had the
Cavaliers. And North Carolina was settled by the third and fourth sons
that didn't have a cent. They'd come over from
England and the Moravians and various and sundry different groups of
people, the Germans.
- JAMES LEUTZE:
-
The Valdesians.
- GEORGE WATTS HILL:
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And so forth. So we had a working group fo people in North Carolina in
the early days and they did a good job.
- JAMES LEUTZE:
-
Now, was Durham considered to be a center of commerce for all of North
Carolina at that time?
- GEORGE WATTS HILL:
-
No, I wouldn't say a center of manufacturing of those two,
tobacco and textiles, but old Raleigh looked down on Durham. Raleigh was
the center - the state capital and so forth - and
Hillsborough had been the capital back in late Revolutionary days, and
they looked down their nose. Everybody looked down their nose at Durham.
They didn't do that in Winston-Salem, for some reason.
Greensboro was a little town. Winston-Salem was in the tobacco business;
Reynolds was just blooming like a rose. But old Durham was the fourth or
fifth town; it was a town, it wasn't a city. Raleigh was
leading, Charlotte, Asheville, now Durham was what number five or six in
the state. No. I can remember walking to school, public school, that was
back in 19 - well, I graduated in 1917, and so that was, I
skipped two classes, so that was 1907 or something - we used to
walk to grammar school and then went on to high school which is now the
Durham Art Council building. But you never thought about it one way or
the other. The big houses were on Morehead and the little houses were
east Durham and west Durham and the middle houses were on Dillard
Street. Now Dillard was where General Carr had a big, almost a, well
I'd call it a gingerbread house, a tremendous damn thing on
the corner of Main and Dillard and eventually Mr. Toms's
home, where the bus station is now in Durham. Main Street
was - my uncle, Isham Hill had a reasonably small house on Main
Street. Claiborne Carr, a son of the general,
was on Main Street. Then Austin Carr, his younger brother, was in Durham
opposite my father's home, which was built in 1913. Claiborne
was head of the Durham Hosiery Mill, was quite a hosiery mill down in
east Durham, basically, and they built the silk mill in Durham behind
what was then the First National Bank, that busted later during the
Depression. The silk mill was a tremendous five or six story reinforced
concrete building. That was a famous building.