Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1998

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

History

Major Professor

James C. Cobb

Committee Members

William Bruce Wheeler, Anne Mayhew, Cynthia Griggs Fleming

Abstract

This dissertation examines the business career of John Gary Anderson of Rock Hill, South Carolina. Born in 1861, Anderson grew up in a South decimated by war. Anderson settled in Rock Hill in 1880, a small post-war town in the Piedmont that was in the early stages of development, and decided to become a businessman. Anderson's efforts to take his place among the new town's commercial-civic elite, and his early success as a businessman, mirrors the experience of numerous southern men during this period. This dissertation covers Anderson's entry into the business world first as a merchant in the 1880s to a manufacturer of carriages and buggies by 1890. When the automobile began to overtake the horse-drawn vehicle in the early 1910s, Anderson attempted to convert to manufacturing automobiles.

There is a paucity of research in southern business topics and this work provides a study of one of the region's businessmen. Anderson's career provides an example of the problems that southern businessmen and industrialists faced in the New South period. Cotton, the region's major agricultural product, had a strong influence on the economy and created problems for businessmen. Plentiful and skilled labor was a constant source of problems for businessmen and industrialists. Consumer prejudice, both Northern and Southern, towards southern manufactured goods plagued manufacturers. And, most importantly, many southern business found it difficult to acquire sufficient capital to start new business or fund on-going operations. Anderson encountered all these problems during his business career.

This study also focuses on two areas of research that have been largely overlooked by historians. One is the carriage and buggy manufacturing. In the 1880s and 1890s, carriage and buggy building, on a small scale, was common throughout the South. Automobile manufacturing in the South from 1910 to the early 1920s has been almost completely overlooked, although there were dozens of attempts to start automobile manufacturing. The efforts of these southern automobile builders miniscule in comparison to the Detroit manufacturers, but their experiences, and Bieir failures, provide a useful insight into the attempts of southern businessmen to compete in a national marketplace.

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