Dam Crazy for White Coal in the New South - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 25

James B. Duke was just one of many industrial boosters who equated clean hydroelectric
production with textiles and light-manufactories in the New South. J. A. Switzer, a profess-
or of hydraulic engineering at the University of Tennessee, believed that luring industry
to the New South, including “the industrial expansion already attained,” was a result of
“the cheapness of water-power already developed.” And additional industrial growth—in
textiles and other manufactures—would “greatly stimulate the further development of the
remaining latent waterpowers” throughout the New South. 16 Thorndike Saville, another
engineer and booster, commented in 1924 on corporations' total energy production and
consumption in North Carolina, which, since 1912, had rapidly “surpassed its neighboring
states.” Furthermore, he noted, “this output is a sensitive index of industrial development
and reflects the acknowledged superiority of North Carolina in this respect.” 17 Cheap or-
ganic energy clearly lured textile and other producers to the Southeast. Companies moth-
balled many cotton mills in New England, and “the Piedmont's share of the total number
of textile workers rose from 46 to 68 percent” between 1923 and 1933. 18 The New South's
energy supply was renewable and cheap, was more easily manipulated than human labor,
and was a major factor in this recentering of the American textile industry before the Great
Depression. In other words, cheap renewable energy hastened the initial textile boom, and
the continued industrial and energy developments paralleled each other. Maintaining cheap
energy rates helped the Southeast remain competitive.
Before engineers and executives could develop all of the potential waterpower sites in
the New South, they had to build privately owned and state-based systems. One hydraulic
expert and booster noted in 1912 that Duke Power maintained 1,380 miles of transmission
lines over a territory that “stretche[d] 200 miles from east to west and 150 miles from north
to south” to deliver electricity to 156 cotton mills, homes in forty-five mill towns, municip-
al street lights, and an interurban railway with about 150 miles of track in North Carolina
and South Carolina. 19 And by 1924, 80 percent of Duke's electricity went to textile facil-
ities, while other factory operations (such as tobacco and furniture) consumed 10 percent
and municipal systems absorbed the remaining 10 percent. 20 Duke's energy company was
initially the most successful at harnessing a single southeastern river with a series of dams
and artificial reservoirs placed one after the other in a series, but the institution soon faced
stiff competition as other investors also raced to deploy transnational technologies, con-
serve New South water resources, and consolidate corporate power.
Private companies in Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina followed Duke
in the complex task of environmental manipulation and energy production. 21 Each indi-
vidual company incorporated old and new ideas to create dam, reservoir, and transmis-
sion networks that fit site-specific environments in different watersheds. Every business
assumed nature's energy—falling water—would always generate electric power, but they
all learned that rivers did not always participate willingly in conservation regimes. When