• myth: water powered mills combined with lots of technological creativity were the key to the establishment and growth of towns.  This allowed American industry to be very different from in Britain. 
  
• counternarrative: yeoman farmer--Democracy will only work if the US is a nation of farmers
• reality: water power was important to the settling of towns, made possible by state government interference.  Mill towns didn't stay that different from British conditions very long
  

• http://www.engr.psu.edu/mtah/articles/colonial_wood_water.htm
• you want a waterfall or rapids to build a mill
• Hagood Mill in Pickens--operates 3rd Saturday from 10 to 4 grinding corn
• water powered sawmill video or a better view of the gearing
• also fulling mills
  

in the 18th and early 19th century the foundation story of settlement started with a mill

• mills were so important to the community that state governments used eminent domain for millers who needed more land or would destroy land upstream by flooding (p. 97)
• when large textile mills were built starting in the 1830s they benefited from this special legal protection
  
• the foundation story became the coming not just of a community of farmers but of industry, in the eyes of those who were pro-manufacturing
  

• large factories as in England (industrial revolution started 1780s) were seen as bad for democracy
• an illustrated survey of the coming of textile mills to America: http://pammack.sites.clemson.edu/lec323/kids-amir.html
• but the south had lots of small mills--sawing, grinding grain, polishing rice...
• why was it harder to build large mills in the south?
• what is your labor force?  plantation owners did not want their slaves to work in mills--too many together to think about rebellion and too dangerous
• lack of good sites near the coast
• you could make more profit from other investments
  
• textile mills were built in the south in the mid 19th century: William Gregg built a mill in Graniteville and promoted milling in the south

the foundation story that revolved around mills was one of progress and ingenuity

• the machine in the garden--scattered industry very different from the dirty, crowded industrial cities in Britain
• partnership with nature
• business not held back by restrictive rules (that myth is still powerful)
• actually most mills were state-supported monopolies