in Gastonia with the next generation of “trouble-free” combing machinery, and twenty months later Laban Groves put the process into practical operation at Flint Manufacturing Co., also in Gastonia. In early 1906, George Gray equipped the Gray Manufacturing Co. Soon, other manufacturers in Lincolnton and Charlotte experimented with the process. As the quality of Southern-made yarns improved, it matched and then surpassed the quality of yarns made at the older, more established mills in the North and was directly responsible for the rapid movement of the cotton industry to the South. Once the technique was perfected and more reliable equipment available, it gave impetus and direction to the emerging Gaston County textile industry. It was a delicate process in those days requiring constant operator attention, and only a few pioneering mills in the northeastern United States and England had successfully mastered it. The production of combed yarn at Arlington Cotton Mills in 1900 was the first experiment with combed yarn ever made in the South. It required more detailed work and was more costly to manufacture, but the finished yarn sold at a substantial premium and in a more stable market than did carded yarn at that time, making it well worth the extra effort. The relatively simple process combs out waste, or short fibers, that the carding process is not capable of removing, leaving the longer fibers parallel and giving the resulting yarn a silky, lustrous appearance and a smooth feel, as well as high tensile strength. Ragan saw this trend and devoted his efforts to changing the South’s emerging manufacturing direction, just as he had devoted them to attracting the industry to the region a decade earlier.Ĭombed yarn goes through processes that other cotton yarns do not and requires the use of the finest long staple Sea Island, Egyptian or Delta Peeler cotton. The American consumer, particularly in the large, affluent Eastern cities, was demanding fancy dress goods by 1900. The highest quality yarns and woven fabrics were all made in New England or Great Britain, where their mills had many years of experience in the manufacture of premium cotton and woolen goods. Up until this time, cotton mills in the South manufactured only carded yarn of a rather coarse quality that went into the making of heavy woven fabrics, work clothes, bagging, twine and other less refined goods. In building Arlington Cotton Mills (1) in Gastonia in 1900, he fulfilled a dream that had begun years earlier when he was a struggling merchant in McAdenville and one which he began successfully implementing on a smaller degree at Trenton Cotton Mills in 1893. It was George Washington Ragan who had the idea for the South's first combed yarn mill. Unparalleled growth soon followed these trends as more textile mills were built and operated here than in any other place in America.
The second was a mill so large and complex that national markets could no longer dismiss Southern manufacturing as secondary to that of New England. It set in motion a trend that would quickly and completely dominate the county economically for the next 100 years and propel it into a position of leadership. The first was the introduction and adaptation of the combed yarn process for making the finest quality of cotton yarns. Two separate but interrelated events in early 1900 were to produce transforming changes that would define Gastonia and Gaston County in the twentieth century. Compared to great manufacturing centers it was still not much to boast about, but it was the beginning of a shining New South dream. Its proud citizens – 4,610 in number, and again that number in the greater Gastonia area – were congratulating themselves on the success of its five thriving cotton mills with their recently expanded capacity of 40,325 whirling spindles, 644 clacking looms and nearly a thousand contented full-time operatives. Prosperity was booming on farms and in factories. When the new century dawned over Gastonia, expectations of a golden future shone brighter than it ever had.
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