The growing cotton textile industry of the postbellum South required a stable and reliable work force made up of laborers with varied skills. At the same time, Southern agriculture was in a depressed state. Families, especially those with many children, were therefore forced to look for work in the textile mills. Mill managers, in their own interest, created the basis for a distinctive social and economic structure: the Southern cotton mill village. These villages, which included such accoutrements as good schools for the children, were paternalistic work environments designed to attract this...