Stinking Stones and Rocks of Gold: Phosphate, Fertilizer, and Industrialization in Postbellum South Carolina
Shepherd W. McKinley
Abstract
Centered near Charleston and Beaufort, the river and land mining industries dominated world production during the 1870s and 1880s. Phosphate mining fueled the rapid growth of local fertilizer companies, eventually causing the fertilizer industry to shift from the Northeast to an industrializing Charleston. The lowcountry aristocracy (planters, cotton factors, shipping merchants, gentlemen-scientists, and lawyers) created the new phosphate and fertilizer industries to reverse their losses from emancipation. Mining for their former masters, freedpeople extracted housing and labor concessions whi ... More
Keywords: Charleston, South Carolina, phosphate mining, fertilizer manufacturing, industrialization, emancipation, postbellum
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 | Print ISBN-13: 9780813049243 |
| Published to Florida Scholarship Online: May 2014 | DOI:10.5744/florida/9780813049243.001.0001 |
