TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 253 of the Swedish National Committee for the History of Technology. His publications include Engineers as System Builders: The Rise ofEngineers to Executive Positions in Swedish Shipbuilding and the Industry’s Emergence as a Large Technological System, 1890-1940 (1995) and Undergraduate Teaching ofHistory of Technology: A Survey ofthe Teaching at Some Universities in the USA in 1993 (Gothenburg, Sweden: Department of History of Technology and Industry, Chalmers University of Technology, 1995). Creating the Modem South: Millhands and Managers in Dalton, Georgia, 1884—1984. By Douglas Flamming. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Pp. xxxi+433; illustrations, tables, ap pendices, notes, bibliography, index. $42.50 (cloth). The textile industry transformed the social and economic land scape of the post-Civil War American South. Built on the ruins of an agricultural culture, large-scale manufacturing produced new classes of industrialists and factory workers. By 1920, the South had surpassed New England as the dominant textile region. Although southern mills utilized the most modern machinery, their success owed little to technology, instead resting on the economic advantage of low wages: southern textile workers earned 40 percent less than their northern counterparts. The mill village made this possible by institutionalizing labor relations and social reproduction, providing families ofworkers with the necessities ofwork, subsistence, and lei sure. Racial and cultural homogeneity supported the system. North ern and immigrant workers avoided the low-wage South, while at tempts to hire blacks invariably produced violent reactions from white workers. Debates about the origins and meaning of this social and indus trial order have made southern labor historiography one ofthe most exciting fields in American history and Douglas Flamming’s book makes an important contribution to it. Flamming departs from the usual pattern of regional or statewide studies by focusing in depth on a single company, the Crown Cotton Mill in Dalton, Georgia. In most respects Crown’s story parallels that of hundreds of other piedmont mills. Founded by local merchants in 1884, the mill turned Dalton from a rural backwater into a booming industrial cen ter. Over the next decade, workers, initially reluctant to commit themselves to “public work,” moved back and forth between farm and factory. However, by World War I wage increases, especially for adult males, had stabilized the labor force. The industry, thriving during the twenties, was devastated by the Great Depression. After the war, as national and international competition undermined profitability, the textile economy faltered again and the mill commu nity began to dissolve. In 1969, following a pattern repeated across the South, the plant shut down. The firm survived, reborn as CrownAmerica , a diversified corporation with carpetmaking subsidiaries in Europe and Australia. 254 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Flamming goes beyond the boundaries of the case study to address key questions and challenge existing interpretations in southern tex tile history. Avoiding the singular explanations that characterize much previous scholarship, Flamming underlines the nuances and complexity of the industrialization process. Thus, while identifying modernization rather than tradition as a basic dynamic, he empha sizes that its specific outcomes were not inevitable but often marked by ambiguity and failure. Similarly, arguing that the rise and fall of mill village paternalism is the central theme in southern textile his tory, he stresses its two-sidedness, documenting workers’ active par ticipation in forging a “negotiated loyalty.” Often interpreted as an extension of the plantation ethos or tradi tional piedmont deference to authority, corporate paternalism actu ally appeared after 1900 as part of a national movement—welfare capitalism—used to attract steady workers and as a weapon against unions. Schools, parks, life insurance, savings plans, baseball teams, and marching bands contributed to a corporate culture built on ru ral traditions of cooperation. Until the depression, the workers’ and the company’s interests merged to form a cohesive mill community. Once economic pressures imposed firings, layoffs, and evictions in the village and stretch-outs and speedups in the mill, paternalism’s contradictions became evident. Motivated by corporate profits rather than shared interests, management withdrew its securityjust when workers needed it most. Crown employees reacted by organizing a United Textile Workers Union local and supporting the 1934 General Strike. In spite...