Most Active Stories Thu January 12, 2012 The History Of Factory
Jobs In America, In One Town For more, see Adam Davidson's cover
story in this month's issue of The Atlantic. Greenville County,
South Carolina is where manufacturing's past and future live
side by side. This is not a metaphor; it's a visible fact. In
South Carolina, and throughout America, factories produce more
than ever. Yet in Greenville, there are abandoned textile mills
everywhere you look. A decade ago, life in Greenville was
organized around the mills. Each mill had its own village, its
own church, its own bar. These places were abandoned over the
last decade as mill after mill went out of business. What's left
are deeply depressed near ghost-towns. But sometimes, amid the
stretches of shuttered buildings, you can find a living relic. A
bar called Christine's Place — the sign says "Come to the holler
for a cold swaller" — is still open. A few white-haired regulars
are nursing drinks at the bar. In the old Greenville, they say,
the mills r